[WIP] Sky Seasons - WIP

[NilsonLima]

Its being about 14 months since Cloudscape Seasons was released and many people liked it, but even with all the flexibility the asset provides few things were lacking:

- truly realism on clouds shapes (even thou you could improve it yourself developing your own material)
- performance (you can have a good cloud aspect but the performance suffers quite a lot)

Sky Seasons will instead focus on:

- Realism (you can have convincing clouds, even if you target for a film)
- Performance (you can have good clouds for gaming)
- No shape customization (only presets)
- Built-in sky states and cloud types you can assign for specific times during the day and even combine them (when feasible)
- Drive any parameter with sequencer
- Simplicity = less parameters = easy to use
- max 3ms rendering at Epic settings into Full HD and 5ms at 4K

It features:

- C++ plugin
- Simulation for clouds using voxels (4 cores)
- Fully Volumetric (casts shadows and you can navigate inside)
- Ability to work with any terrain (world composition, requires 1 extra core)
- Ability to work with spherical worlds (you can use it on planets and it adapts the viewing according to the camera position, with a voxelized semi-sphere)
- Reflections on translucency (Screen Space or Planar)
- Weather simulation with wind, rain, lighting, snow (requires at least 1 extra CPU core)
- God rays

It targets:

- PC and Consoles only.

Follow some videos I have recorded and there is some more which will release prior to the launch, but we still didn't select them. So, be prepared:

The expected release is March/April 2019, since we are developing it together with Ocean Seasons, since both have to perform well, so stay tuned for the news!

[NilsonLima]

Some more features and also running it as a packaged game in Full HD to show some performance aspects, something goods and wrongs, because WIP is like this :P

[pippin007]

Looks great very similar to truesky are the clouds dynamic on runtime to ?

[NilsonLima]

Looks great very similar to truesky are the clouds dynamic on runtime to ?

I am working on presets for cloud types and you can mix these presets at once or interpolate them during time, all at runtime.

The focus on this product is to be easy to use and since it is a Marketplace asset, it will give access to everyone to the source code without anyone needing to pay more for this, so basically a good option for studios of all sizes. The videos show the asset tweaked for game mode, the film mode will be even more realistic, but we will release the film mode later.

[pippin007]

Yes I have truesky only cost a cool 150 pounds, you get to use the sequencer for ten months only, then after that the plugins yours but you then have to hand script the clouds after that, I think you should keep the sequencer all the time since you have already paid a lot of money already, 150 pounds even to a small studio is a lot of money I think, however the performance was very good I had a large island map, ocean plain thousands of trees, rocks and foliage of all types with no slowdowns at all when playing on the map.

[halobungie]

It Looks fantastic!!!
Two Questions:
1. Will there be some Clouds Shadows?
2. Will it be easy to integrated this C++ Content into a "normal" Blueprint-Content?
Kind regards!

[NilsonLima]

It Looks fantastic!!!
Two Questions:
1. Will there be some Clouds Shadows?
2. Will it be easy to integrated this C++ Content into a "normal" Blueprint-Content?
Kind regards!

Thanks for your interest on the product!

The answers:
1. Yes, all clouds will cast shadows at the environment, the light function is just not ready yet.
2. It is being developed to fully support blueprint only projects, as every plugin should do. In fact, the videos above were taken from a blueprint only project.

[halobungie]

Hello NilsonLima,
thank's a Lot for your fast Answer!
I am very intersted into your "Sky Seasons" Content!
I hope you can do this soon on marketplace! What will be the price?
Kind regards,
Andreas

[NilsonLima]

Hello NilsonLima,
thank's a Lot for your fast Answer!
I am very intersted into your "Sky Seasons" Content!
I hope you can do this soon on marketplace! What will be the price?
Kind regards,
Andreas

We don't have yet a price defined for it. We really would like to have it cheap for everyone, but it is being in R&D for so long and we need to be realistic. We will apply to Unreal Dev Grant and if we win we will compensate on its price making it really accessible for everyone.

As for time to market, all depends on the release date of UE 4.23 and the time to make the changes to the source code to deal with the rendering module changes that will occur.

[halobungie]

Do you come to the marketplace soon?

[NilsonLima]

Do you come to the marketplace soon?

Depends on several things as I have mentioned earlier, UE 4.23 is definitely one of them and we are not yet at 4.22. I would like to submit the final version for Unreal Dev Grants, and use the cash do cut the value at the marketplace by at least 50% of its possible cost (preliminar guesses around $99.99). Notice that all owners of Cloudscape Seasons will receive Sky Seasons for free for all purchases until January/2019, so it is a good value while we are not sure yet about which price we will set. It might happen that once 4.22 comes out and we can take a look on the rendering module development branch at GitHub and see if it spots an issue with the product prior its release. We don't want negative impact on engine changes to affect the user experience since it is a plugin solution.

Our guess it March/April, but that might change for one or two months later. Hopefully not.

[kkhaial]

Any new updates on this? or expected release date?

[NilsonLima]

I have been given update on this at our Discord server with some frequency, but we have put this on hold until we can get more details on the upcoming changes on the engine's rendering module (which changed quite a lot and still will), so we have placed priority on releasing the last update on Cloudscape Seasons and increasing efforts to finish our Ocean Seasons, since there is a lot (lot more) of requests on this.

We expect to have a next update as soon we can see the changes on UE4.23 and probably it will get the development resumed where it stopped after UE 4.23 launch.

[halobungie]

When do you publish "Sky Seasons"?
I hope soon?
Kind regards!

[NilsonLima]

halobungie If we hope for the best scenario regarding the engine changes and its impact on the project, we are projecting the release for 2020 first quarter and we will incorporate several new aspects into it, coming from Cloudscape Seasons, mostly the weather, which in Sky Seasons will be simulated and not faked, and sequencer abilities.