Skydome with cloud

Hi there people,

i’m working on a script/system to have a nice environment that is easy to setup. now i have two things wich i have to combine.

First my sunlight script. this script rotates a direct light based on longitude/latitude. also changes the color (not very good tho)
http://unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=SunLight

next is the skydome and clouds. here’s a quick export :
http://www.pixelstudio.nl/skydome/skydome3.html

PRESS TAB!!! to change some settings.
there are more settings such as wind direction.

Next step is to combine both things.

Love to hear some feedback and idea’s!

Cheers

Looks very good. I like how you have two cloud patterns going in different directions. This makes the effect even better. This is one of the best cloud effects I’ve seen like this for Unity.

Later, you can probably use the skydome blending effect on the clouds to change to darker (stormy looking) clouds or to clear weather at randomized.

BRILLIANT! This is exactly what I wanted to do, just haven’t had the time to get started.

A couple ideas:

For night sky I would add a star dome above the clouds and use a script to have it rotate per correct time. There’s a great thread on the Carrara forums that gave me lots of good info and ideas ( http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=118903&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 ), including this webpage with NASA star dome textures: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003572/index.html

Incidentally, if you need the star dome converted to a different format (ie. turn it into a 6 textured skybox), let me know. I’ve got a nice little application that does this.

I haven’t tried your sun script yet, but in addition to the position and angle for the sun, and variation in light color, you might also consider altering the sun’s image, ie. make it larger and more orange as it approaches sunset.

I’m sure as I play with this I’ll come up with more ideas. If you decide to distribute or license this, let me know. This is exactly the sort of thing I was going to do, but don’t ever seem to have time to do it! :wink:

Hey guys! love the ideas!

lots of things to do then :). when i have a stable version that looks nice i’ll put it up for download!

cheers

This is really really cool. But what’s the impact on performance?

Dave

awesome.

and yeah stars would be a good idea.

Edit:

Also add a setting to change just one of the cloud’s speed like the top one and the bottom one’s speed being separate.

Great man, absolutely great.

Very cool! The only thing I have to say is that even when the slider is turned all the way down, the clouds still move pretty fast. I think when it’s turned all the way down, the clouds should really be creeping along.

Agreed. I would pay for something like this.

How would one go about actually implementing this?

Do you attach the script to a light? Or is it a runtime script? If it’s the latter, how do you tell it to run at runtime. We’re hoping to get a day/night cycle as well.

I know how I was going to to this:

For the clouds, there are a couple ways to go. One is to have two spheres with seamless, alpha mapped, cloud textures mapped on them, and rotate them at different rates. But I suspect the way it was done in this particular instance was with domes and animated the texture map’s UV’s. Height is adjusted by scaling the dome on its Y axis. A third way to do this (and Eric posted a demo of this) is to take a big plan and make it a child of the camera. Then animate the cloud UV’s based on the camera direction.

Pixelstudio was kind enough to post his sun script in the Wiki, and although I haven’t studied it I suspect it’s based on code that determines the azimuth and declination of the sun based on latitude / longitude / local date and time (the formuli can be found by searching for info on celestial navigation).

To animate the sun, I would create a billboard texture , put it on a plane outside the cloud textured domes and then animate it with Pixelstudio’s script. I’d also scale and change the color of the texture based on time of day (or how close it is to the horizon).

For the stars, you could essentially do it in a manner that’s similar to the clouds, but have its rotation driven by the same script as the sun.

Then in a skybox I would have three gradient backgrounds: one for mid-day, another for sunrise / sunset and a third for night time. I would use Aras’s script in the Wiki to blend between skyboxes.

And that’s it. Pixelstudio, is that roughly how you did it? I’ll be interested to hear.

new version, with some more adjustable thingies.

http://www.pixelstudio.nl/skydome/skydome4.html

Looks good, I’ll keep an eye on this!

On the subject - a while ago at Paladin Studios we created an atmospherics system too. Did you ever see our solution in Quest3D? It was a lot of fun to work on, maybe it contains a few ideas for your version.

Movie:

More info including downloadable .exe:
http://www.paladinstudios.com/cms/case-studies/qumulus/

Again, we did the module in Quest3D, but to be honest, we were actually considering to create something similar for Unity. We haven’t started yet, so you definitely can beat us to it! :wink:

Best of luck!

@Dylan - I remember your Q3D atmospherics system, in fact I linked to it here in the forums when we first discussed a community project for something similar a year or so ago. Welcome aboard and it’s good to see interest in this sort of thing again!

@bigkahuna - Thanks! So far the community’s great and open, which says a lot about the software I believe. Looking forward to some serious inspiration sharing! :slight_smile:

Pixelstudio, i attached the script to a light but it seems the results are not realistic. Is it me or is there an error in the script? I’ve tested it with different times and different lat lon but the time for sunrise and dawn seems to be wrong. In your script it’s still nighttime in germany at 8 am in summer.

this looks great

Awesome, the only thing I dislike is in the 4th build where at the dead of night the clouds become extremely contrasting to pitch black, any way to change the colour of the clouds at night?

why not share?

new and improved :
http://www.pixelstudio.nl/skydome/skydome5.html

it’s gonna be released when i got a nice and working version!
The sky and gradient are calculated! so not based on a gradient like the previous versions. i need to improve this, but the base is alright i think.