Anyone know how they did the sunshafts effect in “Wolcen” ? These clearly aren’t normal sunshafts since they appear without a light source, extending horizontally from somewhere offscreen:
What gave you the impression they don’t have a light source? If CryEngine V functions anything like Unity then the light can simply be placed on a separate layer so it doesn’t affect the geometry. My first thought was that it’s volumetric fog combined with a light isolated so it only affects the fog.
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I’ve been able to get some nice sun shafts effect by using Amplify Bloom from a white skybox. There’re probably various different ways of doing it.
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I know that in older games, which weren’t able to use shaders due to shaders not being invented yet, they’ve used alphablended textures on quads facing camera (billboarding) to do them.
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There is a free asset from Unity that can accomplish a similar effect: Sky FX Pack
Note that it was published for Unity 4.5 so it may need some tweaking to work in Unity 5.
This commercial asset works with current versions of Unity: Alzheimer Lightshafts
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Can recommend the first one - runs fine after running it through Unity’s script updater tool. For the second one, I always forget it exists for some reason.
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It could be cryengine’s volumetric light working (because they clearly react to global directional light) or it could be a HUUUGE stretched billboard in the area.
You can create sunshaft-like effects using addtive transparent geometry. It was used often before shaders.
I have no idea what scene has the fake sunshafts. Given the quality of what they’re doing there, I don’t think they’re doing old school transparent geometry. They’re doing stuff with volumetric lighting. AKA: the least fake kind of sunshafts.
Adam has that effect. We could have it in our hands as soon as next week.
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