Tenkoku - Dynamic Sky

天国TENKOKU - DYNAMIC SKY
Tenkoku brings completely dynamic high-fidelity sky rendering to Unity developers. Dynamic means dynamic... there are no sky boxes or static elements, everything from the clouds to each individual star is it's own dynamic element with appropriate movement and behaviors.

Features:
Complete 24-hour day-night cycle
Equinoxial solar position and shift based on time of year
Realistic lunar movement and phases based on sun position
Latitude and Longitude positioning adjustments
Accurate positioning and movement of over 9000 night sky objects
Volumetric lit atmosphere rendering
Multi-layer dynamic cloud movement and rendering
Advanced weather effects (rain, fog, snow, sandstorms)
Aurora rendering based on latitude and sun (both Borealis and Australis)
Partial, annular, and total solar eclipses.








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Tenkoku is targeting developers that are creating high fidelity games for pc/mac desktop systems. it will not be compatible with mobile operating systems. In it's current state it does require Unity Pro, but I would also like to develop a version for developers that are using the free version of Unity, before it's ready for release on the asset store.

Also pricing is currently yet to be determined, but my aim is to make this an affordable system that brings a lot of value and doesn't break the bank

There's still a bit of development work to do. I'll be working on some videos so you can see the thing in action before too long. Release on the asset store will be sometime this summer (that means by the end of August), though I'd love to get it ready as early as possible. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and comments so far. Also what are you most looking for in a sky system such as this?

 

I am actually and I love your support, that reminds me I need to test out suimono again. Only thing I'd add is slow moving clouds, then it would be complete..

I'll buy it when it's ready .

 

impressive ... compliments chingwa!

 

Beautiful! Can't wait to see more.

 

You are crazy Maybe you create the button "Make the best AAA quality game with one click?".

 

Now this looks like a system I would buy, really loving the correct satellite positions for any given time and date.
Will buy for that alone.
Are clouds volumetric, for flight sim use?
Also will this tie in with sumino water system with regards to wester and lighting. I can imagine rough sea in stormy conditions.

 

How much are you planning on charging for this?
It looks great btw, and we needed this.

 

ShadowK - Oh I guess I didn't say that the clouds move... the clouds move



This is sped up of course, but you have full control over the speed, so yes it can be set to move slow. Imperceptively slow even.

sjm tech - Thanks Man!

DefinitionUK - More info coming soon!

Morfeuskiev - haha, yeah I'd pay a lot of money for that button.

John G. - I knew this question would come up right away! The clouds as they are currently are not suited for a flight sim unfortunately. I have some ideas I'd like to try to get them more of a true volumetric, which is what you really want in flight. Currently they are a projected volumetric mass, but it only works properly in view-space. Best suited for games that are from ground-level, or near ground level.

Of course it'll work with Suimono I'd love to have automatic dependency... so when the weather get's stormy in Tenkoku the sea automatically gets choppy in Suimono. Don't know if I'll actually do this as part of the official download though... maybe it could be a bonus downloadable component...

Fanttum - Pricing is still TBD. though it will be in the $45-$75 range somewhere. There are suddenly a number of Unity sky systems available to choose from, so I want it to be competitive with what's already out there.

 

@chingwa

Well why didn't you just say ? Hurry up and get it released then, I swear down you only build products to get money out of me . Got to admit might impressive stuff there, looking forward to it.

 

If you could get some sort of system in place to have clouds that were possible to fly through, you would tick all the boxes for an Environment system.

 

Those clouds look fantastic.

 

Yes that are some delicious clouds and atmospheric effects. You're a machine Chingwa

As for the name.
I don't know if that was intentional but 天国 tendoku means "heaven" in a religious way, while the actual sky is "空 sora"

 

I would easily pay $50 for something as good as this.

Also, will there be a way to change the star map?
Maybe just for perspective for different places on earth, or possibly new customs star maps for other plants.

 

Thanks guys!
John G. - yeah, this has been on my mind for a while. I'm definitely going to look into it some more before finalizing the clouds!

nipoco - そうでしょうね。　でも、英語で「sora」と言う発音がちょっとつまらない気分があれると思ったんですけど。 Personally I prefer to pronounce the kanji separately as a type of 駄洒落... so it becomes 天(ten) 国（koku）... as in "country of heaven". (actually, in suimono I also used this type of fanciful 'reading', though I don't use the kanji in the logo as much anymore.)

Fanttum - The star map can be positioned however you like. By default It is affected by latitude position and the current time of day (yes, the stars move too). It's pretty accurate I have to say... constellation relations are just as you would expect so you could navigate by them in a game world if needed. I also made sure that precessional shift is calculated, so you can go back 12,000 years and see pretty accurate star relations from any given point.

But it isn't a texture map, each star is a separately rendered point based on data coordinates. The star system assumes that you are on "earth" and all the coordinates reflect this. You could certainly edit the data points though if you wanted, and render different star positions (good luck! there's 9,110 of them).

One caveat is I'm not currently modeling planets, with their erratic wobbly orbits (though I'm looking into adding this soon! it would be awesome to have venus rising with the moon or mercury transiting across the sun!)

 

分かりました。
I see you know your stuff

Definitely looking forward to this.

 

When do you believe it will be released? It looks amazing.
Edit: Summer sometime end of August got it

 

Hi Chingwa

Again beautiful, Amazing what you have created. Are the moving clouds projecting shadows too ?
That would be cool. Is it also possible to created more dramatic cloud where the contrast would be a bit higher?
i mean to create a more darker area on the bottom of a cloud

thanks

Norby

 

Mind-blowing quality right there ! Amazing job.

 

your scene looks so nicely rendered.. what shaders are u using or any tips at achieving something like this. The clouds look aaa quality.

 

norby - Well unfortunately no, they aren't projecting shadows the way they are currently set up. I'll add that to my "exploration" list. It would certainly require a rethink on the current cloud technique, but it may not be impossible. The other possibility is to include a custom terrain shader overlay that generates shadows along the same algorithm as the clouds, but that would get messy I think.

As for more dramatic clouds, yes this is possible... In fact it's already a key component of the weather system I'm incorporating into Tenkoku. I plan to make it fairly automatic... so that stormier weather will automatically change the visual composition of the clouds... for example heavier laden clouds with darker underside could signify imminent rain.



Trak - Thanks!

taichiu727magnus - Thank You! The terrain shader and textures are all custom. I don't have plans to release them as they are very specific to what I need in my project. All I can say is a little shader programming experience will go a long way, don't be afraid to jump into it! What goes an even longer way though is a good foundation in the arts and color theory. Most AAA quality work simply comes down to experienced artists. If you can learn how to analyze other people's artistic work(and not just games!) and apply what you learn to your own work, you're golden.

 

Thanks Chingwa
very nice

Norby

 

Good work!

Also, I really, really like the Cloud-to-Butt chrome extension in threads like these...

 

OK, I had to look that up, but that's hilarious

 

OK, here's a couple updates and additions over the past week....

Aurora Rendering...
The aurora is based on world position, so it fades in gradually and gains height and prominence after you pass a set latitude. The aurora movement is based on the sun position so if you watch it from sundown to sun up the charged particle direction will shift over time as the relative sun direction changes. Renders both Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. (though technically it's the same effect)


Weather Rain...
Rain is controllable from a light drizzle to a full on downpour. what you see below is the full rain effect with ground splatters (kind of subtle) and rain ground-fog effects.


Weather Snow...
Snow effect can also be controlled from flurries to a fairly dense snowfall.


Weather Fog...
The fog effects can of course be controlled from light to dense, but you can also set the maximum height of the fog in world-space, so you can have a dense low lying fog or have a fog effect the fills the screen.



As for when it's going to be ready for the Asset Store, I'm really hoping I can get this up and done by the end of this month. There are still some systems that need programming (dynamic weather calculations and additional cloud systems), and it needs to go through a round of testing/performance tweaks. More info to come soon!

 

Much looking forward to it.

 

Wow the new weather and Aurora effects are looking fantastic.
Any chance you looked into volumetric clouds for the release model?
ikke998 was working a few years back on a nice cloud system http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/particlclouds-package-v2-volumetric-clouds.56878/ wsomething similar would really seel this system.
I will most likely purchase anyway for the correct star modelling (wish to implement a sextant navigation system into a sim). With the hope that volumetric clouds become a part of this in the future

 

This looks great, can't wait to get my hands on it!

 

John G. - thanks for the link, I'll have to take a look and see if that technique can fit into the rest of this system. The idea I had before about just expanding the clouds into world-position (rather than view position) didn't work out too well, I had to drastically increase the cloud rendering which brought down performance quite a bit. Using a sextant system in-game sounds pretty hardcore

bgivenb - thanks!

 

Bookmarked.

@Chingwa
Congratulation. It's seem very difficult to "sell" something to ShadowK or HippoCoder.

 

Looks really excellent.

How are you moving the sun (and directional light source) without getting horrendous waving blocky shadows?

 

hi there,
your screen shoots look really nice!
and as far as cloud shadows are concerned:

- do not project them, because that would be very expensive to render and not work on transparent or transparent cut out shader like the grass or tree leaf shaders.

- use a light cookie on your directional light instead!
that does not cost anything and works fine with almost all shaders just out of the box.
and i would not mind if the shadows did not 100% match the clouds rendered on the sky...

lars

 

ZJP - No Kidding! I still can't quite believe it myself

Whippets - Thanks! I haven't had any trouble with shadows... can you show me a screenshot/vid of what you mean by blocky shadow movement?

lars - Yes, thats a great idea! I bet I could apply the cloud generation algorithm to also build out a texture that can be used as a light cookie... very interesting idea, I'll give it a shot

 

If you've had no issues, then that's all good. Can't wait to try this out

 

i think it is just the most robust and cheapest way to get in some cloud shadows… and the only idea i have to make those work on grass and trees as well. not to mention that it does not need any tweaked shader at all.

lars

 

This is a must buy - can't wait till it's out

 

kirei. ge-munonakanikorewosurukamoshiremasen

 

Ahh nice! Hadn't noticed this. Man i'm getting an ever increasing bunch of environment based things, the sky being as much a point of interest as oceans but the rendering of which i find a bunch harder to get my head round. Well i've already poked interest in some other things but it's always a thing of the perfect solution be a best of remix from all of them. If this is aimed to hook up with Suimono out of the bag then it definitely deserves a shout, i'll be neck deep in code innards after too long if my Suimono fun was anything to go by!

 

This is so high end that should go pinned.

 

taichiu727magnus - boku mo sou omoitai n desu.

lazygunn - I hope you have some time on your hands soon, Id' love to hear your thoughts on it.

Pulov - Thanks Man!

 

This is fantastic, superb quality.

 

Hi Chingwa,
This is looking marvelous.

One of the many good looking aspect of Tenkoku is how it blends with the terrain usage of haze andfog.You said you're using custom terrain shaders with the screenshots. I was wondering how it'll look with different terrain shaders, in my case RTP. Is it possible to to get same blending with any terrain shader?

 

GeneBox - Thanks!

gurayg - well yes, I'm using custom terrain shaders in the above screenshots, but only because I've never been able to get good looking terrain with the default shaders. But the terrain has nothing to do with the distance blending.... all the haze/fog/blending is handled in Tenkoku. It should work regardless of what terrain shaders you're using.

One of the main reasons it looks good, compared to normal distance fog, is that the haze color is modulated with the light direction, which is much more realistic, especially during sunrise/sunset times.

 

Wow those screenshots look amazing. Looks like this will be a very useful asset good work

 

It's look great. I can't wait to see a demo version or a web player.

 

Hey chingwa, we could use some more screenshots/vids to whet our appetites

I presume that directional light, ambient light, haze, and fog are all dealt with by Tenkoku?
Can it handle more than one moon?
Which terrain shaders are you using? Lux, RTP, or?

 

sanfboxgod - Thanks man!

Axel59 - there will be a webplayer once it's released to the asset store. Not too much longer now...

Whippets - more updates coming soon Yes Tenkoku handles all directional lighting, haze/fog etc. You should be able to just drop the Tenkoku module into your scene and not really have to worry about setting up additional lights. There is a small amount of ambient lighting going on, but not much. Currently Tenkoku has just a very basic ambient setup. I've been wondering about making this a bit more advanced... like an omnidirectional ambient light setup, but not sure how popular or necessary this would be.

It only simulates the earth's moon out of the box. It wouldn't be that difficult to add additional moon objects if you needed them (just copy the moon objects and duplicate the code section should do it...) but for now the default system will just focus on earth-like skies. The moon lighting/phase (at least in "realistic" mode) is dictated by the sun position, so if you have a second moon it should still be lit accurately according to the sun. Now if we start talking about additional sun objects, that's where things start to get complicated

The terrain shader is my own custom code. It actually isn't anything super fancy (far fewer "features" than RTP or even lux) but it's made specifically inline and calibrated with the art assets, so as a whole it feels very cohesive which is the most important aspect imho. I've done a fairly lengthy analysis of the Altis terrain system used in Arma3 (which I feel is absolutely superb! though I may be one of the few to think so ) and have been trying to incorporate similar techniques into Unity. Maybe someday I'll have some really great results that I could share, but for now it's still too much of a work-in-progress.

 

If i can get a copy i can make time, this stuff is fascinating for me!

One thing that i don't know has been fixed but was a problem with Nuaj (The creator was very very very annoyed by this), is that at the time, light cookies were not allowed to be changed dynamically which was a very annoying problem. The cookies needn't really be accurate really so this may or may not be a problem but i thought it worth mentioning.

 

Definitely my first purchase on coming back from holiday. Exactly what I've been looking for and way better than the one I wrote >.< doh!

 

Yes, lighcookies are only useable for couldshadows with static or scrolling clouds, also they are slow to set every few frames. A better solution would be to generate shadowcaster meshes that approximate the cloud shapes or use a compounds of meshes with a cutout shader with the same purpose.

@ chingwa, tenkoku looks really interesting, also your presentation is great sorry, if you answered this already but is it possible to fly through the clouds without breaking the illusion? Thinking of flightsim games... Also is it DX9/OpenGL compatible?

 

+1 & +1