Environment Gator

Hi,
so.. it's all about the AnimationCurves.
The EGBlank prefab has blank AnimationCurves, that's why you see the sky black.

Animation Curves work like Gradients. Looping through the values set inside the curve during the Day-Night cycle.
For example, the ESun parameter, is the parameter that indicates the brightness of the sun, we can decide his behaviour during an entire day-night cycle with one curve, that should have a lenght of 1 ( the range from 0.0 to 1.0 will cover an entire day-Night cycle. I.e. @0.4 we'r at 40% of hour day-night cycle, and so on ). As reference,
i suggest you to have a look at how curves are set inside the EGDemo prefab, you can copy the curves from there, using the Unity internal presets libraries, and put them inside the new EG prefab you're going to build, just as starting values.

If you want, you can contact me via e-mail, in Italian, using this link.
I'll be glad to help you!

Regards,

 

Important on #1.3
I've noticed that the ElementsGator inside the EGBlank prefab has not been updated and PS_Rain and PS_Snow are not updated too.
In order to solve that quickly:
1-Delete the ElementsGator prefab inside the EGBlank prefab.
2-Replace it with the ElementsGator prefab inside the EGCPrefabs folder.
3-Apply changes to the EGBlankPrefab.
Done!

The problem that could occur is related to the particle systems. Strange shadows would appear.
PS_Rain and PS_Snow's Renderer should be set not to cast shadow in this new version.



They are properly set, inside the pristine ElementsGator prefab that we can find in EGCPrefab>>Elements folder.)


The ElementsGator prefab is the right one to use in a new EG prefab.

Sorry about that, i don't know why the prefab it's not updated as it should,
but following the above procedure and overriding the EGBlank prefab with the new( aKa with the pristine ElementsGator inside ) will fix the issue for ever! ( until next fixes update! )

Regards,

 

I noticed that if you turn the "Dark Skin" off, when you enter play mode, it turns itself back on and stays on even after you exit. Is there a way to fix that?

One other question: Is there a way to get the scene to start immediately in the chosen weather type? When I choose "Clear" for "Start Weather Type", it always starts as Overcast with all the cloud layers on and then fades to whatever I picked over about 15 seconds or so. Even if I set the weather to static and no changes.

 

Ciao,
I have a serious problem, after update to 1.3 I don't succeed to resize the world (the sky is dark)...
My Terrain is 6000x6000 and 2000 of height
It seems that the terrain is too high but the previous version worked

And also I agree with makeshiftwings I have to start with a clear sky without clouds

 

@ThunderTruck
Ciao,
could you please tell me the values of the HDR and ESun Curves?
Maybe is there the issue, try pushing those values at runtime.
( Pick the gameObject called Earth and in his inspector you can tweak HDR and ESun ( as well as Mie and Rayleigh scattering parameters )).

For the clouds materials at start, that is going to be fixed in next minor update ( coming soon ).
It's just a matter of resetting the materials's alphas.
The feat. it's not implemented yet, 'cause i 'm working at a new quick initial setup process that will include the correct alpha according to start weather.

I'm going to check for the darkSkin issue.


Regards,

 

Also, things look much better if you change the Queue in the three EGCP_ shaders to "Transparent-110" and the Queue in the two EGClouds shaders to "Transparent-105". It makes the sky properly render behind trees and other transparent objects instead of in front.

(Normal transparent objects are in queue Transparent, and tree billboards are in Transparent-100, so this puts clouds behind both)

 

Ciao,
strano non ha caricato le immagini...
Anyway, the HDR and ESun values are the same of the demo scene.
Now I try to play with your suggestions...


Grazie

 

Hi,
tweaking ESun with values over 300 it works for a bit as long as ESun isn't too decremented...

 

Cool, now you only have to program your Curve using "300" as ref value. The values of the curves inside the EGDemo prefab were not working because your scene is bigger than the DemoScene, that's why i've left them blank, each scene is different!
Those parameters should be set according to scene/worldRadius size.

 

Thanks for help. I have now read few times documentation and made some progress with ACF and GDome but now I wonder how to make fog visible My starting point is demo scene final EG -prefab values and I just can't make fog visible same way if using basic fog without EnvironmentGator.

 

Hi,

The Fog is another element that largely depend on scene size, so you'll have to draw a Curve from scratch or starting from the EGDemo fog curves, in order to fit your scene size. I know it may sounds complicated, but curves are super-easy to use and to setup, furthermore, using Curves, we'll have the opportunity to be more precise and smooth with values.

@ThunderTruck
How is going with the setup?

 

Grazie, it work now...
I think you should implement a "auto quick start wizard" that set EG for a quick start base environment in according to the terrain, the parameters are many and who is not an expert, like me, is a little confusing.
Anyway the result is amazing...

Ciao e complimenti da Torino

 

Hi,

Evvai..i'm happy it works now!!

I'm thinking about an "auto quick start wizard thing" but, actually, what i'm trying to do is to have less things to be set and more clear parameters.

For example, thanks to some suggestions received from users ( Rocco "Goldrake" in primis ), i've reworked the entire Global-Illumination system that now works, guess what, with Curves, for theSun intensity and theMoon intensity, the GradientColor is shared between the twos and inside the AtmosGator we can decide the DirLights attenuation that should occur during certain weather conditions.
Now we have a lot less calculations involved, more control over the entire Global-Illumination, we have better and fast results, during the entire DayNight cycle..

This is going to be the new Global Illumination config.


Less parameters to set but much more control.



the new illumination at work..




@makeshiftwings
I've solved the DarkSkin issue, it's a bit tricky to explain. It will be online soon, with the materials'alphas at start fix.

Grazie!! Sono davvero contento che ti piaccia!!
Devo dire che sto ricevendo davvero un supporto incredibile dagli utenti, thx, ne ho bisogno!!


see you soon with more updates..

Regards,

 

I noticed that EG had a problem I also had with Unistorm, which was that night skies looked broken when turning on HDR on the camera. I finally figured out what was going on:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/238444-Unity-Skybox-shaders-don-t-work-in-HDR

That will fix the problem with Unity's built-in skybox shaders. For the custom EG skybox shaders, you need to make sure you clamp to 0 any time you do something like "combine previous +- primary" in the Blend3CubeMaterial or else the value can go negative when HDR is enabled. Or just use a multiply instead of a +-.

 

@makeshiftwings

Great, that was really weird, i was struggling with this, together with a bunch of "strange behaviours" for some Unity classes.
Kudos for "makeshiftwings", you did an amazing job!! Thx!!!
I'm going to try it and it will be implemented in the upcoming minor-update,
that will include a lot of cool news and fixes !! I'll post infos soon.

Thank you guys for the incredible support!!


Regards,

 

Thanks for pointers, anyway I only can achieve visible results with exponential fog although I need to exclude all the sky stuff from fog...
It would be great if sky shaders would already have fog off or something but maybe I can work it myself hehe

 

Thank you makeshiftwings, this solution worked perfectly for me.
The clouds showing up in front of trees was an asset killer for me.
But the above sorted that out nicely.

 

Hi to all,

Yes this works well, but keep in mind that transparency it's a bit tricky to handle, since each project is different and something else could break.
For example, i've Unity installed on 3 different machines, and i can simply get rid of the Trees's issue, just playing with the billboard treshold of the Terrain.
No matter which Tree's prefab i use, i'm not able to reproduce the issue, anyway, that doesn't mean that there's no issue so workarounds are always super-welcome. I'll try to find a more "final" solution.

I take this opportunity to tell you that the update with the 1.3 fixes, system adjustments, and the enhanced illumination system is almost ready, here's a brief look at the changeLog:

[Vers#1.3R1.0414]
- Fixed: Editor. DarkSkin went on after PlayMode. Fixed.
- Fixed: EGBlank prefab. There was a wrong ElementsGator Prefab inside the EGBlank prefab. Fixed.
- Reworked: Global Illumination. Totally reworked and improved GlobalIllumination. Easy setup and improved performances.
- New: Directional Lights (usually TheSun-TheMoon). Now DirectionalLights use Curves and values attenuator according to Weather conditions. DirLightsSpeed indicates the Time that the light takes to reach a new value.
- New: SunFlare. FlareIntensityMax value added. The max value reachable by this Flare intensity. FlareIntensity and SunIntensity are inversely proportional: one value decreases when the other increases.
- Added: SunFlare. 2 new Flare Textures.
- Edit: TheMoon. Now the 2nd DirectionalLights ( usually theMoon )can cast shadows.
- Edit: Code refinements. Substitution of some Lerp() functions with SmoothDamp() functions. Smoother transitions in Light, Fog, Darkness.
- Edit: GDome. Darkness: Smoother transitions for darkness. Darkness is now Applied at Start according to Wex and ToD. SetDarknessAtStart() method added to DomeSlice.cs .
-[Vers#1.3R3.0414]
- Added: GDome Editor.
- Edit: EnviromentGatorEditor. The SkyBox and Time panels now show only parameters which can be used in the current WorldType configuration.
- Edit: EnviromentGatorEditor. Now setting WorldType to SphericalWorld will set the SkyBoxMode to Atmos.
- Added: CustomEditor. Panels have a ShowTips toggle to turn Tips on/off.( Currently applied to: GlobalIllumin and Fog Panel).
-[Vers#1.3R4.0414]
- Fixed: EGClouds.cs : Materials'alphas at start. Now all the clouds set alpha according to Weather @Start.
- Added: EGCLouds.cs : Darkness is now Applied at Start according to Wex and ToD. Inside the FirstRunSetUp() method.
- Added: EGClouds.cs : added float AddNormalMapOffset. Adjust the bump/normal texture in order to have cleaner and smoother alphas's transitions. NormalMap will follow the color.alpha. Ratio[ Alpha : Alpha-AddNormalMapOffset ].
- Fixed: TimeHookUp() method. Now temporary disable wexDyn in order to avoid "hard-jumps" in some values ( i.e Fog.color ) if the TimeHookUp is perfomed with the variable _startAt pointing to a WeatherChangeDecision() ToD.
- Performances: Slight code enhancements. Improved overall performances and system coherence and stability. Even smoother transitions.
-[Vers#1.3R7.0414]
- Edit: DomeSlices.cs : If the Slice is not set to "isAlwaysVisible", it will show up according to current weather ( with slights exceptions in order to have more random clouds situations at horizon ).
- Edit: ElementsGator. PSRain. Rain Texture and shader reworked.
- Edit: EGClouds Editor. Show parameters according to CloudType.


I also have a question regarding the Textures included inside the EG.
Are you going to use the .psd file to edit the clouds or i can get rid of the .psd format and use .png instead?
This way i can shrink the package size a bit.

The 1.3 fix update will be available soon.

Best Regards,

 

Thanks Stefano some great sounding fixes in that list, look forward to it.
Regarding the clouds, I would be happy with png files, an option would be to make the pan files available to download of your site.
Also is it possible to set wind direction for cloud movements to any direction eg ssw not just n,s,e w.

Loving the system, set a very large 20 sq km scene up from scratch last night to test large scale scenes.
Did the job perfectly once everything set up scale wise.

 

Hi,
happy to tell you that the update ( #1.3R9 ) has been submitted for review!!

It will be in the upcoming update!

Yes, that's what i was thinking. Some new cloud texture on the website soon..

I'm super-glad you like it, and i think you're gonna like the new feats and fixes inside the update.

@see you soon.

Best Regards,

 

Not often i just stare at a new asset running for over half an hour, really pretty demo, i was starting to think it was very 'particular' (like the demo would represent the look you'll always get with the system) but it's really quite not having looked at the system and textures (providing contrasting alternatives in mood or theme to the regular clouds on your site or in the package would definitely help get across the options possible but it's not too hard to imagine at all, if you can make the art you can probably get some very unique skies!) and very entertaining documentation properly, it seems to offer a great deal of control with some sensible ideas to make it all work in concert - makes me look forward to the time i can revisit vue and really get creative with my skies, really look forward to it, looks like you can keep adding and layering art and it keep becoming a richer experience for whoever's under the care of the gator. lovely stuff

 

Thank you, what a review!!
Could you please share it to....the Universe ? ( keep on joking..)

What i liked is the fact that you totally got the point and simplified the concept ( that's what i'm not so good at, with my English ) and the fact that you pointed at the " customizable " part of the thing it's a pleasure, because it's not always so obvious, that's why i was a bit doubtful about the demo release, cause it's just a small part of the thing and maybe not so clear too! ( i have no time to make a super-Demo right now ).
Anyway, thank you again, i really need this kind of "boost"!

Best Regards,

 

I just watched the 1.3 demo, the sky looks really really good. I have to say that i was very impressed and i can't wait to update the version i have and implement this in my game. I haven't put it in the game since i have been working on very important things, but after that i will implement it in the game

The one thing that should be replaced in the demo, to give it a much higher quality would be to buy an environment asset from the store. There are so many good environment assets for a fairly cheap price like the assets from Michael O.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/11905
Or just a landscape would look good
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/2280

It's just a suggestion.
Continue your awesome work!

EDIT:
ofcourse you couldn't release your asset with these assets, so you would still have to have the one you have now... But it would be very good to showcase your asset.

 

@Eskovas
Great!!
I can't wait to see the EG in your, awesome looking, game!!

I think i'll follow your advice for the webDemo,
nowdays it's more about how you "present" things than what's inside,
i'm not complaining, it's just that i'm so bad at "presentations"!

I hope that the new update will be online soon, so that i can move on with the
dev faster, if no big issues show up. About the dev, i'll try to listen to all the feedbacks and
requests, even if i'll will follow an almost linear path during dev, in order not to get crazy.

Today i'll update all the Docs and will add some new sections...
..back soon with more updates..

Best Regards,

 

No worries on the review, the system was perfect to what I had in mind, with one main caveat that i'll go into later, in fact my main criticisms i guess were maybe the supplied rain could be a bit more defined as it looks a bit aliased and 'sketchy' seeming initially, and heavy rain be a bit more of a hammering deluge (One nice asset, Unisky, had a nice effect that augmented heavy rain particle effects with a kind of tall, wide darkening layered billboarded particle effect around you that made the rain seem like a proper very heavy sheets of rain thing), and like the above person mentioned the landscape was a bit disappointing and it took me a few seconds to get over it before i looked at what i was meant to be looking at, sped up time for a bit, randomised time every so often and kept going 'woah'

I think if, in the package you do a collection of assets based on a very stylised fantasy kind of game, so your skies might have a different number and slightly different nature of hues (I noticed a collection of skyboxes representing the sky colour to the horizon, and though you could get creative with those for sure), maybe an increased number of skybox-cloud layers with more abstract shapes - one of the reasons i'd decided to get EG on sight was because i'd seen the gameplay videos for Cradle, particularly this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aFjdYxoCfs, if you look at about 1:40, i thought 'i want to do that' but part of a full day/night year-round system with weather etc, even perhaps one month shapes building in the sky from overlaid skyboxes as the days pass building to some celestial event while still interacting with the other systems, clouds and others, satellites needn't look scientifically explicable in size or appearance, i'd love to see a majoras mask-style moon in a game again some day, some clouds on the horizon be strange, ominous shapes, not clouds at all, and some reach far into the sky, Adventure Time style knife-storms for a weather effect hah (being able to have gameobjects showering as part of weather systems would be great, like when hailing for example (or knife storms)), and yes, this would look significantly different and still only be another small example of what is possible (And maybe this could be explained as what the gator dreams of)

My main caveat with the system, i guess, and i'm sure you've thought of it, is the lack of substantial 'fluffy' style clouds, these requiring fairly involved volumetric rendering which can be a large subject full of headaches when implementing in a product that is to be usable by all - i also own Nuaj, which i'm not even going to try and make co-operate with EG, esp as the creator seems to have neglected the asset somewhat, it does lovely volumetric clouds, that maybe could have a makeover by now given recent impressive work by others (At least in terms of basic cloud appearance iq's clouds on shadertoy.com typify his mastery at the art of clever pretty things) but the creator of nuaj also wrote a really good publically available paper on the subject based on a talk they gave (paper and power point here http://patapom.com/topics/Revision2013/) and reently made the Nuaj shaders available with the product. You may know this stuff, you may not, but it might be a poke in the right direction if you had plans for, or bemoaned lack of, substantial volume clouds in EG, maybe you don't care! And i'm happy as it is, and this work is a lot of quite intense work, but it would be nice (And imply quite a price hike)

Nuaj's creator says they will return, but who knows when! Mystery! But there's nothing wrong with a little friendly competition in an area much neglected in Unity on what i'd consider a competent level, and I own both so eh! Right tool for the right job eh

The above is really an absolutely tiny quibble however given the pricing of the asset, which is already very generous, so well done and I do hope you keep maintaining and adding to this as the art-focussed, well-concepted nature of it is great, exactly what I want in such an asset, and it would be very interesting to see where this will go in future

 

Hi again to all,

@Lazygunn
How not to agree @100% with your analisys? Some of the initial assets ( like the rain particle ) are a bit more than a place-holder right now and will be replaced with dedicated and more accurate particle system as soon as i finish the upgrade of the entire Precipitations's System ( meanwhile, it's not hard to reach some results using Shuriken and then feed the EG ) , but i'll try to hurry and finish the system asap.

The main-Goal for the moment is to have a stable and flexible system that could then be fed with art-assets, enhanced particles and more eye-candy overall look and FX's in a more consistent way. I'd like to create some sort of "standard" format for all the assets (textures , audio, particles, etc) that could be created and then being fed to the EG. Honestly, i think that I am ( should i say "We are" ) on the right track to achieve this goal.

The tricky part is to meet the demands of users trying not to go to far from the already planned development of the EG.

Actually there are "fluffy" clouds available inside the EG ( EGCVolumetric), they are just at the Pit-Stops.
I mean they could be already used but a much more effective implementation of these type of clouds is coming soon.
I'd like to use them also as "peak-Clouds" that move around mountain's top or similar ( Skyrim like type of thing ).
But, there's always one "but", as you said, could be a pain to implement Volumetrics properly, and they could also be very expensive in terms of performances if we want to have them looking beautiful.

Regarding the "very stylised fantasy" part of the thing, i'm on it, it's the part i'm waiting the most!!

Now, just to be clear, the next main steps will be focused on the "System" in general ( Initial Setup ( yeeeah!! ), Performances, Editor ).
After that, an Astronomic-Seasonal system is coming soon ( more accurate Satellites positions, moon-phases , correct Day-Light-Time according to current season,etc.).

Unity Pro features "full" implementation and maybe some 3rd Party Assets "official compatibility" could arrive before the 2.0( it's just a rumor ).

After the above are done, we are ready to start the battle of the art-assets!!

Thank you again for the precise, competent and clear analysis, that helps me a lot!!

Have a nice day.

Best Regards,

 

Will the astronomical system include correct stars placement as well. Would make a fantastic addition.

 

That was the plan in the near future, but since i'm having some trouble with StarGator right now ( i'm working at the Transparency issue, i almost solved the rest but the Stars now are problematics ), a correct or almost-correct representation of the stars could arrive before than i thought.

I'll give you more infos as soon as i proceed with the implementation..

Regards,

 

I think I have a sphere-mapped texture of the stars somewhere, which i'm guessing you could use a self illuination shader on, you may have this covered but i thought id mention

 

The solution proposed by Lazygunn is correct. I think that to simulate the star positions, this is the fastest way ;-)

 

I used it in a sky effect for an android wallpaper demo, was very effective in it, its 8k x 4k too which means it should be large enough for anything really (ive found it too, i can pm you it via dropbox if you want it)

 

Hi,

Q:
While i was struggling with the Transparency queue order, i've realized that a "final solution" it's quite impossible to reach, but it's easy to get around the obstacle. Anyway, what i found curious, is that i'm still not having the Tree overlapping issue if i properly set the Terrain settings. No matter the distance, the type of Tree ( i'm testing things from the AssetStore as well ), the Terrain size..The only way to replicate the issue for me, was 'zeroing' the trees billboard parameter. Another thing that you may have noticed, is that changing the Transparency for the EGCP's shaders could generate some issues with the StarsGator and sometimes with the moon. I suggest to try to handle with the Terrain settings and Trees parameters before changing the shaders.

@LazyGunn
Sure, please send me the DP link. I already have a good one, with polar distortions, etc,
it's not bad once applied but, i don't know, in someway i don't like it. Thank you!!

 

Well the trees get rendered differently depending on how close they are to the camera. When they're close enough to be meshes, they're in the regular "Transparent" queue and will look fine with EG's default sorting. But when they are further away and turn into billboards, they go into the "Transparent -100" queue. So all the parts of EG should always be behind the tree billboards, so it should all be "Transparent-101" or lower, I'm using "Transparent-105" and "Transparent-110" and it looks good. There's a chance that the transparency looks different in Forward Rendering vs Deferred Rendering, but putting all the transparent EG stuff lower than "Transparent - 100" should make it work in both modes.

 

Yes, i know , that's why i found that strange.
Are you sure you don't get any transparency issues?
If i set the values as yours, then i start having problems with the StarsGator that shows up in front of clouds.

Anyway, i'm testing different solutions and the good news are that they all work well.

One is to include all, or at least the most commons, UnityBase Shaders with modified Transparency queue, in order to have the same effect ( shader ) but set to work inside a scene with the EG, with no problems of sorting. It will be not mandatory to use them, but in case of problems , we can try to solve the issue replacing the shader with an "alias" that just differs in the Transparency order queue from the original.
It's just an idea, but maybe it could help?!

..i'll be back soon..

 

Hi to all,
this is just brief update on the current development state.

The astronomic seasons implementation is going to be a bit more complicated than i thought, i mean, not only the system is complicated but also the technical implementation inside the EG. That said, it doesn't mean i'm going to quit on it, just looking for the best solution, so maybe it may takes a bit longer than preview.

Testing the above was usefull for another feature though.

I've called them GSpheres ( mmhh..) and are used to "layer" other Textures/Materials in our sky to show everything we want to show up.

They will be programmable in the EG style and , most important, they are another step towards the OneClick ( or maybe two ) SetUp wizard, since the GSpheres will scale automatically according to current world-radius and skyScale.

No more "manual resizing", once we found the correct scale for our sky, they will scale accordingly.

Now i'm trying to blend this system with the ACF system in order to use them for dynamic-clouds.

I think i'm going to use one GSphere to implement the current StarsGator while the astronomic system is under development,
it's looking good so far.

Just some example:







Thanks to super-focused users's feedbacks, a lot of others improvements are going on under the hood!

Keep an eye on the website for documentation updates. ( there's already something new ).

Stay tuned for more updates.

Best Regards,

 

Hello Karlbovsky,

I finally decided to implement Environment Gator in my game, here are the results. ( i had a previous version before i updated, but i think it didn't update correctly, so these images are probably using the first version of this asset.






I'll post some screenshots when i get the latest version running

 

Hallo Eskovas,

Wow, you did a nice job with your scene/level, looks great!

As far as i can see , the GDome ( surround.clouds) looks a bit stretched/curved, ( maybe it's just the FoV to high ).
Try to give a slight bigger radius for the GDome. And, another thing i noticed is that, probably, you're not using the latest version,
since the sourrounding clouds are from the old version ( maybe i'm wrong on it ), you can see which version you're using in the inspector or inside the EGGui ( if activated, press G at runtime ).

I'm preparing a little update note about the current dev.state. Today i'd be able to start refining the 1.4 that will include some nice improvement, the GSpheres used as Clouds look very...let's say that i'm very happy how they look like !! ).

In 1.4 the Atmospheric Scattering is going to look way better than before, with lots of possible variations, since now we can "animate" RayLeigh and Mie parameters using Curves ( i'll post some screen soon ).

see you soon.

Regards,

 

Thanks for the suggestions.
I actually updated to the latest version (it says version 1.3 r9.0414), but i guess it didn't change some things that it should have, mainly in the prefabs.
I'll completely remove the asset and re-import it again, that way the update will be clean.
Nice to see the improvements for 1.4. i'll be waiting for it

 

Hello again,
I made a clean import of the package and changed a few values, and also fixed some problems with the height of the clouds. Now everything looks much better
If you don't mind, i'll post some more images:





I did find some problems, or maybe i set up some things wrong, for example:
- Sometimes there are a few lights that are upside down and still affect the scene,
- Sometimes, lightning strikes light are upside down.
- Some transitions between night and day are strange and flick the light instantly.

Then again, maybe i set up some things wrong.

Anyway, amazing asset and i'll be waiting for future releases

Edit:
Another problem is that this asset creates some triggers around the scene and that affects the raycasting of bullets and other things that rely on raycasting.

 

Happy you was able to update to the latest version with success.
The setup process is going to be much easier with the introduction of the GSpheres and some tricks in scaling components.

I'm sorry, but i don't get it. Could you please be more precise about that.
Maybe could be the AmbientLight gradient. Try to change it at runtime ( just open the Unity's render settings panel, put the scene in pause, and modify the AmbientLight color ) . If used, ambientLight will have a huge impact on the overall lighting.
Then again, i'm not sure if that's the case.

Thats sounds strange
Do you mean that the light seems to be emitted from the ground, or?
Anyway i'll give a check, and a nice enhancement is coming over for the EGTL_System. No more "forced lightning" to light up the clouds but , instead ,the clouds's shader will react when a Thunder occurs, sounds complicated but the first tests are looking good..

Thats sounds less strange. Maybe, what you see, is the "jump" that occurs in shadows when both, TheSun and TheMoon are used as shadow casters.
In order to avoid that, you should set the intensities of the directional lights accordingly. The "strongest" light is the one that emits shadows, so try to program the 2 Curves in order to let them perform the "Switch" when shadows are not so hard/evidents. Another trick could be to set the second shadow emitter , let's say theMoon, emits very subtle shadows. This 'issue' maybe will be solved when the new Astronomic sys will be ready, but i can't say too much right now about that, since the whole thing is in development.

Thats interesting for me to know.
Which kind of issues do you had and with which elements?

Thank you!! If you have any doubt or if you need help implementing the asset inside your project,
i'll be glad to help !

i'll be back soon with details about the 1.4!

Best Regards,

 

When i said lighting upside down, i literally meant upside down, like there was a light emitting below the map

Yes, just like what happens above, lighting strikes lighting are sometimes upside down.

These are the EGAudioZone gameobjects. They have triggers and that affects the raycasting.
I think i just realized how to fix this, by putting these triggers in another layer...

thanks for the help

EDIT:
from the image i posted a few days ago:



You can see that the mesh of the building on the right is lit from below.

 

Those screenshots look awesome! I love the galaxy band in the sky. I was actually hoping to add something just like that to my skies.

 

Hello again
I fixed the problem i was having by changing the intensity of the lights.

Here's how it was before (i didn't change this part from the EGDemoFinal_Prefab):



This is how it was. You can clearly see the light emitting from the ground. This light is being emitted by the moon and ruins the scene lighting.
From the first image, the curve of the moon was never 0, so it was always emitting light even if it was bellow the ground.

Now here's with the curves fixed:



Now the moon has 0 influence during the day and the sun no longer affects the scene when it's "below" water. I still have some values to tweek but overall looks way better.

You should probably fix this part of the asset, so everything looks better

PS: Sorry if i'm flooding your thread with too many images but images are better to explain these things.

 

eskovas, check your PMs

@Karlbovsky:

How suited is environment gator to large outdoor terrains? Would it be easy to use environment gator with a large seamless world?

 

Yeah, i'm super happy to ear it!!
Actually the Light in the first screenshot was way to strong!!
I've left a bit of light from theMoon in order to have a sort of rim light, but this can be easily avoided ,
as you correctly did, using Curves.

No problem mate, your game looks great!! It's a pleasure to see it !

I don't know if i can answer to your question with a ,yes or no!! The question here is huge.
I've tested the component in big/huge environments and it works, but i'm talking of a single-huge chunk of terrain.
Could you please tell me more about your project?
How do you planned to move your cam/player inside the seamless world?
I mean, are you going to move the player or the world, or ?


I'm going to have some tests, tomorrow , on the new 1.4!!
If i'll have time i'll post something during the evening, after the test.
So excited to show you something !!

Best Regards,

 

Looking forwards to this. Finally FINALLY got to the point where I could put this to work, just playing with the various many settings, will be doing all night/morning and then some thinking! (Maybe while I make some nice new, maybe strange 'static' type (the images) clouds in Vue)

The thinking being, how to get this working with with an IBL PBR shader setup - Basically how to capture and convolve a cubemap of the environment for use in realtime. Apparently I might not be able to do this until Unity 5 but if it's possible to carry out the operation on a compute shader over however many frames and blend between the convolved textures periodically then i'm fine with a directx11 only solution until myself and a programmer friend can find a more general solution. Programmer friend randomly introduced me to trying to mess with compute shaders recently, they're a lot less scary than I thought they were going to be, just need to find out what the actual algorithm is for the convolution and if it can take advantage of compute shaders. If I ever figure this out there will be pics, it's going to look rather good!

 

If you use Lux ( http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/235027-Lux-an-open-source-physically-based-shading-framework ) it has an Environment Probe that will automatically capture and convolve an IBL Cubemap. You can put that in your scene, capture a few maps at different-looking times of day in Environment Gator (sunrise, noon, sunset, night) and then swap between them at runtime. I got it working using purposefully blurry IBL cubes as ambient light while keeping the normal directional light for the main sun and shadows. But if you wanted correct-looking non-blurry specular reflections, you'd need to be constantly re-rendering the cube maps to keep up with the moving sun, clouds, and weather changes... I don't know if there's a good way to do that without killing your framerate. That's why most IBL uses a static sky and environment.

 

I'm aware of all that, don't worry. I use both Lux and Skyshop and am familiar with their tools, and have been doing a lot of research into finding ways of doing it very quickly. By very quickly I still mean it'll take over a second, possibly a few, but for outdoor scenes it doesn't need to be perfect and can blend between over time, the trick is how to do it quickly, hence parallelisation on a gpu using something like CUDA, OpenCL or the already implemented DirectCompute in Unity. A well known serial approach to the convolution is here http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter10.html but i'm sure there are better, more recent approaches

I've considered grabbing maps offline for various conditions but i find the idea very inelegant and not very useful to others. If I can find a way that could be useful to everyone i'd be a bit more satisfied

 

Well if you do figure something out, I'd be very interested to hear about it.

 

I read something or other about Unity 5 having dynamic cubemaps as standard - this seems natural as their shading will be PBR from then on (I presume there are legacy options too), but Unity 5 is a few months away and they might do their typical thing of restricting the API and I definitely cant wait until then to get Lux/Skyshop working nicely with this, so yes i'll let you know! If the skyshop guys provide the source for their soon upcoming gpu filter and don't mind, i might be able to turn it from editor only to use at runtime with some obvious caveats