PQS Vacuum Material

Shader: Terrain/PQS/Sphere Projection SURFACE QUAD · materialType = Vacuum

The PQS Material { } drives the shader that paints a body's near-surface terrain — the real, subdivided quad-sphere you walk on and fly over from low orbit down to the ground. This is the counterpart to the ScaledVersion materials, which paint only the distant low-LOD sphere; the PQS material takes over as the camera descends, and KSP cross-fades the two across the fadeStart / fadeEnd altitudes. Vacuum is the base sphere-projection terrain shader, and is the type you reach for on airless bodies. Like the rest of the PQS Main family, this shader is world-space triplanar: it projects each texture down the three world axes and blends them by the surface normal, so there are no UV seams and a handful of tiling textures can clothe an entire planet. It blends a stack of textures by elevation, layers a separate texture on steep slopes, and crossfades between a fine near tiling and a coarse far tiling by camera distance. Compared with Main it is in some ways larger (four elevation bands instead of three) and in some ways simpler — there are no normal maps and no atmospheric fog stage at all, which is exactly why it suits vacuum worlds. Its sibling PQS shaders are Main, Optimized, Extra, MainFastBlend, OptimizedFastBlend and MainTriplanarZoomRotation.

We shall first see how to enable the material, then how the shader assembles the surface, and finally discuss each group of properties in turn.

Enabling

Select the material by setting materialType = Vacuum in the PQS { } node. The Material { } node then accepts the properties listed below.

cfg

PQS
{
    materialType = Vacuum
    Material
    {
        // Colour grading of the per-vertex colour map
        saturation = 1
        contrast   = 1
        tintColor  = 1, 1, 1, 0

        // Texture strength and the near/far crossfade distance
        texTiling      = 1000
        texPower       = 0.5
        multiPower     = 0.5
        groundTexStart = 2000
        groundTexEnd   = 10000

        // Deep (lowest) elevation band — near base + far multi texture
        deepTex         = MyMod/PluginData/regolith_color.dds
        deepMultiTex    = MyMod/PluginData/regolith_far.dds
        deepMultiFactor = 10

        // Main (mid) elevation band
        mainTex         = MyMod/PluginData/dust_color.dds
        mainMultiTex    = MyMod/PluginData/dust_far.dds
        mainMultiFactor = 10

        // High elevation band
        highTex         = MyMod/PluginData/rock_color.dds
        highMultiTex    = MyMod/PluginData/rock_far.dds
        highMultiFactor = 10

        // Snow (top) elevation band
        snowTex         = MyMod/PluginData/ice_color.dds
        snowMultiTex    = MyMod/PluginData/ice_far.dds
        snowMultiFactor = 10

        // Where each band fades into the next (on normalised vertex elevation)
        deepStart  = 0
        deepEnd    = 0.3
        mainLoStart = 0
        mainLoEnd   = 0.5
        mainHiStart = 0.3
        mainHiEnd   = 0.5
        hiLoStart  = 0.6
        hiLoEnd    = 0.6
        hiHiStart  = 0.6
        hiHiEnd    = 0.9
        snowStart  = 0.9
        snowEnd    = 1

        // Steep-slope cliff overlay
        steepTex      = MyMod/PluginData/cliff_color.dds
        steepTiling   = 1
        steepPower    = 1
        steepTexStart = 20000
        steepTexEnd   = 30000
    }
}

How the surface is built

The shader is a triplanar terrain surface assembled per pixel. There is no single colour map; instead a base colour, four elevation textures (each with a paired distant "multi" texture), and a steep overlay are combined in the following order:

Per-vertex colour grading — the PQS supplies a colour per vertex (COLOR.rgb, usually from a colour map or LandControl). The shader desaturates that colour toward its luma by saturation, mixes in tintColor (whose alpha is the mix amount, acting as an unsaturation pivot), and scales it by contrast. The result is the base colour that the band textures then tint.
Four elevation bands — deepTex, mainTex, highTex and snowTex are blended by the vertex's normalised elevation (written into COLOR.w by the PQS height build). Each band's weight is a pair of smoothsteps: deep is 1 − smoothstep(deepStart, deepEnd); main and high are each isolated mid ranges computed as smoothstep(loStart, loEnd) − smoothstep(hiStart, hiEnd); and snow is smoothstep(snowStart, snowEnd). So deep covers the bottom of the height range, main and high the middle, and snow the top. Note the naming: despite the "snow" label this is just the top-elevation band texture — on an airless body it is whatever you want the peaks to be, not necessarily snow.
Near/far tiling crossfade — each band is sampled at two scales and crossfaded by camera distance. The near tier uses the band's base texture (deepTex/mainTex/highTex/snowTex) at the shared texTiling scale for close-up detail; the far tier uses a separate texture per band (deepMultiTex … snowMultiTex), each at its own *MultiFactor tiling, for the distance. The crossfade runs between the groundTexStart and groundTexEnd view distances. texPower and multiPower set how strongly the near and far tiers show. Because the triplanar coordinates are world position scaled by 10⁻⁵, the tiling numbers are large (the near default is 1000).
Texture vs. flat colour — the blended band texture does not replace the base colour, it modulates it: the final albedo is lerp(baseColour, baseColour × bandTexture, blendW), where blendW is driven by texPower/multiPower and the near/far mix. Where it falls to zero — with both powers at 0 — you see the flat graded colour map; where it is high you see fully textured terrain.
Steep-slope overlay — steepTex is blended over the result on steep terrain, sampled triplanar at its own steepTiling. The per-vertex steepness (TEXCOORD1.y) is multiplied by steepPower and clamped to 0–1, so higher steepPower makes the cliff texture reach onto gentler slopes. The overlay has its own distance fade between steepTexStart and steepTexEnd — the overlay is at full strength close to the camera and fades out with distance (steepFade = 1 − smoothstep(steepTexStart, steepTexEnd, depth)), so it behaves like the near tier of the ground textures. There is no separate near/far tiling for the steep overlay and no steep normal map.
Lighting — the surface is lit with a plain diffuse (Lambert) NdotL term against the local star plus spherical-harmonic ambient. There is no normal mapping on this shader (unlike Main, every band of which carries a bump map) and no specular highlight — the world normal used for lighting comes straight from the mesh tangent frame, not from a texture. The forward-add pass folds in additional point/spot/directional lights, and the deferred and light-prepass paths reproduce the same triplanar composite for Unity's deferred renderer.

The triplanar projection means the band textures need no UV mapping on the mesh. The shader still constructs a tangent frame and therefore expects mesh tangents, which the PQS quad-sphere provides. Because the colour, elevation and slope all come from the PQS build, the final look depends as much on your PQSMods (height, colour, LandControl) as on the textures set here.

Properties

The properties fall into four groups, which we shall take in turn:

Colour grading — how the per-vertex colour map is processed before texturing.
Texture blend & distance — the near/far strengths and the crossfade distances.
Elevation bands — the four height textures, their distant multi textures, and the transition windows.
Steep-slope overlay & opacity — the cliff texture and the PQS fade scalar.

Colour grading

Property	Format	Description
`saturation`	Decimal	Saturation of the per-vertex colour map: `0` collapses it to greyscale (luma), `1` leaves it unchanged, higher oversaturates. Applied per-vertex before contrast and tint. Default 1.
`contrast`	Decimal	Contrast multiplier applied to the graded colour. Default 1.
`tintColor`	Color	A tint mixed into the base colour; the alpha is the mix amount, acting as an unsaturation pivot (0 = no tint). Default (1, 1, 1, 0) — i.e. no tint.

Texture blend & distance

Property	Format	Description
`texTiling`	Decimal	World tiling of the near base textures (all four bands share this scale). Default 1000.
`texPower`	Decimal	Strength of the near texture tier; drops the textures out toward the flat colour map as it approaches 0. Default 0.5.
`multiPower`	Decimal	Strength of the far (multi) texture tier. Default 0.5.
`groundTexStart`	Decimal	View distance (m) at which the near→far crossfade begins. Default 2000.
`groundTexEnd`	Decimal	View distance (m) at which only the far tier remains. Default 10000. (The loader and shader both label this "NearFar Start", which is a mislabel — it is the end of the near/far crossfade.)

Elevation bands

Each band has a near base texture and a separate far ("multi") texture with its own tiling factor. The band weights come from the vertex elevation and the transition values at the end of the table. There are no normal maps on any band.

Property	Format	Description
`deepTex`	File Path	Near base albedo for the deep (lowest) elevation band. Triplanar, world-tiled at `texTiling`. Default "white".
`deepTexScale` / `deepTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `deepTex`.
`deepMultiTex`	File Path	Far (distant) texture for the deep band. Default "white".
`deepMultiTexScale` / `deepMultiTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `deepMultiTex`.
`deepMultiFactor`	Decimal	World tiling of the deep band's far texture. Default 1.
`mainTex`	File Path	Near base albedo for the main (mid) elevation band. Default "white".
`mainTexScale` / `mainTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `mainTex`.
`mainMultiTex`	File Path	Far texture for the main band. Default "white".
`mainMultiTexScale` / `mainMultiTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `mainMultiTex`.
`mainMultiFactor`	Decimal	World tiling of the main band's far texture. Default 1.
`highTex`	File Path	Near base albedo for the high elevation band. Default "white".
`highTexScale` / `highTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `highTex`.
`highMultiTex`	File Path	Far texture for the high band. Default "white".
`highMultiTexScale` / `highMultiTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `highMultiTex`.
`highMultiFactor`	Decimal	World tiling of the high band's far texture. Default 1.
`snowTex`	File Path	Near base albedo for the snow (top) elevation band. Despite the name, simply the top-elevation texture. Default "white".
`snowTexScale` / `snowTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `snowTex`.
`snowMultiTex`	File Path	Far texture for the snow band. Default "white".
`snowMultiTexScale` / `snowMultiTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `snowMultiTex`.
`snowMultiFactor`	Decimal	World tiling of the snow band's far texture. Default 1.
`deepStart`	Decimal	Elevation (normalised 0–1) below which the deep band is fully active. Default 0.
`deepEnd`	Decimal	Elevation at which the deep band has fully faded out. Default 0.3.
`mainLoStart`	Decimal	Lower edge of the main band's rising smoothstep. Default 0.
`mainLoEnd`	Decimal	Upper edge of the main band's rising smoothstep. Default 0.5.
`mainHiStart`	Decimal	Lower edge of the main band's falling smoothstep (main weight = rising − falling, isolating the mid range). Default 0.3.
`mainHiEnd`	Decimal	Upper edge of the main band's falling smoothstep. Default 0.5.
`hiLoStart`	Decimal	Lower edge of the high band's rising smoothstep. Default 0.6.
`hiLoEnd`	Decimal	Upper edge of the high band's rising smoothstep. Default 0.6.
`hiHiStart`	Decimal	Lower edge of the high band's falling smoothstep (high weight = rising − falling). Default 0.6.
`hiHiEnd`	Decimal	Upper edge of the high band's falling smoothstep. Default 0.9.
`snowStart`	Decimal	Elevation at which the snow band begins to appear. Default 0.9.
`snowEnd`	Decimal	Elevation at which the snow band reaches full weight. Default 1.

Steep-slope overlay & opacity

Property	Format	Description
`steepTex`	File Path	Albedo blended over steep slopes (cliffs), triplanar at `steepTiling`. Default "white".
`steepTexScale` / `steepTexOffset`	Vector2	Tiling and offset of `steepTex`.
`steepTiling`	Decimal	World tiling of the steep overlay. Default 1.
`steepPower`	Decimal	Multiplier on the vertex steepness before it is clamped to the overlay weight. Higher values push the cliff texture onto gentler slopes; 0 disables it. Default 1.
`steepTexStart`	Decimal	View distance (m) at which the steep overlay's distance fade begins. The overlay is at full strength nearer than this and fades out beyond it. Default 20000.
`steepTexEnd`	Decimal	View distance (m) beyond which the steep overlay is fully faded out. Default 30000.
`planetOpacity`	Decimal	Opacity of the PQS material (shader uniform `_PlanetOpacity`), used by KSP to fade the terrain against the scaled-space sphere across the `fadeStart`/`fadeEnd` transition. Normally left at 1. Default 1.

Notes

This is the body's near-surface terrain material. The body simultaneously has a ScaledVersion material for the distant sphere; KSP cross-fades between the two across the fadeStart / fadeEnd altitudes, so the two should be tuned to match where they meet.
The textures are world-space triplanar, so they need no UVs and the tiling values are in world units scaled by 10⁻⁵ (hence the large near default of 1000). The shader still constructs a tangent frame from the mesh, so the PQS quad-sphere must provide tangents; a custom mesh without them will light incorrectly.
The band colour, the per-vertex elevation that drives the band blend (COLOR.w), the per-vertex steepness that drives the overlay (TEXCOORD1.y), and COLOR.rgb base tint all come from the PQS build — your height, colour and LandControl mods shape the input this shader paints.
Unlike Main, this shader has no normal maps (no *BumpMap properties on any band or on the steep overlay) and no atmospheric/ocean fog stage — there are no globalDensity or fogColorRamp properties. The lighting is plain diffuse with SH ambient and no specular term.
The far tier here is a separate texture per band (deepMultiTex … snowMultiTex), each with its own *MultiFactor tiling. This differs from the Main family, where the far tier reuses the band's own albedo at a coarser *MultiFactor tiling rather than supplying a distinct texture.
The config key names differ from the Main family: near/far strengths are texPower / multiPower (Main uses powerNear / powerFar), the near base tiling is the single shared texTiling, and the band-transition keys are deepStart/deepEnd, mainLoStart…mainHiEnd, hiLoStart…hiHiEnd, snowStart/snowEnd. Each ParserTarget on this loader is unique — there are no config aliases (in particular, no Atmospheric… alias; the token is simply Vacuum).
The steep overlay's distance fade runs full strength up close and fades the cliff texture out with distance (steepFade = 1 − smoothstep(steepTexStart, steepTexEnd)), so it is visible near the camera and hidden far away — matching the near tier of the ground textures.
planetOpacity drives the per-pixel alpha emitted by all forward and deferred passes. Because the passes blend with OneMinusSrcAlpha SrcAlpha, KSP uses it to fade the planet surface in and out at the scaled-space transition; a static config value is normally left at its default of 1.
The _floatingOriginOffset shader input is not a config property — KSP sets it at runtime so the world-space triplanar coordinates stay numerically stable as the game shifts the floating origin around the active craft.
If none of the passes compile on the target platform, the shader falls back to Unity's built-in Diffuse shader.

PQS Vacuum Material ​

Enabling ​

How the surface is built ​

Properties ​

Colour grading ​

Texture blend & distance ​

Elevation bands ​

Steep-slope overlay & opacity ​

Notes ​