3D Cloud System

Thank you very much!

Little update on the textures...

Cumulus coming soon. It was a little harder then I thought...

Cheers!

EDIT:

I would like to thank Majatek for the name and the Icon. Both of which I will be using! I will put your info in the read me.

Thanks!

 

Awesome work! It looks pretty cool

 

nice.but what was the frames per second in the video?

 

It was pretty high. I think 60-70 on my old laptop...

Cheers!

 

In the video, are the clouds making shadows on terrain?

 

No, this is Unity basic. I could add some Blob shadows, It would lower the framerate though.

I finally got a Very first test of Cumulus. I would like to apologize for the wait. I said it was coming in a few weeks several weeks ago.



Cheers!

 

no it's fine (frame rate is too important in unity) but what exactly will we be able to do with your program? Do you already have a feature list out?

 

Well, this is not some ind of fancy plug in stuff. There will be features enough to make some nice looking 3D clouds in your scene.

There will be quite a few textures and different presets available. Considering its just particles, there is not a whole lot to tweak.

Cheers!

 

Any idea on a release date?

 

Well, I have a few jobs now, so those will be my main focus for the next few months.

But I am still working on it... If I encounter not to many problems. I should think it will be released in several weeks? I can't be any more specific then that...

Cheers!

 

Hi,

Pretty nice work here
Please could you tell me how you managed to get the particles with a smooth transparent texture and keep a proper Z sorting ? I'm stuck on that problem...
I'm working on a custom particle system, and I don't know if I can fix it with a shader or if I have to Z sort all my polygons :/

 

Hello,

Thanks, I did not use any special methods to achieve the effect I have shown here. I just use the sorted billboard function with a alpha blended material.

Cheers!

 

Hi, thanks for this information
I'm quite new to unity, so could you explain where I could find this sorted billboard stuff please ?

EDIT : ok forget it, I've just found it ^^

 

Care to share for all the other new people out there?

 

Sorry

It can be found in the Particle Renderer parameters

 

Find the particle renderer, And change the render settings from billboard to sorted billboard.

Cheers!

 

Hi,

thanks ^^
But since I'm working on my own particle renderer, I can't use it like this
for now, I'm using a piece of code found here to do the sorting, it's working pretty well after some optimizations

 

Hello!

I have a few questions for the people looking forward to this system...

Should I release it soon with not as many features? or take a few more months and "try" to get all the features I wanted finished. I am not a good scripter so it might take awhile.

The features that would not be included if I release it now would be moving clouds. A few other types of clouds, and fixing the particle billboarding bug.

It's up to you community!

Cheers!

 

Hi,

If you release it sooner, you may have more returns from users to let you know what should be improved/reworked (or not) before spending more time on some other features.

What is your billboarding bug ?

 

Looks great!

 

Hmmm, I would still try to fix the bugs enough that I don't "think" a lot of people might return it... As for the billboarding problem, when you create a normal particle system and move around it, it looks 3D. Thats because of the billboarding, but the problem is if you position your camera under the system and rotate it to look up at the particleSystem and then rotate it on the local Z axis. The particles rotate with it. So the fix would be to only billboard particles when the main camera moved, not when it rotated.

I has been bugging me for the past few months(no pun intended)
I made a topic on unity answers and no one seemed to know there... I would give a few copy of this system if someone could figure it out >.<

 

haha, I'm working on something to solve this problem someway, but that's limited to spherical particles

EDIT : could you do a video to show your problem ?

 

Sure!

Cheers!

 

It looks absolutely awesome!

 

Thanks a lot!

 

ok, this is what I had in mind.

It's not really possible to fix that problem without a big rewrite :/
you can see here an example of my solution : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/89...t-of-triangles?p=598539&viewfull=1#post598539

I'm using a custom particle emitter and a texture where I have a "fluffy" sphere lit under different angles, then I choose the right sphere according to the current light orientation.
It's working only with a single directional light, and only with a perfect sphere shape, so to get some clouds details I have to use many more particles...

I'm not sure it's worth doing all this stuff to fix something that is not so visible on your demo

 

Thats pretty damn awesome!

Yeah, only one person commented about that problem. I am not sure if it would really make a big difference?

We will see The way I achieved the lighting on the clouds in that video was pretty.. errrmmm. bad. I had this crazy system where I created a empty game object for every particle. And then rotated those objects to face the sun. And used that direction with a color.lerp. Yes I know. Strange right? I can't figure out a better way to get that realtime lighting though. :/

Cheers!

-Ian

 

If you are motivated, you could try to implement something like this solution : http://www.markmark.net/clouds/
Detailed pdf here : http://www.markmark.net/clouds/RTCRPubs.html

I'll try to do it also one day, if I have some time

 

To complex for me I think

Cheers!

 

After all that stuff, what was you resulting direction ? the forward vector of your gameobject ? if yes, you don't need to use a gameobject for that, it's a simple vector operation :

Code (csharp):

1. Vector3 directionFromLightToParticles = (particle.position - light.transform.position).normalized;

 

Looks pretty stunning I've been looking for clouds like this, since in my game one can optionally fly and is supposed to fly through the layer of clouds If the FPS don't go down too much using it, consider me a buyer (as long it's affordable for poor people like me)

In terms of "when to release it" I agree with Alesk that some people (myself included) would love to get their hand on this as soon as possible, and you can always expand the functionality later based on the feedback you received. If what you say about the FPS is true then you not only got some of the best looking clouds for Unity right now, but I believe also the most performant "volumetric" clouds.

 

Thanks for the feedback... I am going to release a new pack in a few days... I will not say what it is

But after that I guess I will just submit the cloud system as it is... I guess as a WIP version for the asset store. The code is not very clean... I guess I will just leave it the way it is.

Cheers!

 

Man, I hate asking this question...again IOS capable (OpenGL ES 2.0)?

 

I doubt it... I uses particles and it would probably lag a lot. Not to mention all the code is not optimized for the Iphone.

 

Hi !

So ? any update ?

 

Here are a few updated images...

http://img9.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=screenshot20110802at408.png

 

Has this been released yet?

 

Nope, sorry

 

Any estimate on when it will be?

 

No, I am working on it. It is getting a little hard for my abilities.

 

3dDude have you see a cloud system that can control speed of cloud formations, like time lapse clouds?

 

Looks very nice!

 

When is it going to be released?

 

Hmmm, not off the top of my head. Unisky? it is not 3D though.

Thank you.

I am still not sure. The time has come in its development were the scripting aspect of this project is getting hard for me.

Mostly I am making texture changes now.

Here are a few things that bug me:

1. If you change the cloud prefab, You have to generate a new cloud formation for it to update. Thats because I am using a C# script I found on unity answers to make a button that calls a function in a JS. The JS script generates the clouds. But that does not create with prefab connection.

2. When your character looks up and rotates, you get this weird billboarding problem. And I have asked the forum and unity answers a few times now. And it seems the verdict, is that I would have to re-write the particle emitter if I wanted to change that.

3. for every different type of cloud you want in your scene, you have to have a new generator prefab.

So it is getting a little depressing working on it.

I may just release a version that is simple that still has those bugs in it. I am not sure yet.

Cheers!

 

Hey 3ddude, that's cool take all the time you need. Maybe you should ask the Unity folks about the new particle system. In their 2011 Roadmap they wrote they redesigned the particle system from scratch for Unity 3.5. I consider that generally a good thing, but it would be a pity if it would break all your previous hard work with the old system. You should maybe check out if they have backwards compatibility and get a statement from them on that?

Just stating my concern, I don't want to discourage you. I'm still very much looking forward to trying your system Who knows, maybe the new system has a positive side effect of eliminating your current billboarding problems, too.

Here's hoping!

 

Thanks for the link. I didn't see that before. I don't think it will be to much of a problem. I will take a little time. But I think it should work fine.

Cheers!

 

Some new pics of Cumulus.

http://img32.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=screenshot20110817at113.png

I may release it soon. It won't have some of the great editor features of some of the other products out there though

It is still planned under the name Cloudscape.


Ohhhhh fancy

 

Progress:



40-60 FPS. On my sucky macbook white...

The scene has cirrus and cumulus rendered in it.

 

I just found this thread and started reading it yesterday, so forgive me if I'm missing a key ingredient. This isn't on the asset store yet right? I would love to have your clouds to tinker with on my own and wonder if you might be underestimating people's interest in purchasing what you've done already and retro-fitting it to their own needs.

I'm no coder so I might not be able to fix the issues you've encountered to make them suitable for other people's uses, but maybe those other people would be interested in purchasing them who are better able to adjust it to suit their needs? You've been up front about the limitations with the product as it is, yet it still seems appealing for certain uses that maybe you haven't considered?

For example, I'd like to know if you could render environment maps with these clouds, in which case the billboarding wouldn't matter. I don't know the first thing about how to make such clouds, and would be happy to pay a reasonable price for the head start you've obviously made. Somebody who wants to make clouds to fly through might have to figure out a way to fix the billboarding, but your work might get them 90% of the way there and they might be very happy to pay for the head start too. Just a thought!

 

Can I download this ?