uSkyPro – Precomputed Atmospheric Scattering [2.0 Beta]

Actually uSky GUI Demo has the example already and the uSkyGUI_Helper script how to show the simple clock. I assume you want to do it in Unity GUI Text, You can use following script:
[Edit]
Scipt updated - fixed the warning message.
DisplayTime.cs

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System;
3.  
4. public class DisplayTime : MonoBehaviour {
5.  
6.     public uSkyManager m_uSkyManager;
7.  
8.     // Update is called once per frame
9.     void Update () {
10.         if ( m_uSkyManager ) {
11.             TimeSpan t = TimeSpan.FromHours ((double) m_uSkyManager.Timeline);
12.             GetComponent<GUIText> ().text = string.Format ("{0:D2}:{1:D2}", t.Hours, t.Minutes);
13.         }
14.     }
15. }
16.  

 

Does this work together with TrueSky Alpha?

 

Not sure about that, I didn't own that asset and never try it. Sorry I don't have the answer for that.

 

Hi, I've just transferred a project to PC after working on Mac, and have real trouble with frame rates if 'Sky Update' is checked true. This doesn't occur with the identical project on Mac.

The console suggests all is correct, but the frame rate is terrible, with a discrepency between m/s in the console and m/s as reported by an FPS utility. Tested in an empty scene and the problem persists- the only cure is to turn off Sky Update which obviously defeats the purpose.

Usky looks fantastic and having a day/night cycle has been transformative, would love to get to the bottom of this.

Update: By empty scene, I was testing with a current scene stripped back at runtime. With an actually empty scene from scratch it works, even though they're identical by that point. I've found that having an RTPv3 manager when the level loads causes the problem, and it persists even when deleted. Conversly, adding one at runtime is fine..

Update 2: Found it! Unchecking 'update on every frame' on the RTP Fog Update component solved it.

 

@Luckymouse Hi, I have a couple questions/issues related to uSky for you:

1) Do you think it would be possible to have the moon and stars rotate at night? Right now it's all static and really stands out (not in a good way I'm afraid).

2) I noticed that when "Play Timelapse" is on, there is an issue with the "SunShafts" camera filter: it is very clear that the origin of the shafts (which is supposed to be the sun) "jumps" every second or two instead of smoothly progressing. This is an issue that doesn't affect the shadows, only the SunShafts caster.

3) The sky turning black in the scene view every time I switch to another application and come back to Unity is really starting to be a problem in my workflow. I always need to select something, move it a little and then undo to get a refresh of the scene view (and get the normal sky back).

Would you mind having a look at those things, please?

 

At the very begining of this thread, there is a note :
"uSky is currently working the perspective camera view only"
Is it something that could change in the near future?
And why this restriction?

 

@Luckymouse I asked this question to the Marmoset Skyshop guys and they unfortunately said they weren't able to do it in real-time, so I thought I'd try to ask my question to you here.

I have a particular setup that I was wondering if it was possible to accomplish with your plugin. I need to setup a scene with HDRI, but the HDR image/texture I use is incoming from a real-world camera setup that streams live images as textures into Unity. I was wondering is it possible to use your tool to automatically update the HDRI and lighting at runtime? Is it possible to do every frame, every few frames, or even every few seconds?

And finally if any of this is possible to do with your plugin, would it be possible to use it in tandem with Skyshop?

 

I added this feature already, need to fix up some details. It will be in next update (v1.1.5), should be available soon.

I tested it, but doesn't happen that issue. I will investigate it.

I mentioned early post too, I try to fix that but I can't replicate the issue, so I can not find the bug. I will keep investigate it.

 

The skybox shader just won't work for "Orthographic" camera projection. You can try unity default-skybox, the sun will deform when you use the "Orthographic". So far I don't know how to make it to work with Orthographic.

I think uSky is not the plugin what you are looking for. uSky is a procedural skybox shader, It doesn't handle any HDR Image.

 

(@Luckymouse Hi, I'm not sure if you saw my reply to the private conversation)

 

V1.1.5 available in AssetStore now.
Key feature:
- Added night sky rotation feature. If the night sky rotation enabled, the moon will be opposite direction of the sun, also the stars and outer space will rotate at night as well.


- Added new uFogGradient script. It is simple gradient color setting that based on the Timeline for unity Standard fog color, nothing fancy.
It works well for forward rendering path. It has predefined sky color gradient keys, and user can manually change the fog color with any custom sky color.
This script is useful for some case: transparent material, the objects are not in the Z-buffer, the unity water that use the standard fog..etc.



To use it: just simply apply this script to uSkyManager and turn on the Fog in the Lighting window.
Note: It does NOT need uSkyFogCamera to apply on Main Camera.

 

U Fog Gradient works great, thanks!

 

@Luckymouse That sounds great. I don't know if this is already possible but here are a couple of features/suggestions that would be required to be able to fully use the night sky features:

1) Deciding precisely where the moon appears when night falls.
2) Choose the path/speed of the moon rising.
3) Choose the rotation speed of the night sky (the stars).
4) (Optional) Have the ability to add constellations (as images).

Please note that I'm not asking for any scientifically accurate features; the strength of uSky is that it's simple to use and to setup. I'm simply interested in features that let the user control things from an artistic point of view.

 

To add another suggestion, it would be useful to have seperate fog densities for day and night (using the USky image fx fog). I realise it's not accurate but at night often the fog appears less dense based on the scattering, and could benefit from extra density.

 

Question : In the webplayer demos, the moon seems to just appear without moving like the sun did... is that normal? Also are the starfields going to move like the sun did (simulating earth moving/revolving/turning) ?

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

1) & 2)I'm working on the sun path right now, I will try to find a better way that have more flexibility to control the moon in future.
3) Rotation speed of the night is based on how fast when you play the timeline, I think I can add a curve control in the PlayTOD script.
[Edit]
The curve control is for different play speed for TimeLine. Lets say if you want to make the night time play faster than the day time.
4) The outer space cubemap is already a (360º milky way) image of the constellations, Do you mean other cubemap or some other way?

Actually I think I will re-work on the scattering fog later, I will consider your suggestion.

Yes, the starfields will move the same like the sun did. The night sky you saw is from older demo. I just updated the webplayer demo and the night sky will rotate now. Please check out the new web player.

[Edit]
I changed the Stars flickering in this 1.1.5 version, and I believe it does not look as good as older version. I will change it back in next update.
If you want to fix it now you can edit the star shader file and enable the line # 41, disable line # 42. So it will fallback to last 1.1.4 version.

Code (CSharp):

1.             float index = frac(hash.x + (hash.y + 1) * (_Time.x * 2 + unity_DeltaTime.z)); // flickering speed
2. //            float index = frac(hash.x + (hash.y + 1) * (_Time.w * 5 * unity_DeltaTime.z)); // flickering speed

 

Hi Luckymouse

Since updating a few days ago to the latest package, I've been having trouble importing the UskyGlobalFog Material to drop it onto the script. Reimporting the whole of Usky into a new scene is also crashing unity. Narrowed it down to the material folder where along with the UskyGlobalFog, other materials have also failed to import correctly. The Files are time and dated - 27/05/2015 21:49 if that helps. Any ideas/Solutions?

 

Hi Luckymouse, thanks for this update to a great asset.

I added the UfogGradient.CS script and turned on fog in Unity lighting, but for some reason the fog effect does not fade out to view distance. Beyond a certain range, distant objects suddenly appear solid black (even though there is no black colour in the fog gradient).

This occurs in Deferred Rendering mode, but it looks as expected in forward rendering - is the UfogGradient only for forward rendering?

I am finding it tricky to get the fog to look natural against the skybox gradient... I've previously used the UfogCamera method, but that doesn't work with Unity's advanced water.

 

Sorry about that. I accidentally updated the Unity Editor to 5.0.2f1 with the uSky package. if you import to older editor version may occur import issue (or even crash). Update the Unity Editor should fix it.
(Btw, Unity 5.1.0 will be release very soon too.)
[Edit]
In general, I will keep uSky with lowest unity version as possible. Unless unity editor has major graphics update.

uFogGradient applies just the colour to standard fog only. So the fog rendering method is using from the build-in unity editor. Try to use different fog setting value or fog mode in the Lighting window to remove solid black issue you got.

Please do some simple test in your working scene:
Will the black issue appears even if you remove the uFogGradient script? If so, this issue is related to build-in unity fog function. That should be a unity bug.
However if the black issue is gone after remove the uFogGradient script, that may cause by uSky, please let me know if it is the case.

Yes, it is for the forward rendering only. If you use the Deferred Rendering that you will get the message from the fog setting. It is how the standard fog works in the Unity.

[Edit] I believe the Unity's water fog will not work for uSkyFog (or unity GlobalFog ) ImageEffect. It works with the unity standard fog only.

 

G'day @Luckymouse

In you're OP there was that beautiful ocean, which looked like the one in CryEngine, is that an asset or how do I get it?

Cheers

 

It was from older scrawk's ocean, here is the link:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ocean-renderer.171651/

Scrawk is making a new projected grid ocean, here is the new link:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/scrawks-ocean.323545/

 

Hey Luckymouse, look this code from the Keijiro developer, maybe can help you to improve uSky.

https://github.com/keijiro/FadeToSkybox

 

One question, uSky supports Lens Flares ?

 

I used a lens flare on the sun in uSky, worked fine on desktop and VR

 

Actually, I think Unity's fog is broken. I just updated to 5.1 and objects with standard opaque shader just don't fade with fog at all, in deferred rendering.

 

Thanks for the link. I checked his project. As far I know his technique is working only on the blurry cubemapped skybox. He is fading skybox color with z-buffer as fog. It may not work if you have an obivous horizon line (sky and ground) like unity default-skybox or uSky.
Here I baked the unity default-skybox to cubemap with Keijiro project.

As Recluse said you can use the unity built-in Lens Flares component. However uSky have no colour control for Lens Flares colour yet.

 

I don't think it needs it - you can set the lens flare component to take the colour from the Sun light.

Btw - is there a way to modify the distance clouds rotation speed in script? I've got a dial in my game that speeds up the day / night cycle and I'd like the clouds to speed up too, to give the impression of time passing quickly

 

You can directly change any of the distance clouds attributes, just like any other unity materials.
Excample:

Code (CSharp):

1.         Material cloudMat;
2.         float MyValue = 0.5f;
3.         cloudMat.SetFloat ("RotateSpeed", MyValue);

Just assign the current distance clouds material to cloudMat.

 

Question: Does uSky have preset for stormy / rainy weather? Or other weather conditions?
Also can uSky transition between these conditions?

 

Thanks, that's brilliant - I got a really nice 'time-lapse' effect now

 

@Luckymouse

It would be cool if you could add a solar eclipse feature - so, rather than the moon being directly opposite the sun, it would have it's own rotation, which could cross the sun if set to the right value.

 

uSky does not have weather features or transition between them. At the moment user can change only the Wavelengths and Night Zenith to desaturate the sky colour to be light grey to simulate the storm colour.

Yes, I will try to improve it in future.

 

I just purchased uSky but I have a few issues:

Using HDR, and sky update is on.

-The exposure control on the uSkyManager component does not communicate with another HDR exposure script on the camera. Both are required because the uSkyManager component only controls exposure of the sky/fog related graphics. Getting both exposure settings right requires endless tweaking, which has to be done all over again once the time of day is changed.

-If I add the GUI prefabs to my scene, it doesn't have any effect. It works on the terrain example scene though.

-HDR objects in the scene (emissive particles) are not affected by the fog, but it works correctly with the Unity global fog.

-The global fog has no option for fog height.

-When the sun is near the horizon, the sun intensity should be automatically reduced.

-Changing the sun intensity has no effect on the bright spot in the sky because it still looks just as bright when a 3rd party tone mapper is used. Is the bright spot actually HDR?

-The uSkyManager component has a tonemapping checkbox but I would advice against that because the hole HDR thing seems to be broken. Make the sun actually HDR and don't use your own exposure and tonemapping, but instead leave this to a 3rd party script. This should solve most of the problems.

 

Any chance to improve this aspect in the future? Eg. A drop-down preset list of realistic sky conditions which can be smoothly transition between?

Also are the clouds animatable like below?

 

Yes, the uSkyManager exposure will only control the uSky's component. Which other HDR exposure script that you are refer to? Do you meant Tonemapping script? and you want the uSky exposure attribute to control the Tonemappin's exposure also?

After you apply GUI prefabs, it needs to connect the uSkyManager to the uSkyGUI_Helper.
uSkyGUI_Helper is the child of the GUI prefabs.
I believe that i need to add a documentation of GUI prefabs to the package to explain how to use it.

As far as I tested the uSky Fog (image effect) is acting exactly the same as unity global fog (image effect) does. The reason you get the particles material works in unity global fog, because you has turn on the unity fog in the Ligthing window, that particles material fog effect is not render with unity global fog, it renders by the forward based fog.

Right now, uSky global fog is based the unity global fog script, I can not get the height fog with decent result. So at the moment the uSky global fog supports the distance fog only. I may improve it in future too, but no release time yet.

If you really need the height fog, you may use the unity global fog and only turn on the height fog option, then add the uFog Gradient to control the fog colour.

You can adjust the Light Color gradient key to dim the sun light at the sun rise and sunset time. Basically sun light is just light colour multiply the sun intensity.

I agree currently there are no control for the sun spot brightness. I will add the control in future.

I guess the "Tonemapping" attribute in the uSkyManager is little confusing to you. When you check it that it will turn the skybox to full physically range brightness of sky colour. It will get correct brightness when user apply unity Tonemapping or any related tonemapping image effect.
Lets me make it clear again that uSkyManager Tonemapping option is not an image effect itself, just switch the skybox to different brightness mode.

I read couple time of your last question here, but I still don't really understand that what do you mean by the "Make the sun actually HDR"? Do you mean that the sun spot brightness value need to be more than 1 if you turn on the uSkyManager Tonemapping attribute?

 

Yes, the current uSky clouds is just a beta, i will improve it in the future. To make an awesome looking clouds that it is not really a easy task. I'm trying some new 2D procedural clouds effect, I will release it if it is good enough. No time schedule when it will be done yet.

 

@Luckymouse, I get a warning 'Cleaning up leaked objects in scene since no game object, component or manager is referencing them - Mesh StarfieldMesh has been leaked 2 times'.

Thanks again for a great asset - I look forward to your continued progress on uSky

 

Yes, I meant the tonemapping script. Either the build in one, or a 3rd party script. But perhaps I don't fully understand what the relation is between the uSky tonemapping/exposure and the tonemapping script exposure value.

After experimenting some more I managed to get some good results but it seems that the exposure value on the uSky manager script doesn't actually control any exposure, but rather sky brightness. It might seem the same with a different word, but increasing the exposure on the uSky manager script increases the amount of light the sky casts at the rest of the world. Therefore I think calling it "exposure" is misleading in what it truly does.

Yes, that is what I meant, but it seems that increasing the exposure on the uSky manager script does this. Is that the case?

Thanks, that fixed the problem. By the way, is the fog color pixel independent (distant objects are more blue in real life) or is it the same color for the entire screen?

Edit:
Height fog seems to work really well here:

But unfortunately that Preetham & Hoffman stuff is way out there, requiring an academic degree to even think about touching it :-(

 

Hello everyone!
First of all: pretty impressive asset! I love it.
Unfortunately I've got some problems getting it all working in version 1.1.5.
Even if I follow the few steps provided in the "_readme.txt" file I can't get uSky to work properly, neither the Simple uSky Scene nor the uSky GUI Demo. I might miss something, but the sky keeps staying blue. Furthermore, the longitude slider doesn't do anything.
Help would be appreciated!
Thanks a lot!

 

So I'm assuming Lucky Mouse is having a field day with the latest blacksmith assets. Atmospheric scattering here we come.

 

Yeah, the atmospheric scattering in Blacksmith is really stunning. But one massive disadvantage with that is that it only works if every single shader in the world has the scattering code integrated. It would be better if it is just a post effect.

Edit:
Actually, there is a post effect available in the package as well. From the comments here:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/06/22/making-of-the-blacksmith-animation-camera-effects-audiovideo/

 

I will check what cause that warning. Anyway, It is a harmless message from editor, it won't affect anything at runtime.

I think you understand differently how uSky works in general. Basically it is a skybox shader package, so most of the attributes in the uSkyManager controls the skybox only, same as exposure attribute and purposely designed that way.

If you checked the uSkyManager's Tonemapping that meant there are no tonemapping on skybox itself, and you need to use the Camera hdr and Tonemapping image effect. In that case the sun spot value is around 1000.

The colour of the fog has not variation with distance at the moment, I just implemented a basic fog effect, may improve it in future.

You video you posted I saw it while ago, that is from David Miranda. I believed he use his own Fog Volume for that video. It is not just a simple height fog image effect.

 

As your picture shows that you have the skybox material missing in the uSkyManager. so it has not skybox. The longitude slider controls the sun light rotation horizontally. It should work. Please reimport the uSky package again, and make sure import everything in the package.

@SAOTA, Elecman
I imported the unity atmospheric scattering project, It seems broken and got the shader compiles error. Not sure what it can do right now. Just from the codes that looks like it is not a image effect.

 

The Blacksmith demo has two methods of calculating the atmospheric scattering. The default one is not an image effect. But they included a method which is an image effect, but it takes some manual input to get it to work. They both look identical.

 

@Luckymouse: Thanks for your help!
Reimporting the package into the updated Unity version helped (update from v5.0.0f4 to v5.1.1f1 on both OS).

 

Seems the blacksmith atmospheric scattering shader (StandardScatterSpecularSurface) has too many variants, It will get some problem from low end computer and occurred Timeout error when shaders compiled. I disabled the debug multi_compile and compile without d3d11 (i'm using Macbook). Finally I got all shaders correctly compiled and the project is working as expected.

Yup, it has the atmospheric scattering image effect option. The rendering path of the camera has to set to deferred and apply the AtmosphericScatteringDeferred script to camera. Looking great.

[Edit]
Just figured that the Atmospheric Scattering need to check the Force Post Effect option to able the image effect. The image effect fog works with Forward rendering path as well.

 

Hi, can't see the skybox with oculus cameras (only the clouds are displayed) using unity 5.1.1f1.
Any idea how to fix this ?

 

Have you set all the oculus camera's Clear Flags to Skybox?
If uSky's skybox didn't show, does the unity default-skybox show with oculus cameras?

 

in fact, was problem about clear flag ! tks
got another problem with moon texture :
- when moon light is enable, moon texture disappear
( and when moonlight is disable, moon texture is visible)

 

It looks like a bug to me, can you remove all your assets (models and texture etc), send me the project with uSky folder and your scene file via private message please. I can not reproduce the same issue, so I need further information about this issue from your project.
Meanwhile you can try to import uSky in a brand new project, see if that issue still occurs.