[Community Project] WIP Weather & Water Shader

Community Showcase Game Development
1458

Hey,

So I have got a project where I have migrated the project into it and it kinda works but I don’t have any of the underwater and I don’t have the shoreline effect you have on the demo levels. Is there a quick and easy answer why? I have placed the BP and the underwater BP in the level.

Also, in my level the looks really bad even on Ultra. It has no proper reflections and has that funny edge bleeding effect going on. I’ll attach a pic to show what I mean…

Cheers,

EDIT: After digging around a little it seems I need a file which mimicks the landscape data so it knows where to process the shoreline, right? like a heightmap file or something?
Also, I’ve noticed the 4.12.2 UE4 is out, when can we expect the update from your end or will the 4.12 stuff just work fine with the 4.12.2 engine?

1459

Erm, is that the picture you meant to include?

1460

Try unzipping again no missing textures. Its not stuck at 45 percent it’s compiling six to ten thousand shaders and by the sound of it engine shaders too. That can take ten minutes on 16 threads at 4.6 GHz for me sometimes I’ve heard it taking a half hour or more

1462

That looks like it’s missing some components, was copied to a new project? Is that project in 4.12.2? In order to use everything in a new project, you need to migrate it all and then place the actors in your own level. Here’s some info on that:
/wiki/How-to-add-to-your-project

The edge bleeding you see is from SSR, which has limited usefulness on an . I turn it off, the artifacts are too visible.

It’s hard to tell the scale from that image, how close is the camera to the shore?

EDIT: For the shoreline effect you will need to add your landscape heightmap as a texture in the BP_Ocean details panel, will modulate the waves based on your landscape. Is that what you mean? or do you mean shore foam?

That means it is compiling shaders, which can take 5-15 minutes depending on your system. is normal, just need to let it finish.

And all other questions on 4.12.2

I’m downloading the update right now, will push the changes to GitHub within the next couple hours.

1463

what part of the coast makes you such a nice person :cool: Surely you must get the daily PMs asking how to install etc. too?

1464

Must be the better coast :wink: haha jk…

I dunno, I used to work in tech support so I guess it’s just the way I’m programmed. By the way, don’t think I have said enough; Thank you for all your help with answering questions on here man, really appreciate it! It’s difficult to keep up with everything there’s just so many posts, so again, thanks! :slight_smile:

Shhh! Don’t encourage them :stuck_out_tongue:

1465

Look into driving not only the amplitude but direction phase what have you via a lerp or wind speed or such.

1466

Attention all 4.12.2 users having trouble opening the project

Can any of you tell me what the error message was? I have upgraded to 4.12.2 (from 4.12.0), opened up the project, and it loads just fine. It didn’t even re-compile the plugin, just loaded right up.

The first time you open it, it will hang at 45% loading until the engine shaders are compiled, but I am not seeing any errors. If that is what you are experiencing (long load times, looks like it is frozen at 45%) just wait for it to finish.

If it was anything else please let me know so I can look into it. Thanks

1467

I actually have a question. What version was it that used a struct for each test point with FVectors and I think Density and TestRadius floats. 1.0 seems too early and 4.7 too late (the bone override struct was implemented by 4.7)

Would like to compare my code to see how im doing.

Edit: Nevermind appears 1.0 was it



USTRUCT(BlueprintType)
struct FBuoyancyTestPoint {
	GENERATED_USTRUCT_BODY();

	UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadWrite, EditAnywhere)
		FVector Location;
	UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadWrite, EditAnywhere)
		float Buoyancy;
	UPROPERTY(BlueprintReadWrite, EditAnywhere)
		float VolumeRadius;
	};

Was what I wanted to see I beleive.

1468

I don’t think any of it was removed (aside from the struct you have posted above), we just started using the BuoyancyForceComponent instead. Check the BuoyancyComponent file in the latest build, it should have the implementation details. It is float vector array based, but you would want to use an array of structs and break out the float vector you need instead right (is that how your planning to do it)?

I’m on my tablet right now so I’m not positive, I’ll double check the repo.

1469

I’m still quite new to coding learning as I go and just doing some coding to learn but yes your correct thats the approach for SceneComponent im practicing with (trying to get away from blueprint headaches, which causes coding headaches!). BuoyancyComponent is a MovementComponent so i’ll have to do some testing and messing around until tonight when my european programmers get online since im using SceneComponent as my base.

Edit: “========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========”

Thats always a good sign when my header files compile, then I can mess around in the actual declaration of everything.

Thanks :slight_smile:

1471

Hey ,

I managed to get everything integrated into my 14.2.2 project using latest Project from , following your page of instructions to migrate and copy/paste stuff into the project.

I have a few questions/issues though.

1> I’ve noticed there is an experimental ‘sky’ folder and I have dropped the skydome from that into my project and it looks cool so far. However, when I press build I get some warnings about the skydome. One was regarding a rotator static mesh which I figured out to be the moon having collision set but actually not having collision. The second I cannot get rid of and I’ll post an image now to show you:

I know it’s experiemental, but I’m just checking it’s something you’re aware of and see yourself or if it’s a new?

2> With that same experimental skydome, I increase the speed so that I can see the day/night transition and highlighted some issues too. For instance:
A> if I set the Cloud Opacity to anything but 0.0 then I get some very strange shadowing/lighting issues. Like light where there should be shadows, and shadows everywhere else (black). Again, a screenshot to help illustrate.

B> When the sun dips beneath the horizon, it’s obvious there’s still a sun shining down there as there’s some funky occlusion on the horizon in the direction the sun is/was.

one is I think intentional and on the whole kinda correct BUT the oddness is in the movement of said occlusion. The ‘rays’ shift very dramatically as you rotate or pitch your view around making it obvious that it is in fact lightshaft occlusion. I had a similar thing on a day/night cycle I was modifying and I just ended up scripting the intensity and lightshaft stuff to turn off at given times of day but I know you’re much smarter than me so there’ll be a better way!

3> At night, the moon is not visible. I see the rotator mesh (in checkerbox material?) moving occasionally (if it’s not too dark) so I think it;'s missing some kind of moon material??

4> Should I just use the normal skydome for now? :slight_smile:

project mate, can’t wait for dynamic weather and time of day that maybe has some nicer and smoother transitions of sky colours (like you don’t have enough to do).
I wanted to point these things out to you in the hopes it would help but I’d be very surprised if you don’t already know about them all!

Thankyou!

1472

Great! Yeah I know what you mean, been there (still find myself there too often) :wink:

For the Component, the reasoning for the UMovementComponent is a USceneComponent has limitations (a UPrimitiveComponent is an abstraction of the USceneComponent, adding additional features). You should be able to change to a movement or primitive component without much (if any) changes to your code. Here are some key differences:

SceneComponent:

PrimitiveComponent (MovementComponent is a slightly modified primitive component):

Another key is that MovementComponent’s provide a form of movement to the Actor (or Character) that they are a sub-object of. For the physics to work properly, it needs to have collision support, which isn’t available for a SceneComponent. Also many of the physics actions require access to the PrimitiveComponent for things like angular damping and mass calculations.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

1473

Captura2.PNG as I solve problem .–. please help

1474

Just press “Yes” when you see that. It is a minor problem with the blueprint that I have fixed internally, nothing that will cause any issues though. It will be fixed on in the next update.

1475

Great! glad to hear it :slight_smile:

All of has been fixed, I have abandoned that blueprint for the moment and have been re-writing it all. The calculations for sun/moon & moon phase were moved to the plugin, they are pretty heavy math calculations and blueprints tend to compute it much slower.

is all ready to go, I’m just stuck on implementing the moon phases into the material properly. It is so close but isn’t good enough yet. Was planning to update the repo with these changes later today or tomorrow morning depending how things go. I might just leave the phases out until I get it all sorted, everything else works flawlessly.

So I wouldn’t use that blueprint, the moon calculations are off (and the light you see at night is supposed to be from the moon, but was unhooked due to rotation issues). Hope to have it out shortly! :slight_smile:

Anyone with ideas on how to do (dynamically) in a material, please feel free to post here with any tips:
https://.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?113274-Projecting-a-Moon-image-within-a-SphereMask-SkyBoxImage

Thanks!

1477

I only have 4 moon phases in my skydome, full moon, no moon, quarter and half, which are just different textures to approximate phases set through a dyn.mat in the BP_Sky bp and then the moon radius scalar parameter for size. My setup uses a sphereMask for the moonRadi parmeter but not to do dynamic moon phasing, it seems your after trying to simulate acutal moon phases by masking part of the moon texture and skylight?

Edit: Your moon phase calculations are probably better than ones we have in our mshed up skydome from a bunh of marketplace assets, some work, and your skydome, I re-read your post.

1478

Yeah, masking a moon image with a spheremask (or spherical normal) shadow. I can get it to work perfectly in a preview of the material, but as soon as the moon starts rotating (or orbiting if you will), the moon image gets skewed and rotated along with it.

Getting the correct phase on the correct day is calculated in code and output in a -1 to +1 scalar float, where -1 & 1 == full Moon, 0 == new moon. With the calendar system I’ve built I can get accurate positioning & phase for any day of any year from year 0-9999. That parts working great, its just getting the material to visualize it that’s not working.

If it won’t work, I can easily make a flipbook texture with 29 different images (one for each day of the cycle) in Photoshop and change the texture each day. I just like to do things dynamically (ie. the hard way). :slight_smile:

1479

Yeah adding more textures would be my next step unfortunately im not a material wizard. Will scour my courses though.

1480

Hey, thanks for the info - can’t wait for the update.
I have an though you may be able to help me with. I zipped up my project that was working fine and moved it to my PC but on opening the level it said :

http://i67.tinypic.com/nlbolc.jpg

and then when the map loaded I had two issues:

1> Lots of errors linked to the message above I am sure:

http://i63.tinypic.com/2ro2pg6.jpg

2>It was missing just the BP_Ocean from the World Outliner. When I tried to add the BP_Ocean entity by dragging and dropping one into the world it had a white circle with a red cross on it to indicate it was not going to allow me to drop one into the world. It asked if I wanted to anyway and when I said yes, it crashed the editor.

Here’s what it says when I try to double click on the BP_Ocean in the content browser:

http://i64.tinypic.com/2vjc51e.jpg

Any ideas? On my other PC I’d specifically saved it when I’d had it working very nicely, even after shutting it down and reloading so I’m confused, especially with it being zipped up which should be identical setup and files to what I had working :confused:

Thx

EDIT: I know you said in your reply earlier to remove the experiemental Sky stuff and I was about to once I’d loaded in, but as you can see I can’t get loaded now