Orbit: Weather & Seasons BP

[Unreal_Mike]

@;614863

It’s launch day everybody! Thanks again, you’re all awesome!!!

I have a lot of errors

[hippowombat]

@Unreal_Mike;614889

I have a lot of errors

Is this just in the example project downloaded from the marketplace?

[Unreal_Mike]

@;614897

Is this just in the example project downloaded from the marketplace?

I put the bp in my level and when stop the “Play” mode. I work in “World Composition” and I down to 40 fps and yes, it’s the marketplace version.

Maybe because of the new update ? (4.13.2)

[hippowombat]

@Unreal_Mike;614900

I put the bp in my level and when stop the “Play” mode. I work in “World Composition” and I down to 40 fps and yes, it’s the marketplace version.

Maybe because of the new update ? (4.13.2)

Shouldn’t be the engine version causing it. If you’re migrating the files over to your system, be sure to copy the entire Orbit folder from the example project content folder over to your project’s content folder. Don’t use the UE4 migrate feature, it breaks things more often than not. Also, be sure that, under the Actors section, the appropriate actors are assigned, it looks like they are not, based on those errors. You’ll want to assign a directional light to the Sun Actor slot, a different directional light to the Moon Actor slot, a skylight actor to the Skylight Actor slot, an exponential height fog actor the the Height Fog actor slot, and a post process volume actor to the Post Process actor slot.

This tutorial video should help you get started:

Orbit: Weather & Seasons - Getting Started

Cheers!

[Unreal_Mike]

@;614902

Shouldn’t be the engine version causing it. If you’re migrating the files over to your system, be sure to copy the entire Orbit folder from the example project content folder over to your project’s content folder. Don’t use the UE4 migrate feature, it breaks things more often than not. Also, be sure that, under the Actors section, the appropriate actors are assigned, it looks like they are not, based on those errors. You’ll want to assign a directional light to the Sun Actor slot, a different directional light to the Moon Actor slot, a skylight actor to the Skylight Actor slot, an exponential height fog actor the the Height Fog actor slot, and a post process volume actor to the Post Process actor slot.

This tutorial video should help you get started:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=s886SNtNtF4

Cheers!

When you take it from the market, you “import in your project” so that should be worked. BUT ! I have found the solution, even you don’t use all the actors, you’re forced to add and assign all of them in the bp. Great work dude !

[hippowombat]

@Unreal_Mike;614906

When you take it from the market, you “import in your project” so that should be worked. BUT ! I have found the solution, even you don’t use all the actors, you’re forced to add and assign all of them in the bp. Great work dude !

OH gotcha, I’m at work and I haven’t seen how they processed the files, I thought they were going to have it in the example project but even better, they made it so you can directly import it to your project, that’s fantastic! Thanks for the heads up, and yeah, even if you don’t want to use say the skylight or the height fog actors, you still have to assign them, then just disable them in the blueprint

Thanks for your support and feedback, I appreciate it!

Cheers!

[jojo8026]

Just bought Orbit and got it all imported into my game, but when I build my lighting I get this error, how do I fix it and how do i make it nighttime,do i use time of day or what?

&stc=1

[hippowombat]

@jojo8026;615038

Just bought Orbit and got it all imported into my game, but when I build my lighting I get this error, how do I fix it and how do i make it nighttime,do i use time of day or what?

&stc=1

That error is due to the volumetric lighting frustum meshes, and while the settings in place that are required to make it work will cause this message to pop up whenever you do a map check, it will not break your project or stop you from compiling, so you can safely ignore it.

And yes, you just need to make sure that the option to tie the settings in each section to the time of day/sun position is marked as true, which it should be by default, and then drag the time of day slider to a night time position, i.e. 2400.

[hippowombat]

Hey guys, I’m just waiting on Epic to add the marketplace release of Orbit to my vault so that I can make a getting started video aimed specifically at this version. (This version, as it turns out, differs slightly from the Orbit version, in that [according to what people have been telling me] you add all the files directly to your exiting project as opposed to generating a new project based on the one I provided to Epic. This is actually preferable, but leads to some differences in setup that may make my existing getting started video a bit confusing.) In the meantime, I’ve started gathering a couple frequently asked questions, and I’ve posted them with their respective answers on the OP of this thread, but I’ll post them here as well. Please let me know if you have any issues or questions, and I’ll be glad to help you get them resolved/answered.

Cheers!

FAQ:

Q - “I get a big long list of errors when I drag the Orbit blueprint into my level, why is that?”
A - You may need to assign the proper actors to the blueprint under the “Actors” section, near the top. The actors you’ll need are -

• Sun Actor - A directional light actor in your level, not the same as the moon actor.
• Moon Actor - A directional light actor in your level, not the same as the sun actor.
• Skylight Actor - A skylgiht actor in your level
• Height Fog Actor - An exponential height fog actor in your level
• Post Process Actor - A post process volume actor in your level

Even if you aren’t using, say, the height fog or the skylight, Orbit still needs to reference them at runtime. You can simply deactivate them in the blueprint if you don’t want to use them.

Q - “When I try to make it rain/it starts raining, Unreal Engine crashes, why is that?”
A - You may need to assign a sound asset to the Rain Sound variable under the weather section. It should be assigned by default, but I’ve seen issues where it hasn’t been in the past. The same goes for if you experience a crash when trying to deal with lightning, you may need to assign sound assets to the Thunder Sound [DISTANCE] variables under the lightning section. These sounds are provided in the pack by default.

[jojo8026]

So I got everything set up but I cant see my moon, Ive got a directional light set for my moon and I even tried using the moon mesh but I cant see that either??

&stc=1

[hippowombat]

Hey there @jojo8026, can you zoom out from the moon mesh and ensure you’re not inside it? It’s quite large. As far as seeing it in the Orbit BP, can you send a screen shot of your moon section parameters?

Cheers!

[Scigor]

Hope you sell a lot, you deserve it!

I was thinking it might be useful to add a control to switch or blend between custom settings quickly.
For example if I need to move from a simple basic weather to a more complex one, several times during the game.
See how they change completely the atmosphere and environment in Silent Hill during the siren. Something to obtain a drastic change, without having to touch each time all the parameters.

[Truun]

Looks like a very nice asset with all the features it has.
I was just wondering, with the full time of day feature, does all lightning in your level need to be dynamic, or can it also work well with baked lightning?

[hippowombat]

@Cyborgking;615223

Looks like a very nice asset with all the features it has.
I was just wondering, with the full time of day feature, does all lightning in your level need to be dynamic, or can it also work well with baked lightning?

To utilize the time of day feature, you do have to have fully dynamic lighting. If you’re not simulating time of day, you could theoretically use baked lighting, though I’ve never tried it.

[SaviorNT]

If I have a custom night-time skybox, how would I implement that skybox into the night scene?

Basically, I would like to incorporate the Orbit system with the StarSphere system (StarSphere in Blueprints - UE Marketplace)

[hippowombat]

@SaviorNT;615279

If I have a custom night-time skybox, how would I implement that skybox into the night scene?

Basically, I would like to incorporate the Orbit system with the StarSphere system (StarSphere in Blueprints - UE Marketplace)

You would need to make a couple changes to the Orbit BP; you’d want to change the shader model of the Sky material from opaque to translucent so that you could see beyond it’s bounds; you’d also want to set up a float curve to control the opacity/emissive power of the StarSphere based on Orbit’s sun position. I don’t own the StarSphere system so I’m not sure how it works, but I’m guessing there’s a sphere mesh you can assign instanced star-map-materials to? You could add one of those sphere meshes as a component in Orbit and edit it with Orbit’s sun position so that the stars are only visible at night. Then just disable the default star-map in Orbit.

[hippowombat]

@Scigor;615209

Hope you sell a lot, you deserve it!

I was thinking it might be useful to add a control to switch or blend between custom settings quickly.
For example if I need to move from a simple basic weather to a more complex one, several times during the game.
See how they change completely the atmosphere and environment in Silent Hill during the siren. Something to obtain a drastic change, without having to touch each time all the parameters.

This is something I’m exploring, the main thing that I’m trying to avoid is having too many variables updated on Event Tick, which is a typical way to dynamically update float values without a timeline. It’ll likely be a feature in a future update

[jojo8026]

Is there anyway to make the sound actors stay put because whenever I load a different style of orbit from like rain to snow the sound actors always get removed, is there a way to like lock them down so I dont have to add them everytime its kinda annoying tbh

[hippowombat]

@jojo8026;615444

Is there anyway to make the sound actors stay put because whenever I load a different style of orbit from like rain to snow the sound actors always get removed, is there a way to like lock them down so I dont have to add them everytime its kinda annoying tbh

That’s odd, they should be set as default. I’ll take a look at the blueprint when I get home from work and make sure that they’re set the way they’re supposed to be. In the meantime, if you open up the blueprint and check the sound variables under Lightning and Rain sections to make sure that defaults are assigned, that should fix the issue. If not then it’s a profile struct issue, which I can walk you through fixing, but is a bit more complicated.

[jojo8026]

@;615447

That’s odd, they should be set as default. I’ll take a look at the blueprint when I get home from work and make sure that they’re set the way they’re supposed to be. In the meantime, if you open up the blueprint and check the sound variables under Lightning and Rain sections to make sure that defaults are assigned, that should fix the issue. If not then it’s a profile struct issue, which I can walk you through fixing, but is a bit more complicated.

The only words I understood from what you said above were “Set as Default” everything else just went right over my head lol, I barely passed math in college so I didnt understand a word you just said, luckily the more I work with orbit the more I understand it, I havent touched the blueprints yet, I installed UE4 over a year ago and im still trying to learn this Alien Language known as blueprints, which is harder when you have a math deficiency lol