Tenkoku - Dynamic Sky

Probably answered by now, but does this all work with unity 5? and unity 5 ibl? Also any ETA on release date?

 

Man, I can't wait for this. Anyway we could get it in beta? I NEED THIS!

 

I always though about doing something like this, but this is a thousand times better anything I could do. Great skills man!

 

Hi, was this ever released? I would like to use it!

 

Thanks for the interest everyon! Tenkoku isn't released yet (despite any talk about scheduled releases in this thread ) but it's still alive, and should be coming soon!

 

Looks amazing. I'd be interested in this as well, as long as it plays well with Unity 5. Cookies for cloud shadows would be amazing as well. If there are specific bottlenecks related to cookies that are Unity's fault, maybe now would be a good time for a proper bug report.

 

Looks very good.
Will it include weather?
rain, snow, etc.
if yes, for the work i do, weather sound quality is very important, as is look feel of rain/snow/ rain splash, etc.

 

Now that the water system is doing good. And chance of opening this up for beta purchases? Please

 

shwa - yes weather will be included, at least basic weather at first, such as rain and snow, and I'm also planning on adding thunder storms (with sound fx etc) wind storms etc.

Archania - I don't think I'm going to do a beta like I did with Suimono, but I am planning on getting Tenkoku up on the store soon now that Suimono is out of it's beta phase. Haven't fully decided what features will be in at the beginning yet, or what the initial price will be... I have to look and see what features are feasible for the first release still...

 

I like what I see.

 

i am so excited about this... been messing with unity 5 a lot and and want to throw in an actual sky into what im working on ...hope it releases soon so i can play with it. Do you know if there are any problems using this with the occlus rift package? Its free to download to test with.

 

Any update on it's release? I am really looking forward to this asset! The current competitors in the assetstore are just not fulfilling my requirements however I think this asset might just be what I am looking for.

 

@merubian - It's coming... I don't think it will be ready in January, but February is realistic and is my goal target. I spent part of this weekend getting it setup and fixed in Unity 5, now that beta 20 came out. The sky rendering is almost perfect, but the initial weather offerings and UI need some work still. I'd be curious to hear in what ways you're being "let down" by the current sky systems on the store, and what you're looking for in your project.

And here is some screenshot love...

 

I have been let down by a Time of Day and Weather library by the fact that though it was looking beautiful, the code and the structure of the prefabs were far from clean/professional or easy to understand.

BTW, your library looks gorgeous

 

First of all thanks for the great response time as always.
Things letting me down in competitors are different for each of them and the problem mostly is that non of them have the right combination of features.

The system I am looking for has to be realistic because I want my players to be emerged in a believable environment that does not only look good but acts like the real world so that players can use real world knowledge in the game.
For example, the realistic placements of heavenly bodies would allow players to use the sky to navigate the world.

Also not only does your asset seem to acts realistic it also looks great which is something some other assets can not say.

Another part I personally find important as a programmer myself is that the code is neat and well organised. This is for example something that is missing in unistorm as many reviews tell me. As an owner of Suimono I can tell that you take good care of the details and are not afraid to put extra time in optimizing your code.

Probably there are other things I look for in a asset but these are the ones that come to mind right now.

 

Here's one of the worst ways we're let down by current solutions: Shadows that waver and shimmer in a horribly pixelly way as the light source (sun/moon) moves across the sky. On some solutions this can be so bad it's unusable.

 

Yes this is true. I've experienced the shadow flickering issue with some weather systems.
a) Unistorm for example, no matter what settings one chooses, the shadows flicker like a strobe light.
b) Time of Day has this issue to a lesser degree. It's almost not noticeable, yet if there are some extreme twists in the geometry, sudden changes in triangle angles, the strobe light party starts again!

I've been having this issue with some rock geometry with Time of Day, yet I've had this issues with all kinds of geometry in Unistorm.

Here is an image where you can see what I'm saying about the triangles in the geometry.
a) Circled in red is the triangle with a too different angle than its neighbors, hence it flickers when shadowed. It's pretty noticeable
b) Circled in green there is some shadow artifact issue but to a lesser degree.

The only advice I can give, is to avoid having sudden changes in angles in your meshes. Also avoid having one triangle have a "too" different angle than its neighbors, this will cause the triangle to flicker when it recieves a shadow.

Well I guess if different systems show different amounts of artifacts in shadowing, then this is might not be a Unity issue. If this is so then I hope Tenkoku solves this pain in the butt!

 

I think the shadow issue is coming from Unity implementation of shadowing. These system dont provide a new lighting model, just move the lights i think. I dont own either, so i cant be sure, but i have not seen anything similar in their descriptions.

Unity shadows are very sensitive to a number of parameters, so the reasons for the flicker may vary, depending on how each sky implementation handles distances and is setup. I recall coming across many shadowing issues when i was making the global illumination system.

One of the major issues is that the distance in the global settings, affects the look and artifacts and is not easy to control.

 

@Whippets @malteins @nasos_333 Yeah, as Nasos suggested this is more of a Unity issue rather than a Sky system issue (though I still hope you guys consider Tenkoku after this explanation! ) It's certainly a shadow implementation issue, but the problem in my experience comes into play specifically with the camera distance culling settings. When the NEAR setting is too low it throws depth calculations out of whack for the whole scene and this shows up in the shadow system having some messed up, err, rendering errors. This shows up in Tenkoku, and in ANY UNITY SCENE that is using dynamic shadows with too-near a camera distance. The below screenshot explains it much better than words...

 

Ok I trust you guys, you probably know a lot more than I do.
I would like to comment that I still have flickering issues on some rock meshes, even though my camera clipping distance is set to 0.3 which is pretty high. So this is not my case.
In my case it is more related to how the triangle order and angles are distributed across the mesh. I've been fixing overall shadow flickering issues by correctly building my meshes. Yet there are still shadow problems but a lot less visible. I guess then in Unity 5 we will have this issue fixed, since it is implementing a new lighting model, right?

 

Unfortunately no... Unity 5 has a new default shaders, but the base lighting/shadowing model hasn't changed.

 

I would also try more combinations of far clipping and shadow distance in the global quality options (plus other shadow parameters there). These are all factors that affect shadows in one or another way. And of course the sun shadow parameters play a big role too, the bias especially.

 

We are in the market for a dynamic sky system right now The game is currently running 60fps on PS4, but the margins are very tight in fill rate for 1080p and what we have going on. Wondering if your asset renders to texture over several frames or to smaller textures before compositing....

Also totally realistic clouds aren't necessarily what we need, but epic-looking clouds, so style over substance for sure! Looking forward to it. Our ideal sky system would also integrate fully with Unity 5's PBS system, light probes, reflection maps and all that jazz... it might be tricky regarding the reflection probes if they have nothing they can capture, so hopefully you've solved that sort of thing top.

Look forward to your thoughts.


Re: shadows, they're still a WIP on unity's side so you'd have to talk to them if you're on beta.

 

I wonder if there is some other way to pass the sky information directly from the shader to another system, without having to render to a cubemap or render to a different camera.

Or an asset that helps to that.

 

Sure, global shader keywords, but they're a naughty word among asset authors

 

@hippocoder - thanks for your thoughts. Now that I have the base system up and running in Unity 5 I'm exploring what can be done to incorporate more advanced features of 5, like the reflection probes and sky reflection/propogation etc. Still to early to say what will be included initially, but "things are being looked at"

@nasos_333 - I've experimented with setting global shader values and colors (for directional color and light information for example) and it works well... i.e. any other object shader in the scene can instantly pickup and use this information in it's rendering, no renderCameras involved! However this is a custom solution and thus every object in your scene would also need to be using a custom shader incorporating this solution. It's fine for an internal project, but an unrealistic solution for an asset store product meant for a wide variety of developers.

 

@hippocoder - hah, we're talking about exactly the same thing.

 

If i understand correct, this method would require to use special shaders for every item that needs IBL or reflection for example, but it would not require changing all shaders, when some may not need such information.

Or would it need every single shader to change in order to run properly ?

 

No, it's there only if you want to use it.
For example, you set a global value in js or c#...

Code (JavaScript):

1. Shader.SetGlobalFloat("chingwa_IsAwesome", 1.0);

then you can automatically use this value in any shader...

Code (CSharp):

1. float chingwa_IsAwesome;
2.  
3. void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutput o) {
4.  
5.     //GET MAPS
6.     half4 tex = tex2D(_MainTex, IN.uv_MainTex);
7.     half4 awe = tex2D(_AwesomeTex, IN.uv_AwesomeTex);
8.  
9.     //ASSIGN COLORS
10.     half3 useAlbedo = tex.rgb;
11.     if (chingwa_isAwesome == 1.0){
12.         useAlbedo = awe.rgb;
13.     }
14.  
15.     o.Albedo = useAlbedo;
16. }
17.  

So, it's there if you want to use it, but if no shaders are using that value then nothing happens. So yes any shader that needed to use the IBL reflection/color info would need to modified. And since the whole point of PBR is to be fed scene info then effectively every object would probably need to be using a custom shader. This is why it's a bit untenable for a 3rd party asset to go this route.

 

I see, thanks for the info. Maybe when the universal Unity 5 shader is standarized, there will be a move towards using such schemes, that would require only change one shader and some top level properties.

 

Oh! That's a pitty.

 

Yes, I'm still looking forward to this. Especially anything 5 related, as I'm building exclusively in 5 now. Like hippo said, it'll be a bonus not to eat too much in the way of fps, as things are always tight; and I'm ready to drop sky/weather into zones right now. The default 5 skybox is starting to bore me.

 

I second that... the skybox right now by default... just doesnt do my scene justice.

I have a feeling the author is going to make a lot of money when he releases this.

 

I need this! Can't wait to play with it. Pls release it!

 

Progress is moving along, and I'm still planning on getting this submitted to the store by the end of February. (It's not leap year is it?)

 

Looking forward to this.

 

Is pro still a requirement for the first release?

 

For now, yes Unity Pro will be required. Though I'd really like to get it working under Unity Free as well, I'll be looking more into this once version 1.0 is up on the store.

 

Can't wait

 

Other than a small issue with the fog having to be disabled for the water, the latest Tenkoku Beta looks really nice!

Nice, sunny evening.



Not so sunny night.


Wind backing the sails against the rigging.

 

Hey Captain, that's looking GREAT! Though, to be honest, anything will look great when you put your ship object in it
I'll have some of your bugs and other issues worked out pretty soon, and shortly after version 1.0 should be going up on the Asset Store.

 

February has ended, any update on the asset's progression?

 

Hi Merubian,
Thanks for your continued interest! I'm still working out a few issues with clouds and weather. Unity drives me crazy sometimes Not long now though. I've sent a beta out to a few interested developers to get some final input and they've been giving me some great feedback. (sorry to anyone who wasn't included in this... I felt I could only handle a small handful of people)

I'll have more news soon.

 

Hi,

Looking forward to this. Hopefully it doesn't eat performance.

Will it have options to disable some features on lower-end hardware to improve performance?

Also ... as many games are multi-player now, hopefully there's support built in to send some synchronization info from the server? Like time-of-day, weather conditions, color info etc.

I read earlier you were only supporting pro? .. with Unity5 free has most of pro features so you should support it too - as an incentive : it means your market will be like 1000 times bigger.

Thx

 

Hi @mwituni .... There are some options to simplify SOME calculations, such as the clouds, and to enable/disable the rendering of various other components. As for server support, there isn't any specific "built-in" server code, but all the configuration variables are accessible so you could in theory just set these from the server for your game clients.

The recent announcement of Unity 5 personal/Professional has certainly thrown a wrench in the works! Mostly this is a good thing, as it means that all developers can now use all the same tools! There is no longer a "free" vs "pro" consideration at all, so any features that previously required pro can now be used by everyone. WIN!

The "wrench" comes into play when you discuss supporting Unity 4 vs only supporting Unity 5. As an asset store creator this becomes a dilemma and a burden. My personal view is that Unity 5 is the future, and Unity 4's days are numbered. For my own internal projects they have all moved to version 5... but my asset store products are a different matter.

Current requirements for Tenkoku are Unity Pro 4.5+ but of course it also works in Unity 5. Since it hasn't been released yet I could drop 4.5 support (man, I'd love to do this, would certainly simplify things on my end!) but It's also a bit vague as to how many people have already moved to version 5, how many people PLAN to move to version 5 in the next month, 6 months, year etc. That data doesn't exist yet.

I'd love to get everyone's feedback here though... are you guys and gals using 5.0 yet? If not do you have plans to upgrade in the near future?

 

I've already switched.. I'm still early enough in my project though that the assets that are having issues with Unity 5 support do not effect me. Someone later in their development cycle, dropping 4.x support my not be an option for them at the moment. Seems like the biggest issue that I've seen has been with art assets. There have been some scripting issues but those seem to be easier and quicker to fix than art assets dealing with shaders (and whatever else the artists are having to do)...

 

Upgraded to Unity 5, easy decision unity 4 free or unity 5 with all features.

 

100% all people will migrate to unity 5!

 

Everyone I know switched to 5, or is switching to 5. I don't believe 4.x has a future except for current projects which must be so far along, that they don't need Tenkoku anyway.

 

Using only 5 here. 4 should be out now.