[RELEASED] trueSKY Alpha for Unity Pro - Volumetric Skies, Clouds, and Time-of-Day

@rvkennedy (or anyone else!) I've followed this tutorial: https://docs.simul.co/unity/Tutorial.html to try and unlink the time of day from sun positioning. So far Ive:

- Set trueSky's Speed to 0
- Link Keyframe time and daytime is unchecked
- Unchecked "Auto Sun Position"

While my time of day is advancing using the below code, I can't get the sun elevation or azimuth to change independantly. It acts as if the time and sun position are still linked/changing automatically:

void Update()
{
ts.SetSkyFloat("SunElevation", -1.57f);
ts.SetSkyFloat("SunAzimuth", -3.14159f);
ts.time += 0.1f * Time.deltaTime;
}

I've exposed the sun elevation and azimuth vars to mess with them in the inspector in real-time as well, but changing them does nothing while the sun continues to automatically move around.

 

Greetings friends! I've just begun experimenting with TrueSky, and have a few questions.

* I'm developing on an i7 machine with a GTX 1070, fast ssd, and 16GB of ram running Windows 10 Pro and Unity 5.6. After importing TrueSky in my project, it now takes 5 - 7 seconds to enter play mode for any scene (including non-TrueSky scenes). Removing TrueSky from my project drops playmode entry time for the average scene to < 3 seconds. In my project, the Sky Sequencer window takes several seconds to open and changing any sky or cloud property inside it causes the editor to freeze for 2-5 seconds whether or not playmode is active. Any thoughts on what might be happening here, or integration adjustments I could make to help updates apply faster?

* Am I correct in understanding that Windows and PS4 are the only supported platforms now and for the foreseeable future? The online documentation mentions OpenGL in several areas, but the source of the latest Unity lib has build capacity only for DX9-11 platforms.

* Can anyone share a sequencer profile with me to demonstrate properly-implemented storms and sharp looking god rays? Hours of experiments derived from provided sample profiles have yielded only smudgy haze and random lightning from dry skies.

* What is the sequencer's "Map" tab supposed to do? For me, it is rendering an empty grid and displaying several "Find Camera" "Mask Mode" "+" and "Delete" buttons which do nothing when clicked.

* Regardless of what settings I use, timelapse-style accelerated time speeds look fantastic in the Unity Editor with dynamic clouds boiling across the sky, and dull in published builds with non-animated clouds sliding across the sky. Has anyone seen this before, and possibly know a fix?

* On the subject of editor/build discrepancies, galaxy and star textures are invisible during the night in my published builds even though they look great in the editor.

* Has anyone experienced vertical inversion on all 4 vertical sides of the cubemap-probe-derived Skybox texture? This is occurring for me in a freshly-created test project as well as my primary one.

 

Followup investigation on the upside-down skybox textures:

* Issue occurs on Unity 5.5, 5.6, and 2017.1 beta.
* The TrueSkyCamera component's "Flip Overlays" and "Flip View" options don't resolve this issue.
* Passing "UnityRenderOptions.FLIP_OVERLAYS" in the TrueSkyCameraCubemap.PrepareMatrices.UnitySetRenderFrameValues() call doesn't resolve this issue.
* Manipulating TrueSkyCameraCubemap.PrepareMatrices.targetViewport[0].h comes close to solving the issue, but I have only managed to distort the cubemap walls rather than flipping them right side up.
* Replacing TrueSkyCameraCubemap.PrepareMatrices "_deferredShader=Resources.Load("DeferredDepthShader"" with "FlippedDepthShader" also doesn't quite work but feels like it is on the right track.
* Something similar came up with TrueSky last year, but this appears to be a different case exhibiting similar symptoms: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/r...ds-and-time-of-day.262439/page-8#post-2463668

Background reading:
* https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-PlatformDifferences.html
* http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/8092/anti-aliasing-causes-post-processing-effects-to-fl.html
* https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ncies-with-commandbuffer-in-forward-rendering

 

Shout-out to Piluve on the Simul slack channel, who has worked with me for the past few days to address the issues I describe above. TrueSky Unity builds after today's date now include fixes for the inverted skybox, missing textures, and static clouds.

 

@Aubrey-Falconer Thanks! Just let me know any problems with the plugin.

 

Hello, everyone!
I am using
Post Processing Stack and having some issue with bloom and TrueSky sun.
If bloom is enabled and radius is bigger then 1 the sun is too large. If radius is 1 the sun looks pixelated. Take a look at images attached please. P.S. i would rather disable bloom effect for sun or would be nice to have sun bloom effect slider for control ?

unity 5.6.1p4 trueSky 4.1.399 (21 Jun)

 

Hi @Konst , I'll download the post-processing pack and give it a try.

 

I'm having the same issue as you with the bloom effect, the thing is, that those effects (the postprocessing stack) its being done after the trueSky rendering (so there isnt a direct relation with it). However I have to update the trueSky.cs with a Sun intensity modifier and see if it helps with the bloom effect.

 

Or you can have Truesky integrate correctly with V2 stack. As V1 and V2 are official unity post, it makes sense in 100% playing ball with them. Do you need a contact at Unity?

V2 opens it up a bit futher so you can probably have an option to inject truesky at a particular point.

 

Hi, thanks for pointing that out, its true that at some point, it will be great to make ts fully compatible with the effects stack.

 

Also please research SRP - scriptable render pipeline as this will go live in 2017 and be the main way alongside V2 stack, that people will want to be able to inject 3rd party rendering or control what gets done in which order and so on.

 

Is there a workaround for the precipitation?

 

Somebody beat me to the Post Processing stack question. I have the same issue, so I'll mention my other problem.

Is there a way to get TrueSky to work with transparent particles? I notice that particles draw on top of the clouds no matter what. This is a deal breaker for me if there isn't.



Testing is straightforward. Simply put a particle effect on the ground, move the camera above the clouds, and then look down at the particle effect through the clouds. The above screenshot is from the included demo scene.

Here's a video of it in motion.

 

Scriptable pipelines will be an important thing to look at and we will check it once its released.

We have been working on the precipitation system this week, I'll check how is it going.

Thanks for the info, I'll check it!

 

Thanks. To clarify, this isn't unique to particles, but seems to be anything using a transparent shader. There's a piece of geometry (it's a part of the demo scene actually) that uses a transparent shader and you can see it visible next to the green smoke through the clouds.

 

Yes, it is happening for me with anything with transparency, we have to check whats going on with the transparencies render pass. Thanks for the info.

 

Great news, thank you!

 

Seems like the new version .420 and higher are broken. I can't import these new versions, Unity crashes during the import. I tested it with Unity 5.6.0 und 5.6.1 with the same result. 418 is the last working version for me.

 

Yeah sorry about that, versions > 418 are crashing. We are working on a fix for that.

 

Thank you!

 

Hi!

The version .428 is working properly.

• Re-introduced the rain, we would like to hear how the new system performs. @Bartolomeus755
• Fixed transparencies. The custom transparent shader is now working, it still needs some tweaks for the loss and inscatter. @Why485
• Added more parameters to the trueSKY editor. Also now the properties are under categories.
• Building for WSA is now a thing (tested on Windows10 x64)

Thanks.

 

Hi nachosimul,

the new version works great. No problem during the import and also the rain works! Thank your hard work on this amazing asset.





Only the snow does not work for me. And is there a solution to stop the rain inside buildings and vehicles?

 

Nice to see that is working fine .The snow is getting updated too.
I will check if there is a way to remove the rain while under cover

 

I'm experiencing an odd bug

This happened in both the newest and second newest update (havn't checked earlier versions)
I first experienced it in my game project, but then created an entirely new and clean project, with the same result

 

@nachosimul while participation is being worked on any chance of getting audio for thunder linked into lightning effects.
Also maybe hooks for wind/rain effects too

 

I set up the scene manually, and the new version actually fixed pretty much all bugs I had, there's still some tiny issues with mountains vs horizon at incredibly far distances though.
That said, this looks absolutely gorgeous!

 

Has anyone had any luck making clouds render on top of AQUAS ocean/river system? I'm looking at the guide for CETO, but the tips there don't work for AQUAS.
Rather at Transparent-499 the water renders on top of the clouds at Transparet-500 the water does indeed render beneath the clouds, but it 'breaks' the water, as you can see:

 

Looks like clouds are not rendering over the water in that image only against solid gometery.

 

Are you getting that error with the setup wizard?

Hi! The sound system is already in UE4 so I'll add it to my To-Do list.

Looking good! The issues that you have at far distances may be caused by the depth buffer precision. You should try to keep your near plane as far from the camera as possible.

 

Rendering transparent objects in trueSKY is handled by a custom shader, that being said, I don't know how the AQUAS shader works and what kind of information it needs from the scene, to update your water shader take a look at the "TransparencyTestShader" under Simul/Resources.

 

Yes with the setup wizard, however if I set it up on my own truesky still works (as seen in the image)

Ok, I'll do that

I'll look into that, thanks

 

Can I ask you if you computer is in an Asian language? Thanks.

 

Nope, it's in Nordic (Danish to be exact), also it worked with the earlier version I used.

 

I've stared at the water shader and the transparency test shader some, and I must admit it's beyond my capabilities.
However I'm thinking that if you give me permission to share the TransparencyTestShader.shader file with the creator of AQUAS then perhaps he'll be able to build in native support, or at least let me know what exactly to edi.

 

Alright thanks for that info.

Sure you can show him the shader ! If you have any questions about that,please let me know,

 

In the next build it should be resolved.
Thanks.

 

Excellent, I'll give him the file and cross my fingers, thanks

 

Hey all! Does anyone have experience using trueSKY Alpha with water systems in Unity?

I'm currently using AQUAS in this project because I happened to already have it on hand, and while it looks nice it doesn't play well with trueSKY. I might be able to update it myself, but if there's something out there that already works nicely I'm inclined to just grab that instead.

Long term I might have to create my own as nothing available seems to meet all of my needs, but short term I'm looking at Hydroform or Playway Water. If anyone's had a positive experience with one of those while using trueSKY I'd love to hear about it!

 

I wrote to the maker of AQUAS the other day with that exact issue and sent along the TransparencyTestShader.shader which as the name suggests is a transparent shader, which works with TrueSky, hopefully that will bear fruit.
If you manage to fix it please let me know

 

I'm quite happy with PlayWay Water along with trueSKY. I think it's not perfect water solution, but the Beta Version 2 works really good so far.

 

Since version 4.1.485 (21 Jul) Cant import trueSky into new project... Also there is a big file size difference after that version. Unity 2017.1.0f3 (64-bit)

 

Hi Konst, you should stick to earlier builds, we are having some networking issues with the build server and it's making invalid builds. Sorry for any inconvenience.

 

The build server is working again, please let me know any issues with the latest versions.

 

Hi, no I have a black sky with the last to builds in Unity 2017.1. Build 484 is the last version which works ok for me.

 

I didn't see an answer about masking things under cover

 

- trueSKYAlpha-Unity5.6-4.1.504-Win32_x64.unitypackage
- Unity 2017.1.0f3 (64-bit)

 

Hi @Konst and @Bartolomeus755, yesterday I downloaded the plugin and had that issue, I played around with the scene and it started to work, Are you able to reproduce that behaviour? It's actually a weird thing because if you look closely the clouds are there blending with the terrain but the atmosphere is missing and clouds are black. I need to check what is going on there.

@hippocoder I though I mentioned it. We are working on that.

Thanks guys and sorry for any inconveniences.

 

Yes, it's the same with version 505 and also after restarting Unity.

 

I think I found the problem, I'll do some more testing and will upload the fix latter.

 

@Konst, @Bartolomeus755 The version 510 solves the problem, please let me know if there are more issues.
Thanks.