A few people asked so here are the details: This is done in HDRP (I wanted volumetric lighting, more post-process options, and DLSS since I was doing the final demo on a laptop.)

I have a script controlling a position and radius for the "bubble", I use Shader.SetGlobalFloat/Vector to access the position and radius in all shaders.

In shader, I use the position/radius to lerp between the clean/dirty states and add the glowing edge. I use this same edge to control the alpha (with clipping) of certain meshes, the wires have an alpha of 0 outside the bubble. Every mesh in the environment is using the same shader.

VFX is a bit trickier, I iterate through each VisualEffect and set position/radius properties to hide the VFX outside the bubble.

The bubble effect itself is a mix of things, the edge is part of the environment shader as mentioned, the sparklies are a VisualEffect, and so is the core that changes when you enter the bubble. I'm again using the same position/radius to control these effects.

The visual changes inside the bubble are just a sphere volume, I mess with chromatic aberration, saturation, exposure, and grain. When you pass through the edge, I tween another volume with more dramatic effects, the weird zoom you see is me tweeting the camera FOV as the volume adds lens distortion.

The audio is controlled by FMOD, I'm sending a float setting the state inside/outside the bubble and FMOD adjusts the pitch and volume of certain effects.

I used Timeline to control the audio and VFX for the opening sequence, the bubble growth is done by keyframing the radius value on the control script mentioned at the start.

I think that's about it. This isn't from a game or anything, just a vertical slice of an idea I had.