Cloudscape Seasons - v1.2d

Community Marketplace
1

Cloudscape system with volumetric clouds with excellent performance and tons of tweeks. Almost every feature is customizable and all materials and blueprints have great breakdown, so it will be easy to integrate into any existing project and other marketplace assets/plugins. No C++ code, just Materials and Blueprints and all textures are procedurally generated.

At the marketplace: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketp…dscape-seasons

DemoFAQReflections.png
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There are 5 demo Maps, being one of them a FAQ map, with some useful info about usage. All maps have a menu that you can use while playing to change some settings at seen in the 6th picture.

Old pictures of v1.1: [SPOILER]

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[/SPOILER]

**Video at Marketplace: ****(v.1.0)

**

**Video at Marketplace: **(v.1.1)
UE4 - Cloudscape Seasons - Demo small - YouTube

Early old video showing how it looks like: (there are better ones)

Video showing water reflections:

**Latest video with documentation and hands on for v.1.0 at:

Complementary video with hands on with changes for v.1.1 and executable demo:
UE4 - Cloudscape Seasons Executable Demo - YouTube**

Application executable video(small version):

Application executable video(large version):

**Application executable showing the solution working, download it (google drive 1.9 GB): here **

Check the product website for a full feature list: https://rigelstudios.wixsite.com/hom…dscape-seasons

Posts 23, 24 and 25 have a small FAQ gathered around.

Thanks for your support!

v.1.0 - product released Oct 27th 2017 at MP

v.1.1 - released Dec 2017

  • executable to show performance baseline for the ones interested in purchase for gaming purposes (November 3rd 2017) - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • new Moon textures with high resolution definition 2k quality (November 2017) - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • performance overhaul targeting reduction of 2ms (November 2017) - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • fix for the engine scalability settings not working for anything lower than epic setting - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • fix for the over-memory allocation when too many changes were done in the blueprint parameters, noticeable mainly when dragging mouse over color pickers or sliding cursos over scalars. - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • 5 new exposed tweaks in main blueprint to help improve performance - done v.1.1 Dec 2017
  • BP_Sky_Seasons will enable to drive Volumetric Fog value by a Curve using the Sun position. - done v.1.1 Dec 2017

v.1.2 - released May 2018

  • add blinking effect at stars and some movement
  • adding simple circular trajectoty to the Sun and Moon (you set the angle from the sun position as a curve) as a secondary option using just the time of the day from the calendar. The Moon rises where the Sun sets.
  • multiplayer replicated for all features
  • works now with OpenGL and Vulkan, besides D3D
  • works now with Blueprint Nativization
  • extra parameters to control clouds height, interspacing and radius - per layer
  • better Maps with built-in documentation and showing some FAQ - common ones
  • 4.17, 4.18 and 4.19 will be updated same content.

v.1.2a - released Nov 2018

  • a fix for the issue with editor not being able to start with a default map with Cloudscape Seasons in UE 4.21

v.1.2b - released Dec 2018

  • fixed issue with main raymarch material which affects the ability of planar reflections to reflect scene when Sunlight is below horizon;
  • fixed issue with New Moon still casting light as if it was Full Moon;
  • several changes in default values for: BP_SkySeasons, DT_MoonPhases
  • fixes parameter values for the BP_SkySeasons and BP_CloudscapeSeasons at each demo scene, to reflect the new changes on light intensity which now needs to be lower (originally because the main raymarch material was killing the light transmission over the material when Sun below horizon)

v.1.2c - released Jan 2019

  • hotfix for 2 cloud layer materials
  • hotfix for 2 textures
  • hotfix for crash when opening project in 4.21

v.1.2d - released March 2019

  • hotfix for crash when running as standalone game
  • hotfix for crash when opening project in 4.21 - improved

Under development - roadmap:

  • new cloud types complementing the ones from original package, just material instances (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • major cloud shape overhaul and extending clouds to horizon following sphere curvature (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • new map containing an animated environment showing not only day and night cycles, but also cloud shape and coverage evolution (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • two new map showing custom cloud shapes (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • follow camera mode on (X,Y) axis (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • performance overhaul targeting reduction of 2ms from release 1.0 (target v.1.3 - 2019)
  • lightning effects - for performance reasons there will exist another copy of main material with this (target v.1.4 - 2019)
  • performance overhaul targeting reduction of 1ms from release 1.3 (target v.1.5 - 2019)
  • tornado formation with floating debris - for performance reasons there will exist another copy of main material with this (target v.1.5 - 2019)
  • stylized clouds for anime/cartoon type games (target v.1.5 - 2019)
  • 04 extra scenarios with anime/cartoon clouds (target v.1.5 - 2019)
  • adding two new modes for the calendar, that overrides the current time displacement based on longitude and latitude, as the time passes, you can set how much time is for daylight, nightlight, day to night transition and vice-versa, also a mode based on event, so this way you can send a command to start changing from day to night and vice-versa, giving you the ability to control this event during game-play and/or cinematic in an easy fashion - (target v.1.4 - 2019)
  • auto-adjust for performance: depending on the camera position and rotation, specific amount of details will be set in order to improve performance or image quality. All you need to do is to specify minimum and maximum constraints, so the auto-adjust will not go beyond those settings. (target v.1.4 - 2019)
  • test the package for Xbox One (target v.1.5 - 2019) - the majority of tests seems to work as of May 2018
  • test the package for PlayStation (target v.1.5 - 2019) - the majority of tests seems to work as of May 2018
  • test the package for iOS (target v.1.5 - 2019) - the majority of tests seems to work as of May 2018
  • test the package for Android (target v.1.5 - 2019) - the majority of tests seems to work in emulators as of May 2018 (not recommended for mobiles at their current capacities - overheat)

**Obs: **the package was designed to not have compatibility broken on updates, every new feature will have an exclusive material that is easily replaced with one selection on the main blueprint. You will not lose any previous work updating the package! So, start modeling your cloudscapes now!

2

Looking cool! Do you mind making a video or releasing a demo build where we can experience VR performance - with the lowered quality settings you talk about on your webpage?

3

I will make a demo with all necessary for VR and post it here. Subscribe to the thread and you will get notified… Im still applying some final touches for the submission at the Marketplace :slight_smile:

take care.

4

Looks incredible, absolutely fantastic work!

5

Pretty cool. :cool: Have you thought about including a weather system?

6

Please make a demo for non vr, too. Really interested in the possibilities for my game

7

If you check my website you will see that Im also working on a weather system too, but it is far from completion because both system are being made to deliver image quality with cinematics, which is something I need a lot for my game Title under development. I just quite need the money selling these products to help bring my game to life. While the tools are made with cinematics in mind, they can be tweeked to allow it work on a game. Just for you to know, the quality I want to achieve is at least what you can see in Rise of the Tomb Raider or even better (for the weather) and for the cloudscape Im targeting to have something superior for what you can see at Horizon: Zero Dawn.

8

I will do, please bear with me while Im giving my product the final touches to submit to the Marketplace.

9

This looks cool in the flythrough, but the clouds are WAY too smooth / blurry, they look very unnatural. When you look at real clouds, they don’t look like that, they have a certain sharpness and texture to it.
I could imagine this to fit with some comic style / heavily stylized game, but not with anything going for realism.

Also, will the clouds change the color depending on the lighting of the scene? The bright clouds on the pitch black sky looks wrong.

No offence, just some constructive criticism. Am looking forward to what the final version looks like.

10

@spacegojira

Im not an artist, Im a technician, so I went after everything possible to customize for a cloud shape or color etc, that said, what I have just showed was my custom settings for what I have figured was ok to show. You can change even the cloud details (the crispy features, billow features, etc). You have extinction color as a parameter, same for overall color, shadow density, ambient color, the density at the clouds too (so that might diminish the smoothness), you can also drive those colors using the main light (sun or moon) using curves as is done with BP_Sky_Sphere (from the engine) and all this stuff is taken into account on the main blueprint. I also have to tell that all textures are procedurals where you define all features you want at your clouds, you can define different types of clouds per altitude, even some different at the same altitude. Keep in mind that those clouds will always looks better at ground while not that much while inside, main reason is that they are a custom shader raymarching the material inside a cube and this material uses a flipbook like texture, and the final texture rendered is pretty small ( the flipbook is 16x16 frames @ 4k will result in a 256 texture only, if you go 8k you will get 512 texture ), with this in mind, little details are a bit hard to achieve. Im working on a material which you will just substitute and it will allow a different approach, but more costly, where you can use an array of textures where each texture will be able to go as high as 2k but that alone will consume 512MB of GPU RAM. Well, this doubles if you think 4k. I hope ppl will use the feature wisely.

For such a product without any C++ plugin behind it, I think myself will worth its cost (around $30). I will provide a lot of examples with the sample photo I based to make them, so everyone can compare at the product page way before they click on the buy button.

The goal is to provide something that artists can manipulate at their will, and something that technicians would not have to care with complicated things and just have the clouds they want to use right out the box when they purchase. The product will be a content-plugin so it will be easily incorpored into existing code with copy-paste to the levels. There are nothing actually that can bring visual quality to Unreal Engine regarding cloudscape, unless it is TrueSky which is physically acurrate, rather sometimes not artistically easy to drive. I can see many people looking at Architectural Visualization wanting it at their films or snapshots. More details on what you will find at the product is available at the product homepage: https://rigelstudios.wixsite.com/home/cloudscape-seasons

Im still working on several final touches before publishing at the store, hopefully will delivery it next week.

Cheers!

11

Cool, does it render transparent objects properly when flying through clouds? That was always an issue.

12

@overreal

It does! Bellow you will find the transparent material I have placed into two spheres as to simulate a sort of glass (sorry, did it quickly and with no references), being one sphere with refraction enabled and the other without it, showing the cloudy region where the two spheres are and the behavior for each one. All done for 4.16.3 so it will also work for 4.17. By the way Im quite confident as for the engine matter I can put it to work as far as 4.13.x, since for submission UE4 Marketplace want the current and the following lowest, I might cut a deal to transform it to previous versions if needed.

video at : https://youtube.com/watch?v=CVpJElXwXis

I hope it translates to what you wish to see, otherwise could you post the material you want me to try at?

o/

13

While creating the Demo maps with the several cloudscapes I could find a good photo to base on, I found particularly 3 scenarios (out of 12) I could not match the sharpness of the clouds… and the problem is that I quite liked those 3 photos and find they really up to most desirable. I made some experiments and I have decided to change the product to support even higher resolution which the following impact: more texture memory being used. The previous the best resolution to map into the volume would be 400 pixels from a 8k texture sampled as 20x20 frames (so at Z it was interpolated 400 slices). The current one you will have mapped into the volume up to 1k from 8x8k textures sampled as 8x8 frames (so at Z it will be interpolated 512 slices). Overall, better image and definition of details. The system will adopt the correct material depending on the selected resolutions.

Hands now at work!

14

I got some good news on the project so far:

  • improved the cloud sharpness
  • improved the rim smooth effect with distance from sun or moon light
  • implemented cloud layers
  • implemented alternative to use curves for several attributes
  • finally matched all cloud scenarios I selected previously and added storm clouds to the pool

but as for implementing higher texture sizes, it didnt turn a good solution and the main reason is that you would run out of system memory too fast since when you change the blueprint attributes the editor automatically add the change to the “undo” feature and as we are working with lots of textures procedurally generated, it turns that too many copies are cached for the “undo” and it makes you to save whole project too many times between changes and even so, run it in PIE for the garbage collector to dismiss that memory.

That said I have changed some things and could improve the overall cloud look appearance with even less resolution for the clouds, now you hardly notice visual differences with different texture resolutions while your main display stays the same (mine is full HD).

I would like to make an offer for all developers wanting the Cloudscape tool for free: place a cloudscape picture in this thread that you would like the tool to be capable to achieve and be one of 5 (five) lucky developers to receive the tool for free, including future upgrades. The criteria for the applicants is that he is an active community member with frequent posts in the forum and the picture depicts a cloudscape (during day, night, storm, sunset or during flight), I will check the history myself. I will post here the winners and I will show the pictures of the product in action with their pictures reproduced.

The submission for this project will happen on the week October 25-29th 2017 and I can’t wait to see what people are doing with it!

Thanks all for the feedback.

15

This one I got from Amanda Bott from twitter and I know I can reproduce it:

16

Looks lovely! Will you make it available on itchio or other places besides MP? As it might take a while.

17

The MP process has just changed… Im going to give a two week wait on the release, otherwise I will might try Gumroad for selling.

18

It is submitted for MP approval.

Check first post and for the documentation link released as a video with tech details and hands on here:

19

Not released yet by the MP, but I’m already cooking the next release with few extra features, more materials, ready to use cloud types modeled, more demo maps, a complete scene with terrain, trees, grass and few assets, and even a cloud in a heart shape to show the strength and artistic orientation this package provides. Stay tunned for new screenshots and videos.

20

Hey, thank you for your indepth reply, that’s very interesting. And I just saw your last video you posted, the clouds look so much better and much more realistic already. I am really looking forward to this, since I am disappointed by all the other cloud packs so far. (: