Volumetric Fog feedback thread

[anonymous_user_34d1a5911 (anonymous_user_34d1a591)]

@hallatore;700510

I feel we are missing some artistic control over the current lighting. I want the rays that are inside the arch, but I don’t want the rest of the scene to be so foggy.
Or to put it differently. I want to have a visual ray/border between light and dark area’s, but without so much fog in general. (If that makes any sense)

I tried playing around with the settings. But I didn’t get any good results without introducing a ton of “dust” to the scene.

I think you can archive it by setting Fog-Density to very low(or even 0) and spawn particles which affect the FogDensity in those areas where you want them

[Jambax]

@hallatore;700510

I feel we are missing some artistic control over the current lighting. I want the rays that are inside the arch, but I don’t want the rest of the scene to be so foggy.
Or to put it differently. I want to have a visual ray/border between light and dark area’s, but without so much fog in general. (If that makes any sense)

I tried playing around with the settings. But I didn’t get any good results without introducing a ton of “dust” to the scene.

For something like this, perhaps you should use a custom mesh and material instead or use particles as someone has already suggested. Why pay the fog cost for the entire scene if you’re only going to use it in a small area?

Just because we have a new tool btw doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one for the job!

[Daedalus51]

Man …thank you so much for this! <3

Really looking forward to fool around with this and I just got an amazing new environment for the lighting academy to rock the volumetric fog with

Also, regarding the shafts, I totally understand why people want it and what they want it for and it makes sense to have some more artistic control and freedom. However, I have to say that the examples provided by John Alcatraz dont look that good. Please dont get me wrong here…I dont mean they look bad or anything like that,
but having such strong lightshafts and then clearly seeing a completely fog free environment where the shafts are occluded from geometry feels super weird and wrong to my eye. So its more like a personal opinion, but I think that look is just wrong and not as visually pleasing.
Of course, if you really want to force it, why not? But I would much rather see support for static indirect lighting implemented than making things like this happen^^ Just my 2 cents^^

BTW…if you look at volumetric lighting in Horizon Zero Dawn…they have some nice lightshafts too, but their stuff is also quite foggy^^ I would assume that they might actually combined screenspace lightshafts with volumetric lighting…but who knows

Cheers and keep up the great work!

[hallatore]

@redbox;700522

It’s because it like in real world.
There is no lightshafts if nothing reflects light inside of it.

But you are right, this is good resquest to make shafts brighter without much of fog.

I feel this is a general problem with the current state of PBR in UE4. There are a lot of minor settings that would have helped artists a lot, but are not added because they are not “correct”.
And the current implementation of volumetric fog seems to go down the same path of being physically correct, but artistically crippled.

My biggest gripe with the this in the engine is how hard it is to control the darkness of dynamic shadows and ambient occlusion on individual objects. Having GI would make the shadows brighter, but that cost too much. And we can’t adjust the “brightness” of shadows since that is not correct. So we are left with dark dynamic shadows because that is the correct way. (There are some ways to get around this, but this could have been much easier with some better settings)

I see a lot of potential in this feature, and that’s why I’m hoping it won’t be “held back” just because some settings are unrealistic.

[Nicobass]

is it normal that stationary lights don’t cast any shadows for fog? it seems that only movable lights support shadow casting, but maybe i’ve missed something?

[SteveElbows]

@Nicobass;700646

is it normal that stationary lights don’t cast any shadows for fog? it seems that only movable lights support shadow casting, but maybe i’ve missed something?

I havent tried this myself yet but there were notes in github from when they were still working on this stuff for the 3.16 branch that suggest it should work:

Change 3366028 on 2017/03/27 by .Wright

Volumetric fog supports static shadowing from Stationary lights
* Using bilinear on static shadowmap depths + 1 PCF to smooth out results

Change 3366029 on 2017/03/27 by .Wright

Static shadow depth maps for Stationary point and spot lights are 2x higher res by default (4x more texels), which is more appropriate for volumetric fog

[hallatore]

I thought movable directional lights where supported? I get very weird results when the sun is set to movable.

Volumetric Fog - Unreal Engine - Imgsli

[Terrian]

@hallatore;700549

I feel this is a general problem with the current state of PBR in UE4. There are a lot of minor settings that would have helped artists a lot, but are not added because they are not “correct”.

You realize that what you just described is one of the core points behind PBR systems… Physically Based Rendering.

I’m glad the trend is to remove hacky features. What you call “artistically crippled” I call “logically sound”.

[EhsanNeo]

I’m getting weird side effects when using high res screen shot tool. it’s different each time I try. Sometimes white points sometimes a weird line somewhere on the screen.

[rosegoldslugs]

Really liking the new additions, thanks!

Are there plans in the future to support a separate cascaded shadow map for the fog? Having to reduce overall shadow quality or the number of cascades for the directional light is a little unfortunate.

[hallatore]

@Terrian;700805

You realize that what you just described is one of the core points behind PBR systems… Physically Based Rendering.

I’m glad the trend is to remove hacky features. What you call “artistically crippled” I call “logically sound”.

I’m just saying that the current ways to tweak the fog seems somewhat limited.
Unreal is a game engine, not a nature simulator. If artists can’t have creative control then we are doing something wrong.

[Raildex]

What determines the ParticleRadius Node in Materials?
Cascade doesn’t have a module “Radius”

[Chosker]

@Terrian;700805

You realize that what you just described is one of the core points behind PBR systems… Physically Based Rendering.

I’m glad the trend is to remove hacky features. What you call “artistically crippled” I call “logically sound”.

you have to realize that not everyone is trying to make games with realistic graphics. there’s a big artistic component in video games which is up to… well to the artists making those games.
games with unique art styles (Zelda BotW, ABZU or DOTA2 to name a few) are only possible because game engines don’t force an entire shading philosophy down their throat.
I think people making non-realistic artstyles will only fight against the engine for so long until they get tired and move on to a different engine

[NickEast (Nick van Oosten)]

@Chosker;701061

you have to realize that not everyone is trying to make games with realistic graphics. there’s a big artistic component in video games which is up to… well to the artists making those games.
games with unique art styles (Zelda BotW, ABZU or DOTA2 to name a few) are only possible because game engines don’t force an entire shading philosophy down their throat.
I think people making non-realistic artstyles will only fight against the engine for so long until they get tired and move on to a different engine

ABZU runs on UE4, and started development when UE4 was still new and didn’t have all the features it has now. And no-one is being forced to use Unreal. And if anyone wants to do something else with Unreal, the source is available. The developers of ABZU did that. No-one can expect Epic to literally do everything everyone wants.

---

On top of that, this is “volumetric lighting/fog”. Light shafts are supposed to appear based on the fog. If someone only wants light shafts, that’s a completely different graphical feature, like the built-in shafts (which are limited I agree).

I agree on the part that only supporting PBR can block someone’s artistic view, but I would rather embrace it than criticize it. Especially after seeing Gearbox’ presentation during GDC, as I was somewhat skeptical before.

Of course, this is all just my opinion.

[SteveElbows]

@Raildex_;701045

What determines the ParticleRadius Node in Materials?
Cascade doesn’t have a module “Radius”

Particle size I presume.

[SteveElbows]

@stargatefreak92;701140

Of course, this is all just my opinion.

I share your opinion. And given time I think people will figure out what artistic overrides are possible and which, if any, it makes sense for epic to add to this system.

I suspect that some of the scenarios people are complaining that the system cannot handle will be achievable once people have had more time to experiment with all of the options and especially the use of volume materials & particle systems to influence the degree of fog present in particular regions.

[Raildex]

@SteveElbows;701141

Particle size I presume.

I don’t think so:/

[hallatore]

@SteveElbows;701147

I share your opinion. And given time I think people will figure out what artistic overrides are possible and which, if any, it makes sense for epic to add to this system.

I suspect that some of the scenarios people are complaining that the system cannot handle will be achievable once people have had more time to experiment with all of the options and especially the use of volume materials & particle systems to influence the degree of fog present in particular regions.

Didn’t mean to start such a discussion

What I feel is missing in particular is most likely adressed with some cutoff/distance settings.

What I want: A more distinct cut where the border of the fog is. So it’s more noticeable.
What I don’t want: To feel that the scene is so foggy.

If I could set a short fog distance and high intensity. Then the fog should be the same for close and far objects. I guess that could be a start.

[SteveElbows]

@Raildex_;701161

I don’t think so:/

Just because the size of each particle in X,Y,Z is available with the particle size node, doesnt mean particle radius is unrelated to particle size.

Here is what the manual says:

The ParticleRadius expression outputs the radius in Unreal units of each particle individually. This allows, for example, for changes to be made to a material once the radius has reached a certain point.

Taken from: Particle Material Expressions in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.3 Documentation

edited to add - I followed the example for creating a very simple volume material and it uses ParticleRadius fed into SphereMask radius. ParticleSize is not used. But when I change the size of the particles by editing the particle system, I see the changes I expect, and this is why I am so confident that ParticleRadius is influenced by the size of particles in practice not just in theory.

[Chosker]

@stargatefreak92;701140

ABZU runs on UE4, and started development when UE4 was still new and didn’t have all the features it has now. And no-one is being forced to use Unreal. And if anyone wants to do something else with Unreal, the source is available. The developers of ABZU did that. No-one can expect Epic to literally do everything everyone wants.

not everyone has the manpower to dive into the engine to change its rendering features.
I’m not saying Epic should literally do everything everyone wants (though they did design UE4 with the philosophy to be much more open than UE3 and cater a broader audience) - I’m just expecting Epic to not make features as “opt-in” only if you’re making a game with realistic graphics. Especially since exposing a few parameters could go a long way into getting that freedom, as opposed to “deeply learning how the every parameter works so you can find workarounds to actually achieve what you want” as others seem to be suggesting

@stargatefreak92;701140

On top of that, this is “volumetric lighting/fog”. Light shafts are supposed to appear based on the fog. If someone only wants light shafts, that’s a completely different graphical feature, like the built-in shafts (which are limited I agree).

I agree on the part that only supporting PBR can block someone’s artistic view, but I would rather embrace it than criticize it. Especially after seeing Gearbox’ presentation during GDC, as I was somewhat skeptical before.

Of course, this is all just my opinion.

I agree this is the “volumetric lighting/fog” feedback thread, I’m just saying that it doesn’t have to be. it could very well be the “underwater fog effect” or the “alien planet atmosphere effect” or the “high fantasy light effect” if they weren’t so inclined into forcing physical properties into every single rendering feature