Hi, I am currently working on an animation where we take off with an F18 fighter jet from an aircraft carrier. Everything looks fine untill we’re above the clouds. The infinite ocean body seems to render in front of the clouds. I already tried changing the Rendering Mode under Volumetric Clouds to Quality or Cinematic. I also tried to play with the Translucency Sort Priority from the WaterZone but without success. Here is a screenshot from below the clouds:
Searching around the community, this issue could boil down to the way UDS and WBO render along each other. Since both cloulds and water use a combination of translucency and depth, the engine can have a hard time picking which one to show from a high position.
I would suggest adjusting the underwater post process settings, change the priority leve here (not the same as Translucency Sort), and make sure its set lower than any other global effects in use. Also, you play around with blend radius value, and the advanced rendering features below.
As for UDS itself, I would check if any depth fog effects are enabled, and adjust the altitude of your clouds. The thread below has an issue, not with an ocean, but still with dissapearing elements:
Yet, for more advanced tips on this asset, you would need to reach it’s creator. The support email on their site is support@ultradynamicsky.com
The cloud system provides scalable quality modes that fit many gameplay types from standard to fast-paced gameplay that requires ground-to-space movement. It also supports cinematic quality for projects that are less concerned with running in real time.
The quality modes are defined by the command r.VolumetricRenderTarget:
Reactive modes supporting cloud intersections with opaque surfaces but with traces completed at a lower resolution: * r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode 0 is the recommended option for quality. It supports fast-paced gameplay that may have ground-to-space transitions, or flying through clouds. Clouds are fast to trace but can appear to have low resolution. Traces happen at quarter resolution, reconstruction at half resolution, and upsample on screen at full resolution.
r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode 1 balances quality with performance to fit a lot of types of gameplay that are good for ground views. This mode is more expensive but looks higher quality. Traces happen at half resolution, reconstruction and upsample on screen at full resolution.
A less reactive mode but looks full resolution:
r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode 2 focuses on higher quality while still supporting ground views for real-time gameplay. This mode is fast to trace and looks high resolution, but it does not support cloud intersection with opaque meshes.
Cinematic mode is achieved by starting with r.VolumetricRenderTarget 0 and following the suggestions in the Achieving Cinematic Quality workflow (see below).
Quality can further be improved, or lowered, for the platforms you’re intending to deploy to through console commands following r.SkyAtmosphere. and r.VolumetricClouds.. Also, user-facing properties can be found in the Volume Material, and on the Volumetric Cloud and Directional Light components.
Thank you both very much for your help, I tried to play with the underwater post processing settings, and also manually tried the different volumetric render target modes. But both didn’t change anything in the result. I do however think you’re right it has something to do with the order of translucency. Sometimes, during working in the scene, all of a sudden it looks correct. But after changing any settings in the UDS, it pops back to the way it was.
It not only occurs with the ocean body, I tried to cover the horizon with mountains but it also happens with those meshes. I did also find out it happens only in the far far distance. In the example images below you can see how a mountain mesh correcty intersects with the clouds when its kind of ‘close’ to the camera, but when you move far way from them, the same render issue occurs.
Okey it seems like I fixed it in the easiest way imaginable and I should absolutely have tried this first: I started a new project, updated UDS and now everything looks fine. It looks like I was, somehow, using a version of UDS that had this bug in it…
Well, if it starts rendering incorrect again I will definately post again in the hope we can tackle it together and help people in the future
