That’s great! I assume you are using new variables “Use Editor Time of Day” and “Use Editor Weather Settings” on a Sky Creator actor?
Correct yes.
@Dmitry_Karpukhin I think I found another bug, this time with the lower hemisphere color.
It appears SkyLight > Lower Hemisphere Color value is always (R=0.001200,G=0.001400,B=0.002000,A=1.000000) when Use Editor Time of Day is unchecked, regardless of the Editor Weather Preset set by the controller (I’m using Lerp Weather Settings).
Overriding the lower hemisphere color with the Set Sky Light Settings node works correctly though.
You’re right, I overlooked this somehow. “Lower Hemisphere Color” is indeed absent inside “Lerp Weather Settings” and therefore is not working correctly. WIll be fixed! Thanks for noticing.
A new update 1.12 rolls in with the following fixes:
- Displaying debug variables now can be turned off by a checkbox “Show Debug Variables”
- Changed default “Fog Inscattering Color” from black to dark blue color (improves lighting at nights)
- Modified ConstructorStatics calls in SkyCreatorActor.cpp
- Added missing “Lower Hemisphere Color” parameter in the “Lerp Sky Light Settings” function
- Fixed empty reference in “MI_SC_SkySphere”
- Fixed empty reference in “MI_Demo_01”
- Fixed “ObjectProperty is not initialized properly” warnings
- Fixed casting static shadows from Compass mesh
I had to postpone 1.20 with new features to make these fixes. Empty reference warning in “MI_SC_SkySphere” was especially annoying, but it’s not a problem anymore.
By the way, can anyone be able to package a project with Sky Creator in UE5 EA?
I can and it runs, though not too well, there’s a giant performance drop. Through stats (“stat unit” in console) I can see that there’s an enormous increase of primitives growing each tick and I can’t understand that’s the problem. I also tried other later versions of UE5 from github, but they failed to package the project for completely different reasons. I probably shoudn’t waste so much time on early and unstable versions of UE5, but some people are asking. Also gained a 1 star review because of it. Like it should be production-ready for some reason and I’m responsible for it… Oh well.
At least the plugin is still works totally fine in editor.
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New Rain Ripples simulation test for the next update. Non-repeatable and customizable with realistic waves propagation. This is already a third iteration of this effect! Previous solutions were kinda meh, simplistic by nature, repetitive and had a high shader instruction count. Now it’s just one 256x256 render target for normal map, everything else happens in back-end C++ code and a few materials in 0.1 ms. Much more handy and eye-candy.
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Will the rain drop effect of mesh be supported?
Also does it support local range rainfall instead of large area rainfall for the whole scene?
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Yes, rain drips and streaks are most probably will be added in next updates.
But I’m really not yet sure about last thing you mentioned though. If there will be such a thing it’s not gonna be soon. There’s plenty of things need to be done beside that.
I’ve been looking for an up-to-date sky/cloud system, and this looks great! I wanted to ask if it was possible to fly above the cloud layer?
My specific ideal usage is to begin below an overcast cloud layer (gray overcast lighting), move up into an extremely foggy zone (inside the clouds themselves) and then pop out the top into sunlight above the clouds. Is something like that possible, and can the cloud height be controlled enough to pull them down into the gameplay space like that?
Even if a single cohesive cloud layer wouldn’t work for that kind of lighting transition, would the overall visual effect be possible through dynamic parameter changes while the player is in the dense foggy/cloud band between the overcast and sunlit zones?
Also is there any means to guarantee a cloud appears in a specific location? In the scenario above I’d want to make sure a central cloud was always situated in the space the player will pass through during their ascent (it’s a controlled location in the level).
We’re in UE5EA as well, although I’m aware official UE5 support isn’t permitted yet until it’s 1.0 launch.
Thanks, and your work looks great (love the blockout tools plugin as well)!
I see, thanks for your reply. That is, the function of rainfall in range will not be supported in the short term, right?
If you are specifially interested in particles that they go strictly under rain clouds, especially at distance, then there’s such problem that CPU particles cannot sample textures and therefore they can’t know where the cloud is really. Right now plugin uses CPU particles for precipitation because they support collisions, so rain won’t appear indoors. I mean it’s a quite complicated and challenging task on it’s own, besides other features I’m working on that are mentioned in plugin’s roadmap. So probably not in nearest time. Sorry!
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@Nick, yes it’s a fully controllable system - you can interpolate different (and deeply customizable) weather presets in runtime - there’s a bunch of built in functions to do so. Here’s a screenshot above cloud layer. You can set cloud coverage and cloud height higher than here and you can set cloud altitube closer to ground or exactly at the ground.
Though! There’s been couple of reports that Sky Creator does not compile in UE5 EA packaged game. I don’t know why it won’t, it compiles on my machine, but with some unexpected performance problems. Still works fine in editor though. I don’t expect it to work with no problems specifically on UE5 EA as well and I’m really glad that you understand that!
Dmitry,
Love Sky Creator and thanks for making it!
Having zero problems running it in 4.26/4.27, but having a bit of trouble getting Sky Creator up and running in UE5. I’ve followed your directions on the documentation about manually transferring the plugins folder, but I still get this result. Sorry to even bother you with it, but any help would be really appreciated. Thank you!
Can I have Sky Creator to be project based and not engine based ?
@Apadana2, hmm, you’re probably missing some libraries to be able to compile C++ code. Try to follow this article step by step. I honestly can’t wait any longer to add an official support for UE5, but we still need it to be released out of Early Access.
@motorsep, no problem, you just need to drag plugin folder to your project. Copy from:
“C:/Program Files/Epic Games/UE_4.27/Engine/Plugins/Marketplace/SkyCreatorPlugin ” (or another directory where you have Unreal Engine installed) and paste to: “YourProject/Plugins/SkyCreatorPlugin ”.
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Dmitry,
Thank you so much for the quick response. I actually got closer by copying the folder to the engine itself, but it still won’t load everything even when it shows up in engine. Here are the most recent pics to show what was going on. And it’s really bizarre because I was able to copy the sketchfab plugin to UE5 and it worked no problem.
But totally agree with you though - Can’t wait for official UE5 support!
Again, thank you so much for the help and an outstanding product. All the best.
Usually there are answers in logs for such errors. You can investigate them in YourProject/Saved/Logs to see if there’s something useful.
Thank you. Going through all the Visual Studio links you sent last. Very helpful and totally appreciate the links.
All the best!
I tried installing Sky Creator as a project’s plugin, not as engine’s plugin. It seems that everything went well (plugin got recompiled and all), but I don’t see any content that is in the plugin’s folder 
The project has just empty content browser and even if I enable “show engine” and “show plugin” contents, nothing shows up.
The way I went about it was this - I created a blank empty BP project, moved Sky Creator plugin folder from \Marketplace\ to \Plugins\ , added empty C++ class to the project (so that MSVC Solution for the project is generated), opened generated solution in MSVC, recompiled project (which recompiled the plugin).
P.S. I am using a fork of UE 4.27.1 and that’s why I had to recompile the plugin.
Weird! But does the plugin itself work at all? And also it has to be absolute the same versions. If you’re even on fork of 4.27, you have to copy installed plugin exactly off 4.27 installation from launcher.