Feedback Volumetric Clouds

@camerondus shadows on the fog override? I am confused, in my case the fog override does not even have any options concerning shadows.. I meant shadows section on the volumetric clouds override, as seen in the image. Which HDRP version do you use?

 

my bad, i meant to say cloud override. im going to try what chap-unity suggested

 

still cant get shadows to work on volumetric clouds. unity 2021.2 beta 4, hdrp 12.0

 

@camerondus everything can work in that latest beta version. do you have the shadow map activated on your sunlight? internally the cloud shadows are done via a cookie texture on the main directional light, so definitely check it's settings. and maybe check the actual shadow volume override in your scene or default settings, i can spot neither regular shadows nor fog in your test scene, if both of those work, cloud shadows should, too.

 

here you can see my scene setup: i do have shadows enabled, and i have some really intense local fog

 

How does one update to the latest version? Only the parts of the github repo that involve the clouds or does one have to update the entire hdrp including clouds and such? Does anyone have detailed upgrade steps?

 

Hello,

I just started playing around with the volumetric clouds and they look quite nice so far!
I would like to address a few issue I have right now when trying to use a render texture for the clouds maps:

1. All cloud types use the tex R channel. Could this be changed to use RGBA for each cloud type so a single texture can be used?



2. Using a render texture is not updating in real time unless the clouds map multiplier is changed. So ror now I just add a random value per frame:



Thanks!

 

in case you use a classic RenderTexture you have to tell the system that the content of the texture has changed by calling IncrementUpdateCount() on the render texture.
if you use a CustomRenderTexture simply add: updateMode = CustomRenderTextureUpdateMode.Realtime;

 

Thanks for the tip. I use a render texture generated at runtime, but the above doesn't seem to work for my case for some reason. I use command buffers to render some objects to the render texture.

 

Illuminati confirmed

 

As far as I am aware we need to use the whole hdrp package from GitHub if we want (semi)automatic updates through the package manager, otherwise, we would need to update the package content manually.

Also, be sure to download all the dependencies from GitHub as well, here are all the packages I downloaded from git:

 

For the presets offered in simple clouds, I think some more parameters would be good, such as scale, shape factor(if applicable) and density

 

Also, an update mode similar to the physically-based sky would be good for performance and flexibility.

• OnChanged would allow us to have clouds without wind to be rendered at full resolution if the sun is static while also give us flexibility at runtime along with very good performance (This combined with next point).

• I don't know how to explain myself but could it be possible to have the whole cloudscape be rendered at once when in the non-local mode because even when the wind is zero I can see artifacts due to temporal accumulation when rotating the camera at a fairly normal speed. We can currently easily see the outlines of the camera frustum when rotating. This could be offered as an option if it has a huge impact on performance and would be a good match with OnChanged update mode.

 

I just tried it in a new outdoor test scene. Have you tried moving the sunlight around in playmode(it's rotation)? If you get any changes in brightness on the ground that would be cloud shadows. Remember that they are not as strong and as high res as other shadows. If you have not got any weird configurations in the render pipeline assets, hdrp global settings or custom frame settings, then I'm out of wisdom on that one..

 

Ive tried moving it around in playmode, tweaking the cloud thickness, everything. Im gonna update my drivers tonight see if that might fix the issue. Other than that im thinking it must be a bug

 

Processing Volumetric cloud in Realtime reflection probe works very well. But it has no effect for Sky reflection and Baked light.

 

is there any changes for clouds in b5, it causing high cpu usage and almost lock up my pc?

Note: it's kinda Random and bit hard to repro

 

Can I ask if the volumetric cloud system will work with raytraced effects - for example reflections in glass any time soon? Is this something that will happen reasonably soon or is it just not on the cards for the forseeable future. The reason I ask this is that we really need a solution that allows us to change the time of day dynamically and reflect the sky/light the scene while also using raytracing for arch viz. HDRIs are fine - but a fixed point in time, so this is pretty critical to make sure this can work.
Here's hoping!!!!

 

Soft cloud shadow please...

 

Currently, the sun's occlusion seems a bit wrong (I think), The way sun flare is properly occluded but the main disc not making the transition seems a bit weird. Also, it emphasizes the low resolution of the cloud quite a bit if noticed.

Maybe it could be fixed with higher resolution clouds but as of the main sun disc it really sticks out when it's still visible through thick clouds:

These were my settings for cloud:

 

My resolution was the highest one "512" and my cloud shadow distance was even smaller than the default one,it's 6000.
I clearly understood the importance of these two options.

and i also understood the sun direction and the cloud shape are important too.

So let me do a extremely idealization.

highest shadow resolution "512"
shortest shadow distance "1000"
cloud shape is the default one "Simple" ->"Cloudy"
sun angle is ""60"
Unity2021.2.b5 HDRP12 (not the github one)

this is the result,the best result you can get with cloud shadow.the hard feeling is still noticeable even in a gif.

My guess is that you guys did not test with a real size character in a simple white cube ground based scene to see how the cloud shadow works.
and the Density Multiplier or shadow opacity is too low to see hard feeling in the shadow boundary.

It looks ok from far distance but no good with a real game character distance.

Everything will goes to much much much worse when users trying to use their custom cloud settings.

We need a much softer cloud shadow to use this beautiful cloud system in real project.

 

Can you share some more details on this and what it will and will not do? This is quite exciting and I am sure other members here would love to have more info too.

 

And here is one not very idealized scene:

shadow resolution "512"
shadow distance "4000"
cloud shape "Simple" ->"Custom"
sun angle is ""15"

It's not even common to huge open world games,they will need at least 6000-10000 shadow distance.

Simply increasing the shadow resolution and reducing shadow distance won't fix it.

When you are moving around the shadow ,things could go much worse.

 

Hi,i have sent it.

Case 1355981

Thank you for your hard working!

When you open it,it should be looked like this:

Just wait there and watch the cloud shadow go over these cubes.
or you can move around with array key and mouse to see how do shadows jitter.


Edit:
Sorry i forget include the camera script that let camera free fly...
please add the script "FreeCamera.cs" that in "Library\PackageCache\com.unity.render-pipelines.core@12.0.0\Runtime\Camera" on your maincamera....

 

I really have to say the new volumetric clouds now really look good (GitHub version) (much better than expanse I think given the performance and quality), but just wanted to ask if things like these would be implemented

• watch at 1:03, that could also be an use case for feeding custom data though compute shaders to volumetric fog (as mentioned in a previous post) if it's released alongside cloud system. This would allow custom systems to take heightmaps and have things like subtractive volume for fog which is really missing right now tbh.
• Add an option make the clouds go lower than 0 as right I have to place my scene really really high to get thick enough clouds below my level and that messes up the physics and isn't really viable sadly.
• The sunset looks much better than unity's PBS sky which just doesn't look good at sun angles around -5 to -12, also given the performance hit when changing sun direction shows Unity wasn't focused on dynamic time of day scenarios at runtime. (watch at 0:53)
• Space games like scenarios are much better handled given that expanse has proper support for planetary radius while for VC we still have some arbitrary curvature parameter, Also, it much better handles smaller planet radius given height based fog in unity just doesn't work alongside PBS sky. I would have used Fog volume for this but we are limited to cube shaped volumes and creating 3d Textures for volume this big either showed visible pixelation or wasn't really memory friendly to have higher 3d textures in memory.
• Also, Unity's handle even glitch out at large distance considering they don't use HDRP's camera relative rendering (I think so because a primitive like capsule mesh renders perfectly at those distance but transforms and other handles just glitch out)

Considering focus might change from implementing cutting edge features in HDRP to DOTS or something else next release cycle.

 

This is a really good example of what could be done on top of volumetric cloud system:

• They seem to have flowmap like input for cloud velocity, which seem better in unity's case as well because we can use flowmaps for Cloud layer just not with Volumetric clouds right now

• Their editor seems much more friendly for creating larger planet scale environment than unity's editor right now. (biggest reason being the editor camera speed multiplier being caped at 2x for some reason )

• I haven't used unreal much but seems like they have option to author volumetric materials as well (for clouds and other things), right now shader graph can only do bare minimum of shader creation sadly.

• As it currently stands, it almost impossible to get anything other than the earth preset to get to look good and work with other physically based effects properly, this makes having stylized scenes really hard.

So it would be really good that unity considers other diverse scenarios when finalizing Volumetric clouds as the next time it gets updated maybe after quite a while and we would be stuck with this system if we don't want to modify the source ourselves which comes with problem of maintaining it throughout each update cycle .

 

https://twitter.com/RaphErnaelsten/status/1387138861416042505
This does look like a pretty good and lightweight solution for URP

It seems to have volumetric shadows as well and the cloud's shading is also looking pretty good given it looks full resolution.

 

Sooo....... all these beautiful features and even the new erosion noise are not in the 2021.2 beta 7 that just released....?

they are still in the github version ?

i downloaded beta7,the cloud system have nothing changed.

 

These look really good.
I think now you could add a Y offset slider as well in all the modes given we have vertical velocity.

I have been wondering for quite some time but was that terrain made with new environment system or it's just a regular terrain? (it looks pretty good to be just made with terrain tools and nothing else )

 

Cloud brightness does not look correct.


powderEffectIntensity 1


powderEffectIntensity 0


powderEffectIntensity 0 camera faces 90 degrees left.


powderEffectIntensity1, directional light angle (90,0,0).

 

Will cloud system support PBS spherical mode in the near future?

 

He probably means the lighting of the clouds which currently behaves like the earth is flat (it was the case the last time I checked them at least).
I asked this a few months ago already, but is there some progress being made since then?

 

This looks very awesome. By the way, will you guys improve the clouds rendering when you fly inside the clouds? eg would it be possible to dynamically adjust performance in order to beautify them? I need a dragon / helicopter / plane flying in there. Currently it just looks like Blobs. It's unclear to me what the endgoal will be for Unity. Focus on clouds view from ground or also dramatic looks inside the clouds. And what about weather effects? Lightning, rain, etc.

 

The SIGGRAPH talk on volumetric clouds looks to be made on pretty old iteration of volumetric clouds judging by volumetric cloud settings and the visual quality, the clouds especially the new noise texture looks much better now imo.

EDIT: You should include some sample content for advanced/ manual mode as currently we don't have any examples to look at and maybe report Bugs related to those modes, it would be really helpful to get some standard textures to experiment with these modes (as just using random textures really doesn't help with bug reporting)