[RELEASED] UniStorm 5.2 - AAA Volumetric Clouds, URP Support, Weather, Sky, Atmospheric Fog, & More!

I'm not a Unistorm developer, just one of the users, but I can answer some of these questions. The reason the snow shader is in a different location and is structured differently is because it is a separate plugin developed by larsbertram1; you can download it on its own from the asset store as well. Unistorm just imported it into their project.

The reason the default prefab doesn't create rain or thunder anymore is because it starts in month 1, which is January, and has a temperature of 30 or so. In the cold months, you get snow instead of rain or thunder, but only if you have the snow shader set up correctly. The "height limit" on the snow shader is how high in your scene the snow should be, so you can have it only snow on the tops of mountains for example. If this is set too high and you're not standing somewhere high up in your scene, you'll never actually see the snow. If you want to get rain and thunderstorms, set the month to 6 and the temperature to 80.

In future versions, I think it would be good to separate things out a little more and not have everything in the one giant if/else block. Each weather type should be an object with settings, and the months and temps could control what the default choices are for weather types, but you should still be able to directly set the scene to any weather type regardless of the month or temp, for those who want to ignore that. Currently, for example, if you try to set it to "butterflies" when the temperature is too low, it just does nothing and leaves the weather in a weird undefined state, which probably isn't what anyone wants.

 

Hey if you need any help I'm finally getting somewhere with this thing. I just got it to snow on the terrain...




But it accidentally turned into a blizzard lol

but yeah I've been messing with this thing for 2 days and I'm just now starting to get my head wrapped around this snow feature. As far as the terrain not staying in the "Terrain Object" spot, if that is what you mean, then you just need to drag out the "UniStormSystemv1.6" prefab for instance, drag it out of the "UniStormSystem_1.6.0" prefab (From within your Hierarchy, not your Project folder), and that will make the whole prefab a non prefab now, then you can mess with the settings and they will stay the same (as long as you are not messing with them while your game is running, in that case, when you stop your game they will go back to what they was before you started the game). If you got any questions I'll try to help. I'm using the free version of Unity though so that's the only one I can try to help with.

 

HUH ?
nothing in my plugins folder ..

"not sure it was there when we submitted the pack "

does this mean unistorm ships WITHOUT this file ?? then how do you expect it to work ...

 

Any idea when the next working update will be out?

 

With the snow issue, mine works great and imported just fine from the asset store in probably 10 different projects. The only thing I found was that the snow start height variable needs to be changed for your scene. Mine is -75 for a flat test terrain. Turn off weather and just play with the snow variables on the terrain. Once you get it nice at around .6 snow amount (full snow from unistorm i think) save your editor variables and turn weather back on..


One thing I was wondering though. Have you (BHS) tried multiple weather systems at once. I currently have a server running that is synchronizing weather, but I was thinking about making multiple weather systems for different areas of a large scale seamless world. I know this would be possible in a zoned system, but have you ever tried it in a seamless world.

In the end having different specialized areas would be interesting. Also elevation changing temperature would be nice too.

 

No it did submit with the pack, I'm not sure why you are having the problem and no one else is. I think it's an import error. Get a blank project and try importing it there to see if it works. I think the plugins folder is getting overwritten for some reason.

We're working on it. It could possibly submitted in a few days.

We haven't tried multiple weather systems at once because we haven't tested it on a server.

We will work on adding new features to the system but first we have to fix the problem that's causing Unity import errors to some.

We did think about elevation snow but then you're stuck with the same problem. Everyone's terrains are at different heights, maybe we could have a global variable that the user could set for snow height. We will have to see.

 

So the Company I am working for Bought this today for our MMO. I'm importing it into my project right now but I was wondering the folder for it says v1.5 however it has the snow stuff it looks like... Do we in fact have the older v1.5 or is it v1.6 even though the folder says 1.5?

 

Page 44, BHS says, "Unity would not let us rename the UniStorm v1.5 to 1.6 so just ignore that."

I'm guessing this is the same main topic, but yeah it's all updated to 1.6 from what I can see.

 

well i must admit my project folder is huge i will try with new project and repost ..

Thks

 

morning people well unistorm works in new project but cant get it to snow ,

the snow shader is on the terrain and i set temperature to 0 and climate to type 3 or 4

the prefab reset itself after play to 20 degrees and type 1 do i need to break the prefab to keep new settings ?

 

Yes I was stuck with that too, but it appears that you need to drag Unistorm out of the prefab. Then you can set things.

 

Since 1.6.1 I have the same problem like Mike, that the terrain doesn't stay inside the "Terrain Object" in UniStormSystem.

And is it possible to use it somehow with multiple terrains, when you need to assign ONE terrain. Thats really uncomfortable when you create a large game.

 

As I said in prev post, just drag the UniStorm Component out of the prefab, this will break the prefab, then you can actually drag it back in, if you like the tidyness of it all being in one place.

Your second question is very interesting, and I have no idea.. makes me wonder why exactly Unistorm needs to know your terrain anyway..

M

 

Yes, you have 1.6.1. Sorry about that. We tried changing the folders and it said gave us an error saying we couldn't. With 1.6.2 we're going to try and fix this too.

Snow happens in the months of 12-2 I believe make sure it's winter, try these months.

Yes, but you may have to alter the script. You also don't have to have the terrain snow. If you don't want it you can refer to the documentation exaplining how to disable it. You will still get snow on all objects with the proper shader though.


We are working on bettering UniStorm with 1.6.2 and it should be released in a fews day fixing the issues some are having. Sorry for any inconveniences.

 

Fantastic.. Cant wait!!
I have 1 request, can you give explicit instructions as to how to import a new version OVER an old one? I had alot of trouble with going from 1.5 to 6..

Or is it just best to start from scratch?

M...

 

Yeah, I don't really need the snow shader. Would it be possible to write it in the documentation for the next Update, how to setup UniStorm for more than one terrain in a scene?

 

yeah atm it seems the only way to cover multiple terrains with the system is to make the clouds scale bigger, or maybe you could attach the system to your player and as you move the system moves with you, not sure that will work though, (Haven't tested it yet) and in a multiplayer game that wouldn't work I don't think, UNLESS UniStorm system of player A is invisible to UniStorm system of player B, that may work. As far as getting it to snow on more then one terrain, it looks like you can set the "CustomTerrainScriptAtsV3Snow" to as many terrains as you want, but in the main UniStorm system it only has one spot for one terrain, in the "Terrain Object" field, so it would be a good idea to change that to allow someone to put in a number for instance, and then if they have how many ever terrains, they just put in the number and that amount of fields will open up to allow someone to drop all their different terrains in them, but this only seems to be needed if you want snow on more then one terrain I think?... but it would be great to have.

Do you think you can set it up to do that, or have an easy set up for those wanting to make multiple terrains stitched together, to all have a storm system? (that can even allow snow on multiple terrains if that is not already available, which it seems it is not, although I haven't tested it, just going by only being able to see that you can only assign one terrain to the system)

 

I was just wondering .. is it possible to link the plugin to a weather system like ( weather channel or yahoo weather feeds) in order to change the weather in real time. i mean , the physical player's location may change the weather into the game environment. is it possible ?

 

Hi, I am really impressed with the features of this asset and in the videos it's looking absolutely brilliant!
There is one thing I have been wondering, I saw it in the web demo but also in some of the videos I think, and that is why does the sun rise and set in the same place, and can this be adjusted? Also is there a large performance difference between the mobile version of Unistorm and this one? I am not planning to build for mobile but I am worried about the framerate during weather transitions, since my setting is a quite busy modern city. Which would be the better option?

 

Importing problems isn't really a UniStorm thing. I think the reason people had a problem is because we were using a old version of the image effect which conflict with the new ones. We're going to add the new ones to UniStorm 1.6.2 which should fix any problems.

We have a different way of accessing the snow as of 1.6.2. We will have a set object included with the prefab that will act as the terrain object. This way you don't have to have a number of terrains and it wont cause problems with the prefab.

If you want to use clouds on large terrains you would add a second camera. This camera would only render the clouds. I believe it's explained in the documentation. If not let us know and we will explain how.

As for multiple terrains we have come up with a solution to fix this as of 1.6.2 explained above.

Someone asked this awhile back. I'm not sure we have never tried it.

If you're going for a mobile weather system I would go with UniStorm Mobile. It's preforms very well on mobile and still looks great.

 

Quick fix for those of you who's setting in the editor change on start-up:

The way the editor works you have to break the prefab connection for the UnIStorm system or the editor grabs the setting from the prefab. You can do this simply by going to GameObject>Break Prefab Instance. This will break the connection and allow you to edit UnIStorm however you want and keep the settings you make.

 

All sound s good, but I must say, that after being told about the now plugin, I tried implementing it.. OK, snow is working a bit weird, sometimes its there, sometimes not, sometimes hittting play actually makes the snow disappear.. and sometimes now..

BUT... Did you'all add some normal maps of your terrain items into the slots (se the snow demo, I had no instructin just copied what the demo did)
HOT DAMN!! It makes my TERRAIN look good.. forget about the snow... the terrain just come alive, really beautiful!
My 6 year old son just wanted to walk around in my mountain rather than badge me to play his usual noisy games, and he was exclaiming
"Its so nice!"
So I hope thenew solution is still gonna be utilising larsbertram1 script?

But I have to say, the snow thing did throw up some more ideas in my head... So you gone and done it now BHS.
So with snow... suddenly you are gonna get to the pint where we want "weather zones". Cos snow is predominately up the mountain, it can be snowing up there, but down in the valley it can be warm and comfy.

So how is that gonna be possible? Different weather on different bits of the map?


MArk

 

What normal maps do you mean when you say "forget about the snow"? From terrain texture or from mesh texture?

 

Seems quite nice! It seems the sunsets aren't quite orange enough. A little to brown. A more intense sunrise/sunset would be cool

 

@ pathelion
If you check the snow demo, he has 4 slits In the script and has populated them with bump map versions of the terrain textures he is using.
If u tryit yourself with your own terrain. Add the script to your terrain and then add copies of your textures. Then select the copies and make them normal maps, Then run the game. its Nice! not sure if im doing it correctly, and you cant scale ir offset the bunns, so works best on terrain set to 1,1 etc.

 

As for the larsbertram1's script we're working on it, but what was causing the problems was there not being a global game object controlling snow. We have added this as of 1.6.2 and should make things much easier.

As for the snow, we could do it by elevation set by the user, but for now we are fixing some of the issues then we will work on new features.

Yes, this has been fixed.

 

UniStorm Version 1.6.2 should be submitted soon.

UniStorm Version 1.6.2 Fixes and Improvements:
* Fixed terrain object error (Preset game object now handles snow)
* Fixed transitions for all weather types when going form sunny to cloudy
* Fixed editor not keeping set variables (Can be fixed by breaking the prefab connection)
* Fixed Image Effects error (UniStorm 1.6.2 now uses the newest version of Image Effects)
* Fixed UniStorm's possition, placing UniStorm at (0,0,0) will no longer alter the clouds
* Brighter sunrises and sunsets making shadows more visable during morning and evening
* Disabled sun during the night and disabled moon during the day increasing performance and reducing draw calls
* Updated folders to say UniStorm instead of the version number
* Updated folder 000Snow to SnowSystem
* Updated star system with more objects, clusters, galaxies, ect
* Improved sun shader, sun looks brighter and more realistic than before
* Improved sun transitions when clouds cover it or fade away.
* Many performance enhancements, even lower draw call counts and even higher frame rate than 1.6.1

 

Nice!
Looking forward to finally implementing this : D

 

I know you posted a web player a ways back, but could you possibly repost another one or link the existing one on the main page? I would like to test this on my Mac for the frame rate and performance, and this is important considering that there is no free version.

 

It's on the main page, it says Try the UniStorm Demo Here in blue and the links right below it.

 

Thank you but this doesn't really answer my question. I would like to know if it's possible to have the sun positioned rising in the east and dropping in the west, since in the demo the sun rises and sets in the same place. Also, if rain or snow is enabled, but I would like rain in one specific area only, and snow in another completely different one, is this possible with one Unistorm prefab?

 

It does rise in east and set in the west. The slider you used in the demo only makes it confusing. Once the slider hits the right side it restarts on the other side completing one full day. You're sliding it forward then reversing it so it looks like it's rising and setting in the same spot. I can assure you that the sun rises and sets in different places.

 

UniStorm 1.6.2 is now on the Asset Store

 

That confused me as well. Glad someone cleared it up.

 

Ok great
So is it possible to have specific weather only in certain parts of a game level? Say for example I have a mountain where I would like it to always snow, but next to the mountain is a city where I do not want it to snow at all, but maybe rain instead. Is this possible, and if so how would it be done? Thanks a lot

 

Maybe some sort of Cold Area or Hot Area can force specific weather in some zone i looking for this same feature cause i make a mountain with snow and rock and if it rain become rock and grass so no problem for this part.

But i made a part of tropical on same island, and palm with snow its not very realistic as i want this part of island stay in sun or rain but no snow.

 

You can probably just make a trigger and then change the weather by script i guess.
The drawback is that you wont see the other weather on a distance, but i think thats pretty hard to do without multiple separate weather systems.

 

Or distant particles when you're somewhat close to the area but not close enough to be affected by the weather.

 

The folder "Demo Objects" contains all of the demo scene items like requested. The particle effects that are attached to the player must be there in order for UniStorm to access them, unless you use your own custom ones. The particle effects that are in prefab form are there for people who have their own character system or that aren't using the player we have provided in the UniStorm prefab. We're trying to appeal to both types of customers. This makes it easier for them to add the particle effects to their custom character or players.

 

Sorry, i saw my mistake and deleted my post, but you were one minute faster than me : p

Btw, how do i get rid of all the "Assets/UniStorm/Scripts/UniStormWeatherSystem.js(781,63): BCE0005: Unknown identifier: 'CustomTerrainScriptAtsV3Snow'." errors?

 

On that subject maybe for a new feature in 1.6.3 or 1.7 you could add something like this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. enum biomeTypes {rain, rainAndSnow, snow, clouds}
3.  

These would be some of the biomes that can be applied (definitely more would be used though), and then you could have a bit of code where you assign a bunch of locations and dimensions in (x,z) coords for biomes, and then apply a texture to each biome and the area in the biome affected by that type of weather would be determined by the alpha of the texture.

Whew! Lots of stuff to say there.
What I mean by the locations and dimensions is you would add a location to the array, and that location would have a world position for its center (only x and z though), then the texture would be scaled by the dimensions you specified in the array of the variable, etc. The weather type would then be determined and applied based on the biome type and the alpha of the texture (as I said earlier in poor words), so higher A means more intense, lower A is less intense.

 

I'm not sure, there shouldn't be any errors. That script was fine when we exported it.

Is that script in your project? And is it in the Plugins folder?

 

Thanks for the responses. So if the weather system is a prefab, is it not possible to scale and move it to a specific part of the game level? I don't mean the sky as such, but the particles, could this work or is this not possible?

 

I just imported the project as default, the plugin folder is empty though, so maybe you did something wrong when you packaged the files?

 

No, you can still adjust the position of the system, but in order for the editor to hold the values you enter you have to break the prefab connection or else the editor will use the prefabed settings such as day length, cloud speed, ect.

I can assure you it was there when it left the computer when we submitted it and is on the Asset Store in the UniStorm contents, here's a screenshot:




Something in your project must be overwriting the plugin folder, this is another Unity import error and I'm not sure what's causing it. Have you tried importing the system into a blank project? Do that, make a copy of the terrain snow script, and put it in the empty plugin folder in your project that's missing it. This should fix your problem. We will have to see what's causing it, I'm not sure if it's something on our part of not, it is being exported with the system. We will contact Unity and find out.

Have any others had this problem?

 

Please, you have GOT to figure out how to package this without overwriting a ton of stuff in the Standard Assets folder. I know it's possible because there are a ton of things you can download on the asset store that use things within the Standard Assets folder without overwriting them all. Even if you narrow it down to just the things you actually use, that would help, as currently you're overwriting every single effect in Image Effects, all of the Water folders, the built-in trees, the character controllers, the Unity sample scripts, etc. It makes it a huge pain in the ass to import this when there's an update. I've never submitted anything to the asset store so I don't know exactly what you have to do, but have you tried just deleting the Standard Assets folder from your package before submitting it? It would stop it from working in that session, but everyone who is importing your project already has Standard Assets, so it should work fine if you import it. I think this is especially important now as there are some people using Unity 3.5 and some using Unity 4, and they have different things in the Standard Assets folder, so even if you pick one version to copy, you'll be screwing over some of the customers. Please figure out how to not overwrite all of this; it's the one major fault that's stopping me from wanting to follow the updates on this.

 

Exactly. Please remove everything that is NOT Unistorm. I don't need a first person controller. I don't need a camera. All I want is your sky. That's all! This is sad because your sky looks excellent, but I CANNOT import this in my project. I had to switch to another sky system. Please figure this out.

 

Ok I just had a look at the Asset Store Tools and here's how I think you should be doing it:

- Put everything into a "Unistorm" folder, so that "TerrainSnow" is a subfolder of "Unistorm", and "Editor" is a subfolder of "Unistorm" (Editor doesn't need to be in the root to work; any folder named Editor within your hierarchy will be compiled first as an Editor folder). For Larsbertram's CustomAts3 script, you can put it in the TerrainSnow folder with a text file that says "MOVE ME TO THE PLUGINS FOLDER" or something like that, and put that step in the install docs as well. I've seen a few assets do that, and while it's a bit of a pain for the user to move that one file, it's much less of a pain than overwriting the Standard Assets folder.

- Open the Asset Store Tools and for the "Assets Folder", select "Unistorm", not your root assets folder.

Everything else can be the same, and that should upload just the Unistorm folder regardless of dependencies.

 

+100

Importing it to a new project seems to be the only way for me to get that script, its not even on the list if i try to import it into my current project : / Thanx for the help though : )

Edit: Now i have tested some, first it seems like you have the wrong snow script attached to the snow system cause it says it cant be found, is it the one in the plugins folder that should be attached?
Second, i cant get any weather to work, i have the sun and moon and that part works well moving them with the slider and getting the nice colors and all. But no clouds, rain or snow at all. No compiler errors either, but a lot of warnings on the .active is obsolete in Unity 4, so changed that but still same thing.
Also i have my own Player object, so i dragged over all the particle systems to that one and reassigned them to the prefab, is that enough? A guide how to use your own character might be a good idea.

 

We will figure it out and get an update out quick. We don't know there's a problem until you guys get the system because there's no way for us to import the system from the Asset Store to test it.

People said they wanted a demo scene and a fps player example. We are trying to appeal to all customers.

Thanks for this we will try it and see if we can get rid of these import errors.

That's odd, there should only be 1 script in the Plugins folder and that is the "CustomTerrainScriptAtsV3Snow" script. What other scripts are there?