[Request] Advanced settings for environments

Development World Creation
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1

Hi,

while I like the numerous tools and options we have in Rocket, they are unfortunately all focused/designed for realistic environments, but what about a dream scene or a surrealistic environment ?

  • For example I have in mind a scene where you will be on a castle in the air. The current fog actor are designer to be used from a ground point of view. So it’s really hard to make a foggy scene above the clouds has it will hide the sky. Maybe having the possibility to exclude some mesh from being affected by the fog would be nice. Also in my plan the castle would be shifted by 45 degrees, meaning the player would be standing normally on the castle but the environment would be shifted. I can’t setup the fog as currently it is designed to be only used with a Z up axis. It would be ice to be able to setup the up axis of the height fog. There is no way you can accumulate multiple exponential fog, in udk the simple height fog were nice to manage a fog inside a water volume and the fog above the water as it was possible to accumulate fog. Fogs are just an example, in UDK I already had this limitation. It would be really nice to be able to personalize a bit more some environmental tools.

  • Also, as I plan my levels, they will be very big and I was wondering if I could take the benefit of the super offset of the streaming level. From what I have read it’s planned to be able to offset a streaming level from it’s origin. Would it be possible to do this dynamically ? For example this would allow me to smoothly move two levels near each other without having to setup something else than the update of the offset.

2

Hi Fabrice,

To answer your first part, we have plans for a “fog volume” that could be placed where you like that would solve this issue. There has also been discussion of gravity controls for a future build that could help with the shifted world perspective. Once these are released, please let us know if they can be improved for your needs.

What is it that you are trying to accomplish that you cannot with level streaming and world browser? With large scale worlds (ex. GTA or Skyrim) Worldbrowser will do essentially what you are asking; it resets the chunk of map as the origin. I can create a feature request for any functionality you would like.

Thanks,

Alexander

3

Well, while gravity modifications is something cool it’s not in my current plan. The idea was to keep the gameplay simple with a normal level, but the environment outside would be visually shifted. From my point of view it’s easier to setup the environment this way than working on gameplay.

This is currently possible if you don’t plan to use any fog system. And I’m talking about environmental fog that also affect the skybox, not just parts of the levels like you suggest with the “fog volume”.

Regarding the streaming, it was more a mix between a question and a request : is it possible to move/translate a level via the streaming system ? A full level ?

4

Hi Fabrice,

Thank you for that information, I was a little confused. I have entered a feature request for the rotation of the ExponentialHeightFog to be adjustable.

I have assigned a specialist to help explain level streaming better.

Thank you,

Alexander