Farland Skies - Low Poly skybox with custom shader

[PhannGor]

@Damo9000 ,

It’s a typical 6-frames cubemap with the info for shader where to render sky and clouds. The blue color will be interpreted as sky and shades of red will be rendered as clouds.

[system]

I love the sky but am having some problems integrating it. If I open a new scene and drop the three prefabs for the sky controller and day night cycles it works great. I do the same with my current project and for some reason the sun and moon disappear. I can still see the lens flare where they would be but not sun or moon. I looked at the camera and it looks the same as a new scene, minus a UI and RenderCameraLayer removed, but neither of those is the layer for the sky components. I even tried creating a new camera and setting it as the main camera, still just the lens flair. Any thoughts as to what to look at next, if it helps I can send you screenshots of the camera and day night objects.

[PhannGor]

Hi @ ,

Yes, please post screenshots here or send me them to support@borodar.com

[lookx2]

Hi @PhannGor ,
Love the sky so much, It’s so beautify. However, when I use this in mobile device, It slow down a lot.
More than 30fps drop even I turn off the sun light and moon light. Seem the shader update slow down the program.
Are there any work around to improve performance?
Thank you!

[PhannGor]

@lookx2

Hi @PhannGor ,
Love the sky so much, It’s so beautify. However, when I use this in mobile device, It slow down a lot.
More than 30fps drop even I turn off the sun light and moon light. Seem the shader update slow down the program.
Are there any work around to improve performance?
Thank you!

Could you please describe how exactly did you tested asset performance? And what is hardware specification of your mobile device?

I’m wondering because this skybox shader is optimized for mobile and I’m getting stable 60 FPS even on my 5-years old LG Nexus 4.

P. S. The shader is optimized for mobile, but demo scenes coming with the asset are NOT. They include complex terrain, lightmaps, reflection probes and ALL variants of the cubemaps/textures for demo purposes. These things could be heavy even for modern mobile devices

[lookx2]

@PhannGor

Could you please describe how exactly did you tested asset performance? And what is hardware specification of your mobile device?

I’m wondering because this skybox shader is optimized for mobile and I’m getting stable 60 FPS even on my 5-years old LG Nexus 4.

P. S. The shader is optimized for mobile, but demo scenes coming with the asset are NOT. They include complex terrain, lightmaps, reflection probes and ALL variants of the cubemaps/textures for demo purposes. These things could be heavy even for modern mobile devices

Thanks for reply. I use Samsung S7 edge to test, it should be powerful enough to run most of the mobile application.
I’d create an empty scene and put the skybox prefabs. It run very well and have a high performance. However when I use the day night cycle(which update the position of sun/moon/cloud etc), the frame rate drop dramatically.
Also I’d do some test, reduce the update() in SkyboxDayNightCycle.cs to run every 5 frames. The framerate back to 60fps again.
So I guess it should be the update of shader items impact the performace.
Thank you so much

[PhannGor]

@lookx2

Thanks for reply. I use Samsung S7 edge to test, it should be powerful enough to run most of the mobile application.
I’d create an empty scene and put the skybox prefabs. It run very well and have a high performance. However when I use the day night cycle(which update the position of sun/moon/cloud etc), the frame rate drop dramatically.
Also I’d do some test, reduce the update() in SkyboxDayNightCycle.cs to run every 5 frames. The framerate back to 60fps again.
So I guess it should be the update of shader items impact the performace.
Thank you so much

Thanks for the info, will do additional testing regarding SkyboxDayNightCycle.cs performance. Also, I like your workaround with reducing the update() runs. Quite elegant and users should not notice the difference!

[KevinCain]

Is there an easy way to turn moon / stars off? I could edit the script but wanted to see if I’m missing exposed controls…

[PhannGor]

@KevinCain

Is there an easy way to turn moon / stars off? I could edit the script but wanted to see if I’m missing exposed controls…

Yes, you can enable/disable them right from the SkyboxController editor:

[KevinCain]

Thanks, sorry to bother you with something so simple I overlooked it completely!

Two other questions:

• How could we control the sun’s glow term?
• Is there a way to insert additional colors in the sky beyond the top/middle/bottom RGB values?

[PhannGor]

@KevinCain

Thanks, sorry to bother you with something so simple I overlooked it completely!

Two other questions:

• How could we control the sun’s glow term?
• Is there a way to insert additional colors in the sky beyond the top/middle/bottom RGB values?

1. I’m not sure i understand your question. Please explain what do you mean by the sun’s glow term?

2. This shader supports only three color gradient. You can change top and bottom exponents of the gradient, but cannot insert additional colors without modifying the shader manually.

[KevinCain]

Thanks; I was asking if there is an exposed parameter to tune the sun shader’s glow.

We can change the halo by editing the B channel in the relevant sun map, as below:

My question is: can we dial down the amount of the halo effect rendered (shown at left)?

Back to my question about controlling the sky box’s color gradients, can you point me to the shader I will need to edit manually? Thanks!

[PhannGor]

There is only one shader in the package: Farland Skies/Low Poly/Shaders/LowPolySkybox.shader

And here’s the place where sky gradient is applied:

Regarding sun or moon halo, there is no exposed parameters to tune it in the editor. But you can also modify the shader in this case.:

[KevinCain]

Thanks for the fast reply, I’ll give that a shot!

[wetcircuit]

HiI just bought your skybox tool and I love it!

If I were to ask for any features, it might be to add a little more control over the horizon: an alpha ramp for each haze setting (so I can keep the horizon at 100% but fade to the sky/ground sooner), and the ability to shift the horizon up and down would be wonderful!

[PhannGor]

Hi @wetcircuit ,

Thanks for proposals, that sounds interesting. Will take a look what can I do here, probably next week.

[Schneider21]

This asset is a no-brainer purchase for me. The wife’s been keeping a tighter leash on my wallet lately due to my many Asset Store purchases, but as soon as the restriction is lifted, I’m buying this.

I’m immensely impressed by the documentation and obvious attention to detail you’ve put into sun and moon positioning. Any plans on adding moon phases?

[PhannGor]

Hi Schneider21,

Thanks for such a positive review!

Regarding moon phases, we definitely have this feature on the roadmap. However, I can’t say anything about when it will be implemented. Meanwhile, you can easily achieve this effect by changing moon texture manually or from scripts, even at runtime.

[znith52]

I love this asset so much , and am currently using it for active development. Will absolutely recommend it. One thing tho, the sun and the moon are not showing up in the sky for me. Im using the latest build of unity. Maybe you can give me a hint how to fix it.

[PhannGor]

Hi, just double checked it and all works fine in Unity 5.6.1. Can you please provide more info how to reproduce your issue with the sun and the moon? Have you got a chance to run the demo scenes, does this issue appear there as well?

Also, it would be faster to contact us using our support email for similar questions: support@borodar.com