[Released] True Clouds - volumetric clouds for Mobiles & PC

Unfortunately, SRP's are not supported. If you have already bought the asset and you would like a refund, please send me your invoice ID at mischapanin@gmail.com

 

Hey marserMD, a few questions -

Is it possible to have the mesh used by true clouds to render to the depth buffer? I'm experiencing an issue where all particles show through the True Cloud gameobjects in the scene. I see this too when using True Clouds in conjunction with Volumetic Clouds by Eideren (I'm using True Clouds as a smoke effect with Volumetric Clouds as the sky solution).

Also, I'm noticing a notable downgrade in the quality of obscurance when pressing play in the editor. I.e. - All scenery in front of a True Cloud game object has a nice, high-res boarder where the scenery occludes the True Cloud. In play mode, this boarder becomes noticeably aliased. I have the CloudCamera3D script set to the highest render values. Can I quickly tune some internal parameters to fix this?

One final request - is it possible to use True Clouds with Aura 2? Right now True Clouds render in front of or totally obscured by the Aura 2's volumetric lighting, depending on the shader render settings.

Thanks for your help!

EDIT:

Messing around with the CloudCamera3D script, I commented out the ImageEffectOpaque attribute above the OnRenderImage method. This placed all of the non-occluded particles & volumetric clouds behind the True Clouds game object, but said effects are always rendered behind the True Clouds objects, regardless if they are in front or behind it.

 

Hi! I can't seem to get tinting to work on mobile (iOS); It looks good in editor, but on device, the object with the tinting shader is magenta. Is it supposed to work?

Maybe I'm doing it wrong though. I just left the clouds as they were untinted, and placed a largely stretched out cube above them, and gave it the tint material. Is that the way to do it?

 

Hi!
That's rather strange. You use the tint correctly, although you don't need it if you want to tint all the clouds, you can just change the light/shadow color. Do you mind reimporting the asset?

If it still doesn't work, please do send me an e-mail with the logs from your device.

 

Oh yeah, thanks! I think just the light and shadow color is actually what I want, I missed that. I'm gonna test the tinting again after reimporting anyway. Thanks for the asset btw, I'm enjoying it

 

I've got another question; the shadow color is working well, but I'm wondering if there's a way to get rid of that gap around the screen edges? The gap get's smaller when I reduce the blur values, but does still not go away (and obviously it looks better with blur). See my screenshot at the left and bottom edge (I'm trying to use TrueClouds as a Fog Of War for locked areas)

 

Yes, there is! I am terribly sorry for answering so slowly, for some reason I don't receive notifications from this thread anymore. If you need some further help, please do e-mail me at mischapanin@gmail.com

Here is the solution to the edge bleeding problem:
1) Replace TrueClouds/Resouces/Shaders/ClearColor.shader with the attached file.
2) Play around with the last float in line 32. (0.85 works pretty good):

I'm not distributing it with True Clouds because It's not supported by some platforms and therefore I most likely will change the way I approach edge fading.
And I would have to support multiple approaches for the same problem for the sake of backward compatibility, thus making the interface less intuitive.

On most devices, it will work, except for rare cases in Android world. And on devices where it doesn't work, it won't break too awfully.

 

Hi @marserMD .

I really like how my tornado is being rendered with your Camera effect. However, there is just one crucial thing that I really wish you can help me with.

I have this mesh:


It really works well and renders it as it should be. I'm using some noise and I like the result.

As you can see, I'm using the wind parameters and adding a value to the Z will make it look like it's rotating, but only at a given angle. I would like the clouds to look like it's always moving to the right as it goes up.

To me it feels like the Wind values are in world space, and maybe making it local space would always move in the same direction? Or do you have any other idea to make it look like it's rotating?

Thanks so much, really hope there is a solution!!

 

Hi!

Instead of having the wind in camera space (which would probably look quite wierd), I suggest you to have the wind to be perpendicular to the camera-tornado vector. You can do that by writing a simple script along the lines of:

Code (CSharp):

1. [RequiresComponent(typeof(CloudCamera3D))]
2. public class PerpendicularWindUpdater: MonoBehaviour
3. {
4.     // Assign tornado's transform to this variable in the inspector
5.     public Transform target;
6.  
7.     // Change the wind power in the inspector
8.     public float WindPower = 10;
9.  
10.     private CloudCamera3D _cloudCamera;
11.  
12.     private void Awake()
13.     {
14.         _cloudCamera = GetComponent<CloudCamera3D>();
15.     }
16.  
17.     private void Update()
18.     {
19.         // calculate the vector from camera to the tornado
20.         Vector3 delta = target.position - transform.position;
21.         // make it horizontal
22.         delta.y = 0;
23.      
24.         Vector3 perpendicular = Vector3.Cross(delta, Vector3.up).normalized;
25.         _cloudCamera.Wind = WindPower * perpendicular;
26.     }
27. }

I have not run this code, but it should do the work.

 

that worked quite well!!!

I added an option to keep upward motion by simply doing this:

Code (CSharp):

1. using TrueClouds;
2.  
3. [RequireComponent(typeof(CloudCamera3D))]
4. public class PerpendicularWindUpdater : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     // Assign tornado's transform to this variable in the inspector
7.     public Transform target;
8.  
9.     // Change the wind power in the inspector
10.     public float WindPower = 10;
11.     public Vector3 additionalWind = new Vector3(0, 1, 0);
12.  
13.     private CloudCamera3D _cloudCamera;
14.  
15.     private void Awake()
16.     {
17.         _cloudCamera = GetComponent<CloudCamera3D>();
18.     }
19.  
20.     private void Update()
21.     {
22.         // calculate the vector from camera to the tornado
23.         Vector3 delta = target.position - transform.position;
24.         // make it horizontal
25.         delta.y = 0;
26.  
27.         Vector3 perpendicular = Vector3.Cross(delta, Vector3.up).normalized;
28.  
29.         Vector3 preWind = WindPower * perpendicular;
30.         preWind += additionalWind;
31.         _cloudCamera.Wind = preWind;
32.     }
33. }

Thank you so much!

 

Hi again,

I'd like to add a simple dissolve effect to the mesh that controls the effect. Would it be possible to add that kind of effect to the "normal" shader?
https://www.febucci.com/2018/09/dissolve-shader/

Thanks for your help!

 

Hi,

I just tried more extensively, and it doesn't work as expected. When moving the camera, the noise repositions very quickly and creates an unwanted effect. is there an other way of faking rotation? Here's how it looks like with a simple cylinder scaled up.

 

Huh. I'd have to think about it for a bit.
There sertainly is a way, but it would require modifying the rendering shader (instead of using x-z coordinates to sample the noize, we'd have to use the rotation angle and radius, relative to the center of the tornado)

Regarding the dissolvment: The "dissolvment", as in "changing the cutout threshold" would unlikely lead to a pleasant visual effect. The clouds effect looks best on a continious mesh, without any holes.
What I used when creating fire effect/smoke at the locomotive demo was creating a particle system, that spawns spheres. And decreasing the size of those spheres leads to a steady dissolving effect.

 

Yeah. However, using particles won't let us change the shape and the bending of the tornado as easily as with a mesh with bones.

I'd really love it if you came out with a solution for this rotation effect. I'd pay for it.

Cheers

 

Hi, this looks perfect for my project apart from one vital feature and that’s rendering from inside the cloud so you can fly through them. I understand it’s been asked a few times already and you have said it is unlikely that you will add that feature but is it something that could even be implemented or are you unlikely to add because of the way it has been developed makes it difficult?

 

That's highly unlikely due to the way the plugin works. As I said, the best you can do is turn off the cloud when the camera enters it

 

I see, could there not be some sort of full screen shader that imitates being in the cloud which then fades out once passed through?

 

Hi, what actually currently happens when you do fly through a cloud?

Would there be a way to even have some sort of overlay that fades the screen white when flying through? Without buying I’m unsure of what’s possible.

Thanks

 

It's a screen space effect, cloud are rendered on a texture then combined with the visual using blending with depth as mask, you can't fly through because it's not in the scene.

Because cloud are actually hollow mesh to which distorsion filter has been aplied to make them cloudy, there is no interior to fly in.

Most aaa cloud are very expensive effect with volumetric noise, this is a fake out, you can't fly through it, it's a painting, it's why there is artifact when cloud get cut by the edge of the screen.

I'm simplifying but those are too many reason for you to continue asking for fly through. Do stop asking.

 

Yep, 100% correct

 

Hi,

this is an absolute noob-question I think, and I havn't seen anyone else with this issue, but i can't seem to put the script on my camera. It says it needs to derive from MonoBehaviour... I'm trying to add the CloudCamera3D script.

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi!
It does derive from mono behaviour

Do the sample scenes work for you?
Probably the package was not downloaded properly, please try to reinstall it.

If this keeps happening, please send me your project as an archive at mischapanin@gmail.com along with your invoice ID and I'll help you

 

Hi Marser, I just bought true clouds and wanted to know if you were still supplying people with that VR beta you offered earlier?

 

Yes, absolutely. Please send me an email at mishapanin@gmail.com with your invoice ID.

 

Hey mate, just wanted to follow up on this and see if you got my email.

 

No, I did not. And I just noticed that i managed to misspell my own email. Sorry mate, I don't know how it happened

The correct one: mischapanin@gmail.com

 

does this work on vr single-pass now?

 

Whatever happen to that?

Also all image are dead in the medium article!

I was revisiting because I was wondering if we could precalculate the initial data to a quad, then resolve that blend that quad with the scene depth. BUT the main point was to see if it could be also applied to generate the scattering texture idea from rare's imposter cloud lighting.

 

No, unfortunately it doesn't.

 

The original article didn't get too many views, so I decided it isn't worth a writing a follow-up on noise generation.
Yes, giphy decided to take down my gifs for some reason
Impostor lighting is a GREAT technique, but unfortunately, it doesn't look as well for dynamically moving/merging cloud formations. I can't think of a straightforward way to map it to TrueClouds.

 

It's an article for deep specialist, that's normal, just a few people go that far, then people share, it's a network effects. It's still massively useful for the art, as a reference. It was very popular on tig source when I shared it, popular being relatives to people interested in shader and not intimidated by code.

 

Hi, I'm using a VR rig with two cameras, one for each eye. When I run the VR, the clouds are moving around in each eye instead of staying stationary relative to the world. Mainly they are moving up and down as I look up and down. Any idea on a solution for that?

 

Hi!
Please contact me at mischapanin@gmail.com so that I can send you a VR beta of True Clouds.

Also a video/gif would be helpful to troubleshoot your issue.

 

Excuse me.
Now i use the TrueCloud in my VR project.But i watch it in Oculus Quest,The view doesn`t match in Left and Right eye.Can this TrueCloud Used into VR program?

 

Hi!
Please contact me at mischapanin@gmail.com so that I can send you a VR beta of True Clouds

 

Hi I'm interested in your asset. I need it for VR (single pass), is your beta working? Thank you

 

Unfortunately, single pass is not working

 

It looks really nice. Just checking: it does not support HDRP (being mobile friendly)?

 

Nope, it doesn't support any of the SRP's

 

Hello. I would like to use True Clouds for the Oculus Quest 2 app. Is your VR beta version suitable for this purpose?