☁ Weather Maker ☁ AAA Clouds, Sky, Weather, Water, Volumetric Light & More!

Updated to the recent version and it's throwing missing script warnings on Clouds2D. From what I can see it's because the attached script file no longer matches the classes actual name because "Legacy" was inserted into it.

I'd also like to echo the desire to please decouple more of the various sub systems as I don't need all of them. For example, I'm just using rain and the lightning in a 2D project.

To other devs, I'd also recommend breaking the prefab instance once you've added the weather maker prefab into the scene as updating caused me to lose a lot of tweaks I had to make to the particle systems underneath for things like sort order.

I also noticed that setting CollisionMask under 2D Settings in the RainPrefab2D prefab is not preserved at all. I set it to my desired layer but it immediately overwrites back to "Everything" the moment I start up my scene.

 

@jjxtra Plzzz

 

Hi @jjxtra -- am wondering about the darkness of shadows from the sun. My shadows are much darker in the editor and go quite light once the weather system kicks in. I've got shadows on the WeatherMakerPrefab > Suns > Light Base Shadow at 1 already, however it still seems a tad light on the shadows. How I can I adjust?

 

How many directional lights are in the scene? Do all shadows disappear if you disable the sun object?

 

@jixtra, chiming in: any way to use volumetric lights without fog?

 

Not currently. How would you want it to work? Would you want a noise texture and all the same parameters or is there a limited subset that doesn't have all the fog stuff?

 

Thanks for reply -- it's an interesting issue. The cloud cover affects the shadow strength which makes sense for outside areas. However I also have a train and road tunnel in my current scene and so the shadows inside the tunnels also get affected and look weird (too light) when there are clouds and the shadows lighten / weaken.

 

Are the shadows inside the tunnel cast from the sun or another light source?

 

It's basically Terrain (bottom) > Tunnel > Mesh Tunnel Blend to terrain. So the Mesh Tunnel Blend to terrain is casting shadows from the sun source which looks great when it's dark. I'm just search other solutions on the web as well.

 

Allright. If there is a bug in Weather Maker I'd like to fix it, but it sounds like this may be something else. Hard to know. Maybe you could email me (support@digitalruby.com) and we could continue the discussion there?

 

I don't think this is a bug in your system to be honest, I think it's by design and I'll just have to find a way around it... to get the tunnel shadows another way. So I'll look into it further and get back to you with my eventual findings. Thanks man!

 

Ok no worries. Maybe a separate spotlight pointing in the same direction as the sun?

 

Whichever ones looks pretty and fast (and easier to implement)

Got couple of suggestions:
1) a manager item for WeatherMakerCloud only (we have rain and snow);
currently I have created such an object - but I can't add it to prefab at runtime as the script depends on weatherMaker itself; So I have to overwrite your prefab and remember to do it on every update.

2) Allowing profile to be more like manager (where it can change at-least clouds), or maybe a manager scriptable holding profiles.

2) A way to identify WeatherManager item; maybe a enum (+name) field? Without that, I have to hard-code that Snow is index 1, and if you were to change the ordering ever, I would need to change my code as well.

 

Just tried your asset. After a few minutes the skybox goes black, and the sun/moon is gone.

Known issue?

 

I haven't heard of this issue. Do you have a demo scene you could send me showing the problem? support@digitalruby.com

 

1] I am working on cloud profiles, they will work the same as weather profiles.
2] The weather profile is getting a cloud profile which will replace the cloud properties and allow complete customization.
3] That's a little trickier because someone might make multiple managers and change the order. I don't want an enum that forces rain to be 0 and snow to be 1, but you are welcome to define such constants yourself.

Let me know if you have more questions.

 

@jjxtra, how would you suggest scene/level would set a weather manager without magic index of 0 for rain, 1 for snow?

PS: Wouldn't an enum solve the problem of multiple managers and order; also the enum can have custom = 255

problem with me defining the constant is possibility of perfab changing order from your end.

Looking forward to new cloud profiles.

 

I'll look into adding a unique key to each weather manager. That will be better than indexing into an array anyway.

 

That would work. How do we have our own manager without messing with main prefab.

 

At runtime you can assign the weather managers however you like. So in the start function of one of your scripts, simply set the weather manager property to a new list.

 

I don't think I can in my current setup. Maybe something gets changed in prefab while running (I guess it's the time of day), but whatever the reason is, if I have weathermaker prefab in my scene, actual file size of my scene increases by the file size of wm prefab. For that reason, I have a reference and instantiate wm at runtime.

Now manager have strong link to weathermaker. What I mean by that is, in my scene view, I drag wm prefab, duplicate a manager, drag it outside wm prefab: at this point if I remove wm prefab from my scene, manager loses reference and all values disappear.

My original idea was to create manager prefabs and load at runtime to update list; but with time constraints, instead of investigating, I cheated and made a copy of wm prefab to edit. I don't like that, as now I've to remember to update my copy on every wm update.

 

We'll keep working this out via email.

 

Just as an FYI I've tried to make the prefab more tolerable to deactivating objects. So you *should* be able to deactivate the stuff you don't want to use, such as clouds or sky sphere, etc. and the system should still function. You have to at a minimum keep weather maker script active and set the sun object, as pretty much all the effects require the sun object to light properly.

 

Quick question:

I am trying to do fog on water, Aquas, but nothing seems to work at the water level. When you look on the water the fog does not show up. I have a ship on the water, the ship has fog, but the Aquas water does not show any fog.

Can you clarify how your Aquas integration works? I can't find a tutorial on this or any step by step directions to make fog on water work. It would be great to have some swamp fog, but I am forced to turn all fog off if there is any water in the scene as it breaks the immersion.

Thanks!
David

 

I believe it’s in the readme at the bottom. You have to define a pre processor AQUAS_WATER_PRESENT

 

I'll see if I can figure it out.

No chance of a demonstration?

 

I don’t have a demo setup. I have influenza but should be back to give better answers next week hopefully.

 

Sorry to hear that.

Get some rest and take your medicine.

Hope you feel better soon!

 

Yes sorry to hear you are ill.. I hate being sick .,.,.

I had the same problem with Aquas and saw the read me, but it does not say where you
put it ? Maybe a few 2 - 3 mins videos would be helpful, with common questions that you get.

I had the same question for Aquas so its a +1 , when your feeling better....

keep warm ..

 

Sounds like I need an AQUAS demo video. I'll try making one later this week. Still laid up in bed...

 

hopeful you get better soon hombre, drink plenty of water

 

hey there
first of all sorry to hear about your ill jeff hope youl better soon...
second many thanks for the great plugin
and finally i have a question
and that is can we use weather maker 2d prefab in perspective mode too?
i have a scene in perspective mode and it seems weather maker doesn't work on it
is there any thing i missed in setup?

 

The 2d prefab is not officially supported in 3D mode as much of the code has a special path for orthographic mode. Can you tell me where the 3D prefab is failing you in perspective mode? Are you looking for a different kind of effect that is not built in?

 

Hi @jjxtra -- back to the shadow thing we discussed previously, with the cloud cover directly affecting the shadow strength. How difficult would it be to expose a variable, i.e. a multiplier for the shadow strength? So even if the clouds were say medium... you could still adjust the multiplier to get stronger shadows?

 

Sure thing, I will add something to allow greater control over cloud shadow strength in the next update.

 

Thanks man, you rock!

 

Oh wait, no need to wait for me. Insert your own multiplier into this dictionary:

WeatherMakerScript.Instance.DayNightScript.DirectionalLightShadowIntensityMultipliers.

You'll need to write a bit of script. If you don't know how or don't want to, I can look at adding some parameters to control how the shadow strength reduces as clouds get thicker.

 

Thanks for the tip, I will take a look at this later today!

 

In the discussion on your asset store page it states Weather Maker requires Unity 5.6.3, but at the bottom it says WM requires the latest version for best results. I use Unity 5.6.3. What is the difference in results? Is my version of Unity still the lowest supported? Will it remain supported for the foreseeable future?

 

Jeff,

I just updated and I am getting some errors.

Assets/WeatherMaker/Prefab/Scripts/Extensions/WeatherMakerExtensionAquasScript.cs(65,109): error CS1061: Type `DigitalRuby.WeatherMaker.WeatherMakerFullScreenCloudsScript' does not contain a definition for `CloudCover' and no extension method `CloudCover' of type `DigitalRuby.WeatherMaker.WeatherMakerFullScreenCloudsScript' could be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

and

Assets/WeatherMaker/Prefab/Scripts/Extensions/WeatherMakerExtensionAquasScript.cs(67,113): error CS1061: Type `DigitalRuby.WeatherMaker.WeatherMakerFullScreenCloudsScript' does not contain a definition for `CloudCover' and no extension method `CloudCover' of type `DigitalRuby.WeatherMaker.WeatherMakerFullScreenCloudsScript' could be found. Are you missing an assembly reference?

What do I need to do to fix this one?

 

I emailed Jeff and got the fix. He is going to update it.

Here is the fix, if you need it. It fixed my script.

From Jeff:
"In the meantime. you need to prefix CloudCover with CloudProfile in those files."

Looking forward to trying out the new features!

 

Finally got that AQUAS tutorial made. Here it is!

 

I'm planning on supporting 5.6.3 for at least another year.

 

Hi all,

I'd love feedback on this full screen snow effect I've been working on. The nice thing is that it will be profile based, so other types of effects (dust/sand, decay, lava, etc.) will also be possible.

 

I like the effect!
I really like the work you put into your asset, looking forward to trying it out.
Also, the other effects (dust/sand, decay, lava, etc.) are very intriguing.

 

You are very welcome. Finally got this sent off to Unity. Working on a wetness overlay now!

 

Some eye candy with Viking Village using fog and full screen snow. It's been fun working on this, and I have more overlays planned for the future, such as wetness and making this a material you can apply to any mesh renderer.

 

Hi! I have a couple of questions and suggestions here, our studio is planning to buy your asset, but before I would like to ask some questions:


with the technique you are using it is intrinsically additively expensive to add lights in the scene? is there room for optimization or switching to a technique that doesnt get exponentially expensive with each light so we can handle dozens of lights easily (maybe between 20 and 100)? do you have in your roadmap adding shadows to the volumetric lights?

do spot light volumetrics take in account the light cookies?

and lastly I have a suggestion to improve the quality of your asset from an UX point of view, maybe you should implement custom editors for your tools, for example for the the clouds system, instead of having each field four times for each cloud layer, you could have kind of folding tabs for each layer and a better distribution of the adjustable parameters, each with floating tooltips for ease of use and learn, also things that you mention in your videos, like increasing "fog directional light scattering" parameter at minute 6:30 in the video "Weather Maker for Unity - Volumetric Lighting with Directional, Spot and Point Lights", when you mention increasing that parameter can make the effect more expensive, those things should be warned by the editor of your tool automatically, example: if value of field exceeds X number, then show warning "this parameter can cause performance hiccups when set too high, use it wisely".

because otherwise people that doesn't go through all your videos and have good memory have to guess which values doesn't affect the overall performance when modyfied and which ones does.

cheers!

EDIT: I forgot to ask if there is something like a substractor prefab where you can substract volumetric fog from a specific volume like you have prefabs to add fog to a sphere or a box, but instead remove, so you can have open areas with fog but inside of houses without fog for example.

EDIT 2: We use the Unity's Post Processing Stack v2, is this asset compatible with it out of the box?

 

Hi! I have a couple of questions and suggestions here, our studio is planning to buy your asset, but before I would like to ask some questions:

with the technique you are using it is intrinsically additively expensive to add lights in the scene? is there room for optimization or switching to a technique that doesnt get exponentially expensive with each light so we can handle dozens of lights easily (maybe between 20 and 100)? do you have in your roadmap adding shadows to the volumetric lights?

- I only process visible lights. If you have 1000 lights in your scene but only 20 intersect the visible frustum, only 20 are processed in the shader. If 1000 intersect the frustum, then 1000 will be processed in the shader. For each pixel, a fast bounding intersect will reject lights that don't apply to the pixel. Point lights are extremely fast to reject, spot lights are fast to reject as well, but not as fast as point lights.

- Volumetric shadows for point/spot lights is something I have considered, I will likely use texture arrays for each shadow map to do this so I can still do everything in one draw call. I could just bring in slightly mad volumetric lights from github like other assets such as enviro did, but I don't want to kill the performance which that set of code will do, especially on VR and mobile. So this work will likely be done custom by me, tuned for performance first.

do spot light volumetrics take in account the light cookies?

- Currently no, although I could add this to the roadmap, probably part of the effort to do the point/spot volumetric shadows.

and lastly I have a suggestion to improve the quality of your asset from an UX point of view, maybe you should implement custom editors for your tools, for example for the the clouds system, instead of having each field four times for each cloud layer, you could have kind of folding tabs for each layer and a better distribution of the adjustable parameters, each with floating tooltips for ease of use and learn, also things that you mention in your videos, like increasing "fog directional light scattering" parameter at minute 6:30 in the video "Weather Maker for Unity - Volumetric Lighting with Directional, Spot and Point Lights", when you mention increasing that parameter can make the effect more expensive, those things should be warned by the editor of your tool automatically, example: if value of field exceeds X number, then show warning "this parameter can cause performance hiccups when set too high, use it wisely".

- I'm actually going to refactor the cloud profile layers into separate cloud layer profiles, so a cloud profile will have 4 layer profiles that can be edited separately. This will be done in a future update. This way you can mix and match cloud layers easily. This should also simplify the UI as you can edit each layer separately without seeing all the other layers.

because otherwise people that doesn't go through all your videos and have good memory have to guess which values doesn't affect the overall performance when modyfied and which ones does.

cheers!

EDIT: I forgot to ask if there is something like a substractor prefab where you can substract volumetric fog from a specific volume like you have prefabs to add fog to a sphere or a box, but instead remove, so you can have open areas with fog but inside of houses without fog for example.

- There is a null fog zone prefab. Up to 8 visible null fog zones are supported, and unlimited number in the whole scene. These should not intersect if at all possible.

EDIT 2: We use the Unity's Post Processing Stack v2, is this asset compatible with it out of the box?

- Yes should be fine. If you are using neutral or filmic color correction, the light scattering in the clouds and star twinkling will be greatly reduced, just something to be aware of.

I offer a two week money back guarantee. I try my very best to resolve problems and issues as fast as possible, but if I can't I refund the purchase. It's thanksgiving week in the U.S. here so things will be slightly slower this week as I'll be out several days.

Thanks so much for your post and taking the time to leave feedback. I am definitely not a designer and artist, that is my biggest weakness.

 

Weather Maker 3.1.0 is out and is ready for winter! https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60955?aid=1011lGnL