UniSky v1.2 - Procedural Weather Update

Community Showcases
1

Hey guys, The UniSky v1.2 update is now available on the Asset Store!

New features include procedural, real-time weather and atmospheric effects, as well as a few minor bug patches. To watch a preview of the new features, check out the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClWJT-eGCVQ

1.) Offscreen particle rendering allows for many large, alpha blended particles on screen without the performance drop!
2.) Water droplet image effect simulates rain hitting the camera.
3.) Parameterized storm probablity, duration, thunder frequency, and more.
4.) Includes all rain textures and sound effects needed for a realistic storm.

The new features require Unity Pro (Render Textures) and as before, an SM 3.0 capable graphics card.

With new features comes a new setup routine and tutorial. A video will be available soon, meanwhile check out the written tutorial on the website for instructions on how to set up UniSky to work with weather.

http://www.sixtimesnothing.com/unisky/

Thanks! :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Wow,

Especially the soundeffects brings this scene to live.
I only missed a bird starting to chirp after the storm :slight_smile:
Will the soundeffects be included?

How much performance does your sky system eat up?
I have a lot of other things going on in my game and would be willing to spend max 5% on the sky system.
That is on Quad 3.25GHz and Nvidia 9800GTX.
Could you please provide some performance data from your system?

3

Thanks! Yes, the sound effects will be included.

The video in the link above was running on my system:

Dual 2.66ghz with an NVidia 8800gtx

At peak downpour, I saw frame times of around 2.5ms and FPS around 400. This is with a large terrain @ 1025x1025 resolution and no Umbra occlusion culling. This is also at full settings - I’m rendering the particles to a variable size off-screen buffer so the alpha blending doesn’t kill the frame rate. This means you can change the quality and settings to whatever you need to maintain good performance.

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Very cool video :slight_smile:
Looking forward to the update to experiment even more with the atmosphere created by the lighting etc

5

This looks fantastic. Would your system support sand storms, too?

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@PeterB - This first update is just rainstorms. The next update will probably be some user-requested features and snow. We are ultimately building this system for our in-production game, Dawn of the Tyrant, so if it calls for sand storms then you will see sand storms in a future update :slight_smile: At this point though, I cannot say for sure what other features we will be implementing in the future.

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I was most impressed by the “water running down the lens” effect, first time I’ve seen that in a Unity demo.

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Best 100 bucks spent on a plug in ever. EVER.

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Amazing work Chris!

When the storms is at its peak it feels really intense!

One observation though was that the grass doesn’t seam to be as turbulent as the trees.

And having dynamic light flashes synced with thunder would be icing on the cake.

Quite possibly the best real time heavy storm I’ve seen, looking forward to seeing your game with systems like this.

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I think this is one of the best things i have seen in unity so far :smile:.

Dave

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This is what I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been watching the Unisky threads. Once the weather system is completed, then I’ll purchase Unisky.

Just curious as to whether the weather patterns (rain, clear, overcast, etc) is random or in a certain pattern. Also, can you set an area to have mainly a few weather patterns (snowy areas won’t get rain and some areas get a lot of thunderstorms). Can you set the duration of each of the weather patterns (when rainstorms hit they are brief, or you get more sun than rain).

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The water running down the lens blew me away, I totally did not expect that. This has quickly become one of the staple plug-ins available on the asset store. A must have.

13

Brilliant atmosphere, brilliant sound effects and brilliant water effects! It’s just awesome to see what some people are able to do with Unity.

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If i had the money, this is no2 on my list of things to buy.
Reason?
Unity pro is no.1.
Great work, I loved the video, and the rain on the camera was fantastic. And the amazing price tag= wow. Really cool!

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Thanks guys, I really do appreciate it. I think the storms we get here in the southern U.S. gave me some good inspiration :slight_smile:

@Sh0v0r - Good eye! I didn’t change the grass wind settings, I only set a wind zone. I’ll add that to the to-do list. Also, lightning is one of the few things left to do. Gotta have that before release.

@RoyS - The weather patterns are random, and are controlled by a few parameters like storm frequency, strength, and length. Our game is going to call for some more detailed weather constraints, such as snow-only regions etc., so future updates are likely to go into more detail with these parameters.

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@chris Morris : this looks really good but here for the moment i’m still hesitating between the 2 different skies that are available. The reason : As many other users, i’m an artist, not a technical one, and much less a coder so i don’t want to access your variables by code. I want these to be predefined in a seperate script that would list all different weathers states and then trigger them in different ways ( random or in a certain order etc…) If you do that you’ve got all the place ( well, to my mind ). I’ve already thrown " a message in a bottle" like that far earlier ( as i was really expecting this asset, even though at a less affordable price). never answered back… But i’m still looking at it with a great desire ( but for me it’s like gazing at a beautiful girl who don’t want me, unless you do what i say)

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Looks absolutely fantastic!! Really good work! But I have a question… Any ETA for the snow update? So it is not included in 1.2, right? But will also be a free update for current buyers? Thanks!

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@rosor - The tool is very parameterized, you actually don’t need to touch any code unless you want to do something very specific. UniSky is setup so that you immediately get a functional sky, and with this update you also get immediate dynamic weather, all controlled by a simple interface. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the tutorial video, which shows what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjHJBwNs2pw

@SirLancelot - The 1.2 update does not include snow, just rain. The next update will have snow, and will be free to UniSky licensees.

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@Chris: you know it’s a while since i’ve seen this video, i follow this thread really often. and i know that there are some customers or potential one who desire a thing that i mentionned. i mean what happen at run time ??? if i want my weather to transition between shinny weather to stormy weather. how can i achieve that with your unisky editor. if there are no coding skills needed i would definitely be your next customer. But the video only shows how to customize “one” sky and then it plays with these defined parameters. ( well, it’s the way i understand this awesome feature ( i repeat !!). how about animating the skies at run time ( with different states) ?? In the way i understand your feature, that’s the point i really want to be clarified before i purchase. Thanks for taking time to answer back.
regards
(well, i already know the first answer to come would be : " learn how to code !!!" … if it’s the case that would unfortunately be a dead end for me)
AWESOME FEATURE I REPEAT !!!
edit : what happens if i’m under a roof and it’s raining ??? are there some detection collision test or i don’t know ???

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Pretty fucking awesome… you know with all the talent on this site, if the right people here got together and made one big heave-ho towards the right idea something spectacular is bound to happen… I vote for a new section- the community project area!! or something similar :slight_smile: