Feedback Volumetric Clouds

I have one more thing to say, although the controls are more than enough for normal scenes but I think one more noise layer could really help out with the Custom mode as I really don't want to create a coverage map for those Mid-sized details .

Also, you guys fixed the repetition in shape by using the multiplier but the repetitions in noise is still there (a bit exaggerated here but totally possible in fly throughs):



A second noise layer (please add this) or maybe a fix similar to one with the shape could fix this.

 

Also, it's visible in the overcast preset currently:

 

totally, the sunsets/rise and twilights have always been the weaker points mind, and the most dynamic looking, so i can certainly appreciate the massive steps here for PBS and the cloud systems

 

i think the in and above clouds is being tackled more after the initial drop of functionality and performance for under cloud views

 

Well, one more suggestion would be to add a dimmer/toggle to directional lights itself to control it's effect on Volumetric cloud

Aa weird bug when rotating camera:

 

Hi,i tried the cloud in the version 2021.2.b14,(not github one)
the cloud color difference between different height is really awesome in most time.
but i think there should be a multiplier slider for this effect.
some people may not want this effect, some may want it a bit lower.
these bright clouds in twilight time is a bit of weird to me,
i know this is physically correct,but i think there should be some option for us to adjust it.

 

Good point! I agree

 

Btw, the fog is rendered behind the clouds in Planar reflection from day 1.

it has no problem in reflection probe and SSR in 2021.2.b14.

maybe it's my settings are wrong or it's just a bug no one mentioned.




2. another bug i have noticed is the clouds in reflection probe is not moving.

so it's hard to capture a good reflection when the clouds flying over some good place in playmode.

this could be a problem to other people doing heavy reflection based project and they will be sad when they can not use planar reflection for clouds because the 1st bug i mentioned.....

 

Hey @pierred_unity, I have one more suggestion,
Currently the way Earth's curvature is handled makes it so the coverage maps change drastically with respect to world origin (most probably the pivot for coverage texture is not at world origin if it makes sense ),

Because of this we can't really create a smooth interpolation between different "Earth curvature" on screen as the placement of clouds change drastically. If this is fixed (with an option to choose the pivot, if possible, for future proofing) we could do some cool effects with changing earth curvature at runtime.
I hope what I said made some sense

 

Also, lens flare occlusion still doesn't work with volumetric clouds (local and non-local) which user would expect for the final release imo.

Just a suggestion about that, Currently I don't think it's possible to provide custom Occlusion data to SRP lens flare system, so it would be much better if you guys create a public facing API that supports user created systems to provide that data to Lens flare system and implement your logic using that instead.

I'm suggesting this because there could be cases where transparent objects don't write to depth buffer (which is used for occlusion I think) and we still may want it to occlude certain lens flares according to game scenario. (Say a window which gets very dirty over time, and we may want it to occlude the flares but not necessarily write to depth due to some reason)

 

I have to say, this now sticks out like a sore thumb. It's nice, and I know probably realistic and correct
but it's making it hard or maybe impossible to get the look i'm going for currently. An option as suggested by dongliang would be nice

 

I switched to using the beta so I'll need to wait a bit to test the SunLight dimmer. Will be useful
Actually, the Scattering Tint helped a bit, but
the issue though is I have to push it pretty aggressively, and by doing so, it changes the scene/terrain lighting completely (and the look of all the clouds) which isn't viable


without tint:



With tint:d





I like very thick clouds (unrealistic) where this issue can be more apparent:





I will test the sunlight dimmer when it lands in beta

 

At lower density and white scattering color:

Black Scattering color:


Shouldn't there be no shadows when using white scattering color? I mean the results look good at lower density, but I was just wondering if this is by design?

Like my reason for doing this was that I wanted well defined shapes, so I increased the density to max, but it looked bad even with scattering color set to white:



So, I think you should improve upon this so that clouds with higher density (for well-defined shape) could also look good enough/ simply get a lighter overall tone as currently this is lightest shade possible.

 

And second thing I wanted to ask was why isn't there any option to change cloud color?
The scattering tint as the name suggests only changes color of the scattered ray, not the reflected ones. This could really help with stylized scene quite a bit.

It's better when density is low, at higher density the reflected part is white all the time.

At normal settings:

 

It would be super awesome if a dev could spend the few minutes to make this a one-click solution directly out of that error message and take this every alpha version occurring pain away

 

Just making sure the system can handle most of needs one might expect

Yeah, this definitely helped with the issue .
I was trying to get well defined shapes instead of soft clouds to make sure the system could handle it (and as you pointed out, the way clouds are optimized make it look pixelated on the edges)

What I thought was that the Tint Color "multiplied" by density is supposed to define how dark self-shadowing/Scattering should be (along with multi scattering to control the diffusion), but it doesn't have full control over it currently. I think from an artist point of view (I'm not an artist btw ) I may want more absolute control over it. (Although it does look rather good nonetheless)

Problem with relying on this is that the clouds look really underexposed in most situation, and if I don't decrease the dimmer value the color being reflected (white) overpowers the tint color.

 

In 2021 you don't have to do anything the clouds are there already... I think u have to update the default HDRP scene template in unity HUB

 

Thanks! I installed Alpha 11 and was wondering why I still have to set that manually after I read it would be automatic some time ago.

 

I really wanted to say that this system works really good for the theme and scenarios they were targeting.
The performance is just too good for the visual quality it offers (Compared to what UE4/5 offers, its performance cost is very high comparatively)

Here is the sample scene I created with it:


I have attached the Volume settings file for this scene if anyone's interested. (Maybe saturation is a bit too high )


The performance after a bit of tweaking is just mind blowing for the quality I get. I get around 200fps at max preset on my machine, 5900HX and 3060 laptop GPU (Volumetric fog disabled)
The vertical wind really adds to the realism here.

Kudos to @pierred_unity , @auzaiffe and their team

 

I just have one more feedback regarding this,
Currently when using the presets, we don't have any control except the cloud's thickness, it would be really helpful to add some more control over these presets.

The example I showed above was made using Custom mode, where I was able to tweak the ambient occlusion curve but in other presets the scene looks really washed out because of the default presets (and my scene setup):


So, it may be helpful to add some multipliers (if absolute controls are not possible).
Although I could achieve similar looks using other modes and more control, but I really like these presets and want to have a bit more control over it

 

It really is quite amazing
The performance is just too impressive, while still looking good.

These volumetric clouds are only taking 1ms on a laptop GTX 1070!

 

tried a overcast/sandstorm scene :

 

Awesome! Thanks, gotta try that with a new project

 

Will it be in 2021.2?
I don't see a backport label, but doesn't hurt to ask
Maybe since the pull was opened a long time ago it'll make it to 2021.2? Even though it was just merged

 

I had to try the view above the clouds. Lots of trials, made me wish to have a button to save the current setting quickly.

 

Is there any way to get volumetric clouds to look good using just sky ambient light?


Currently when just using ambient light the color tint parameter just doesn't change anything (because it only changes the shadowed part which isn't present in ambient lighting), and it lacks any detail. (Only when using height based custom ambient occlusion, I was able to give them some sense of depth)
With erosion occlusion set to 1 it still lacks any real sense of depth or just looks bad:


using ambient light (stormy preset):

When using a strong sun light and pbs sky:


The difference is just too drastic, I think.

I know the HDRI in the screenshot wasn't suitable for volumetric clouds to be overlayed on but given we don't have a good of authoring cloud coverage maps (at least I don't know how to till now ) I can't really overlay these clouds (volumetric or 2D ones) on cloudless sky HDRI's either. (It would look really good if we could overlay these clouds on HDRIs I think, I tried this HDRI for clear sky but it looked bad tbh)

Right now the clouds are only suitable for PBS sky.

 

I know it's a long shot, but I would love this system to be usable in URP too because in URP I am making my skyboxes inside Unity and then rendering to cubemap via probe.

Do you think it will be possible one day? Thanks!

 

Ooo Interesting.

You can already export the skies in the edit menu in HDRP as an exr.

It does currently ignore an overlays like clouds though.
But I can see in the long run it might be an option since having local mode unchecked in the cloud is somewhat like a sky box.

So maybe it's in the pipeline for both SRPs


Additionally if you can get it to work, the recorder can export 360 images ( I'm sure exr was an option.) But I believe it's captured the 6 sided set up that URP uses

Alternative in for hdrp You could set up a capture with the EV ranges and merge the final into and HDRI maybe as a fallback.

 

Definitely possible for them to do it one day. The screenshot I attached is mostly using this cloud system in a fork I have of URP12. So keep bugging them and maybe it'll happen lol.

 

Hey apologies if this came off wrong. Totally not my intention. I know it's more involved than simply copying over what you've done as we've added a large codebase on top of URP that had a side effect of making an implementation of this system a lot easier.

Our min spec starts at compute capable devices so we don't have the same limitations you guys have to deal with and affords us way more flexibility with the feature set we can have. I do think it is a little silly to have a requirement that a feature must run on every single device out there as I don't think any other popular engine does that and I hope that gets relaxed in the future. That said though you guys are doing awesome stuff with HDRP and hope it continues but also hope URP gets some love too haha.

 

Yes, you're correct.
I think what I meant was that It's not suitable for any skybox with any details above sea-level. The hdri provided is too similar to PBS sky anyway.

It would be really helpful if you could show some example using such a HDRI:https://polyhaven.com/a/autumn_park

I think some option to blend clouds at the horizon would be really good.

Only way right now it to cover below the horizon using height based fog or geometry (some part above it as well) but it covers any detailed part of HDRI, if we could blend clouds near horizon, maybe fade into the sky near horizon, or take an input cubemap mask for things like mountains, trees and such

 

First thing comes to mind is to enable back directional light but tweak it hard: put strictly above player (90C), make "Angular diameter" extra huge (maybe even disable "Specular" component checkbox to make sun less noticeable), tweak sun color to be green - all this *potentially* can bring desired effect on volumetric clouds.

 

I know the exposure is a bit low, but you will get my point.
This is what it looks like with something more sensible HDRI :

What I used: https://polyhaven.com/a/autumn_park
or try this one: https://polyhaven.com/a/flower_road (better HDRI for this scenario but still the same problem)
With fog:

Without Clouds and fog:

I have no idea how to blend it with the environment (HDRI) right now.

 

Just one more example:

 

Also, when changing the earth curvature parameter, if we are not using height based fog, there are no option to hide the clouds beneath the sea level (It could be hidden using geometry though but for non-local mode it would be better to have some other solution as well)
Currently it looks like this (Irrespective of the sky used):