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[70% OFF!] UniStorm 5.2 - AAA Volumetric Clouds, URP Support, Weather, Sky, Atmospheric Fog, & More!

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by BHS, Jan 27, 2012.

  1. Legacy

    Legacy

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    Do current owners of the project get a free upgrade to 1.4 or would it be a seperate purchase. Pretty much should i purchase now or wait because it will be a seperate purchase.
     
  2. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser2007 Anyone who buys UniStorm now gets the free upgrades regardless of which version because it's through the Asset Store, but once we release 1.4 the price will go up so it's best to get it early while it's still cheap.
     
  3. elbows

    elbows

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    Cant wait for 1.4, which makes me want to beg you not to add any more new features to 1.4, save any more great ideas for a future release :D
     
  4. RoyS

    RoyS

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    You answered the topic on the RPG type endless terrain. Any possiblilty of perhaps a tornado in the future?
     
  5. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    Hi, could you clarify a few points?
    1. You mentioned there was only one rain system, thought I thought there were two? Does this system handle collisions, so that it doesn't rain inside?

    2. In a multiplayer environment, I would expect my rain system to follow each player, and for each player to have their own particle system. Wouldn't it?
    The server simply tells each client in that area "it is raining here", and each Unity client there kicks off the rain effect. It's not like player A needs to have rain around player B...they just need to show rain around themselves, right? Or am I missing something. It seems like if I see rain all around myself...it will look like there is rain around everyone else.

    Unless you have an online rts game or something, where you could zoom around to different parts of the world and have snow around you, and see rain around another player. I guess it depends on the game.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2012
  6. BHS

    BHS

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    @RoyS We're not sure yet about tornadoes, since they would be randomly picked for the forecast they might happen when people don't want that effect. Maybe well comment that line in the code so if you wish to have it you can just un-comment it.

    @jc_lvngstn No, there is only one. That's the hard part is making a system that will cover online and not online aspects without causing problems for none online games. The way the system is set up if you know your network programming than you should be able to convert it. You'd just need to set an endless amount of arrays then the system would add each player's rain effect to the system and trigger it to turn on when it rains. I'm not sure how clients and online games work though. Having multiple rain systems would be a lot harder than when it's supposed to rain turn on each player's rain particle system. Example, what if player 1 goes near player 2? Are they both going to be able to see each other's rain effects? What if there's 10 players all in the same areas and they can all see each other's effects the game would be lagging due to all the extra effects. If you have one rain system that randomly moves around your world then everything is fine each player will experience rain because the system is always moving. There won't be any complications with players' rain interfering with the other players. It gets a lot harder when you think about a multiplayer environment, but like I've stated earlier we aren't fully familiar with an online environment and the way things work. If there are many players that all share 1 terrain than I'd say there's no issue because you just have a very big particle rain system that will allow everyone to experience rain, but if you're talking many players each with their own particle system it's hard to say how that would work, unless they don't render other players' rain effects. Maybe you could have another way for rain effects such as a rain pillar with multiple layers? That way it would just be textures and polygons, not particles. If you're coding your own game though then I'm sure it won't be hard to implement our system to work with multiple players.

    The rain system has collision detection, so no it won't go through objects.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2012
  7. runner

    runner

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    The advantageous of doing the weather entirely on the client side as nobody will be able to tell the difference where the rain drops or is it dropping over-there as perceived from two client's, unless of course some event about the weather that holds some importance such that its raining or snowing, and then you would share that specific value among the clients and server, NetworkView IDs should be minimized as much as possible. Of course if you want different weather patterns on players in the game then you could prefab the weather system with set values and clone them but you should only being sending values to the clients and letting the client handle the effects.

    UniStorm v1.4 looks great looking forward to release
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2012
  8. virror

    virror

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    Just to clarify a bit, with "endless" i mean that the player can run very far, like x=100000 as an example and terrain is generating on the fly. With uniSky this ended up with player running out of the skydome and the clouds would only move to x,y15000. This could be solved by some simple modification though. So the question is: will this system work without any modification if the player moves from example: -100000 to +100000?
     
  9. BHS

    BHS

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    @Virror I'm not exactly sure, are the cloud attached to the player? Or are they unattached in the distance? I tested the cloud scale and scaled the clouds past 150,000 and they stayed the same ratio and the camera didn't go out when I moved it to 100,000. The only problem with this is that you have to have the camera's far clipping plane set at 200,000. Does this answer your question? I might need a little more info. What do you mean by when you modified UniSky?
     
  10. virror

    virror

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    Ohh, far clipping 200000 don't sound good for fps : p The things i had to do to get UniSky to work was to make sure the domes x and z moved with the player and also modified the code so the clouds x and z pos was calculated regarding to player pos and not a fixed value of 0 - 15000. I guess i just have to buy it and try : ) Looks like a great weather system.
     
  11. mrx000

    mrx000

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    I would buy it now and wait for upgrade, but need more information about its flash support.
     
  12. Legacy

    Legacy

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    Unwrapping my new present now ;) err i mean asset :D. Can't wait for 1.4 and this system does look to be very easily extendable for networking, just have the server send the current weather states to the clients(a little more than that but just giving you the quick rundown version)
     
  13. MaliceA4Thought

    MaliceA4Thought

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    I have to admit, this is the bit that I am waiting to see as well. I had to do similar to Unisky as well to make it have a reasonable effect in my networked game.

    When I have 50 people running round a zone, with all the baddies waiting to be culled, then the client is running at about 50FPS after it's all been occlusion culled etc. The very idea of having moving suns etc mean were not into being able to bake lightmaps very easily, and so to preserve the frame rate, I'm using some fog and a far clipping plane of about 1000 on a normal sized terrain.

    If I need to start running skydomes and forcing the far clipping plane out to about 10k then I am not going to have the framerate left to implement this.

    I guess my ideal would be to have all the weather effects controlled by a single timer (as this seems to be) and then have the rain / snow in a cylinder around each player run by their client and driven from the central timetable (with collisions to stop the rain/snow etc inside buildings.)

    Then it's where do the clouds come into play and it's generally the clouds etc that cause me the issues regarding FPS.

    Again, I have high hopes for this, but I will be waiting to see how the implementation of this gets around the framerate issue for multiplayer.

    I'm watching with extreme interest and having said the above, I am sure I will invest anyway as it's all great learning for me, even if in the end I have to do something different:)

    Regards

    Graham
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  14. virror

    virror

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    Please report your progress with this in this thread because I'm very interested in this as well : D
    Was going to buy this before i went to work this morning but i had some trouble with my connection, so it would not let me : /
     
  15. Legacy

    Legacy

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    Hmmm cant seem to get this to work right, ive tried positioning the storm system in a million different positions but all i get is lighting and sounds and like a small bit of fog no rain or anything o_O i even have the far clipping pane to 10000 and all that does is get rid of my skybox





    this seems like it was made for an extremely small terrain o_O the rain particle is tiny
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  16. virror

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    Lol, nice one : )
     
  17. Legacy

    Legacy

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    ? its not working is what im saying i have a larger size scene but the particle effects are extremely small and i dont see a way to resize them without playing with the settings of the particle emitter and even that doesnt seem to be working.
     
  18. virror

    virror

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    Yeah, that what what i commented about : p
    You have a larger scene than normal? Not one unit = 1m?

    Edit: Dang, thought i was going to be sneaky and download Unity at work so i could buy this one : )
    But it wont let me access the asset store through the firewall. No way to make asset store use a proxy connection i guess?
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  19. Legacy

    Legacy

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    terrain size of 2000x2000 when i dragged in the prefab it was like a 1/50th of the size of the terrain o_O
     
  20. BHS

    BHS

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    That's weird I have never heard of this issue. Which prefab system did you use? Try removing the camera that came with the prefab but transfer the particle systems over first. Also try bringing the clouds in very close to your camera to see if they're rendering properly. Finally if all this doesn't work try reapplying the texture to the material then reapply the material to the clouds.

    Let me know if this help, if it doesn't we'll figure out what's wrong and help you out.

    Edit: if your system is larger than unity's regular scale then you may need to adjust a few thing which isn't a problem. The rain and mist need to be positioned in the center of the camera then moved to a desire height. The particles are small because we used the fps controller as the scale source. If everything is very small just make it bigger. I appologize for the issues they haven't happened before.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  21. Legacy

    Legacy

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    i used the just system prefab since i already have a camera i set the clipping pane to 10,000. my terrain is 2000x2000 and the particles look like they are made for a terrain the size of like 32 or something along those line sthey are very small and not sure what settings to use to scale up the particles without messing things up.
     
  22. virror

    virror

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    LOL, that's kind of not good i guess : p
    My current starting terrain is 5000x5000, not a lot of rain there then : /
    To bad i cant test as well right now, have to wait until i get home.
     
  23. Legacy

    Legacy

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    see? i can see some stuff now but i have to like move it all right on top of my character lol and its only raining in the 1 small spot because of how small the particle effect is, i tried making it bigger but the rain dies before it gets near me and if i increase the energy the rain flys too fast lol. plus i have this really annoying swirly grey thing thats supposed to be fog but its not o_O

     
  24. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser okay I think I know what the problem is. First of all have you gotten the clouds to show up? Second adjust the elipsoid to more than what it is now. This will allow the particles to spread out in both the x and z directions. After you've done that increase the particle size some until you find a nice looking rain. Make sure the rain is above your camera source. Keep in mind it does have collision detection.

    You are using the particle emitter right? There's also a rain pillar system.
     
  25. Legacy

    Legacy

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    i guess i dont understand what you mean by camera source, my camera follows my player around, so should i be attaching the rain effect to my camera?also if you look at the 2nd picture the pillar there is supposed to be fog but instead its just this odd black thing that goes around in a circle almost like sun shafts
     
  26. BHS

    BHS

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    Yes, attach both to your camera. The fog cloud is what you're looking for its the actual falling mist/fog. The swirling black thing is the mist streak effect which looks odd with out the other effects. Make sure you attach the fog cloud to the camera also. You may also need to adjust te fog cloud. I still don't know why you're having scaling issues it's very odd.
     
  27. Legacy

    Legacy

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    well if i attach them to my camera my camera follows the player inside buildings how is that going to work?
     
  28. Legacy

    Legacy

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    also it has a huge framerate hit i go from 60 fps on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti with dynamic shadows but also with baked occlusion set to the max setting and this system drops my frames to 24 fps o_O

    Edit: Actually im running at 75fps with vert sync turned on and with UniStorm on it drops to 24 - 34 fps on max detail
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  29. virror

    virror

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    Hmm, that's a pretty big hit, i hope you are doing something wrong : p
     
  30. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser2007 The frame rate issue is probably because you did something wrong. I tested the exact scene that's in the demo on my laptop and got 77 fps even with splash effects and pro image effects. I'm positive the issue you're having can be resolved.

    $Screen.png

    There is a low draw call splash effect that you can add to the rain system instead of the one that's on there now which will probably fix your problem. You altered the rain so whatever you did you spawning too many rain splash effects and you're using the dense ones. The instructions on how to do this is in the documentation.

    Also try removing the splash effect form the rain collisions script to see if it helps. If it does this is your problem. UniStorm hardly uses anything, we spent a great deal of time to make sure it didn't affect performance and we tested it on the laptop with the above screenshot as this laptop is lower to middle end. So if it doesn't affect a laptop it shouldn't affect your computer.

    Please if you need anymore help we'll help you out and get it running properly on your computer.

    Also what's your ellipsoid settings set to and what's your particle emission amount?

    As for the rain inside I'll make a script real quick to help you disable the rain when you're inside. Just give me a few minutes.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  31. virror

    virror

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    Good to hear, this is a buy as soon as i can manage to buy it : p
    Will have a friend buy it for me instead : )
    Seems like a great piece of software!
     
  32. BHS

    BHS

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    @Virror Thanks, great to hear.


    @Efaser2007 How's your project coming along did the above work? I've created 2 scripts for you one that enables and one that disables the rain when you add it to gameobject.Just create two cubes or add them to your door and make sure they have IS TRIGGER check, which will make it walk through.

    Turn rain on:
    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. //Put your rain here
    3. var rain : GameObject;
    4.  
    5. //This turns the rain on
    6. function RainOn()
    7. {
    8.     rain.renderer.enabled = true;
    9. }
    10.  
    11. //If your player hits this object turn rain on
    12. function OnTriggerEnter(hit: Collider)
    13. {
    14.     if (hit.CompareTag("Player"))
    15.     {
    16.  
    17.     RainOn();
    18.     }
    19. }
    Turn rain off:
    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. //Put your rain here
    3. var rain : GameObject;
    4.  
    5. //This turns the rain off
    6. function RainOff()
    7. {
    8.     rain.renderer.enabled = false;
    9. }
    10.  
    11. //If your player hits this object turn rain off
    12. function OnTriggerExit(hit: Collider)
    13. {
    14.     if (hit.CompareTag("Player"))
    15.     {
    16.     RainOff();
    17.     }
    18. }
    19.  
    20.  
     
  33. virror

    virror

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    I have a few more questions.
    I read on the feature list "lightly cloudy, partly cloud, mostly cloudy, foggy, rain, and lighting and thunder storms"
    No clear sky? Only possible to have different cloudy weather?
    Also i am a bit curious what you guys have for plans for the next release : D
    If i can wish i will wish for snow ; )
     
  34. BHS

    BHS

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    @Virror Well the way the light clouds shader works is it takes in the color of light that hits it. It has no alpha level adjustments so there's no way to fade the clouds upon transition. The storm cloud shader allows smooth alpha fading which allows the clouds to slowly fade in and out, but theses clouds aren't affected by light.

    So we can add a way to make it clear but it wouldn't be by fading, it would be instant each night. This should be fine though because this is how skyrim does it each night it picks its cloud material. If you are interested in completely clear skies then we can make it happen.

    As for the snow, your wish will come true because that is a feature we want in a future version of UniStorm along with randomized temperatures, complete with 4 seasons based off a 12 month year.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  35. Legacy

    Legacy

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    I am going to try it again soon im actually attempting to optimize some stuff with my game project since i recently wrote a zone system i wanted to test it out if i reduced zones to 4 1000x1000 areas and use my zone engine to stitch them together so i will let you know in a bit thanks for the help :) (The draw calls could be related to the terrain im not sure whats up with the scene but i purchased the landscapes v2 pack on the asset store and each one of those terrains is extremely realistic but massive draw calls and makes the unity interfaces lag when registering where you click... im extremely unsatisfied with it.) This however is an awesome system and i will figure out how to get it to work. Does the new 1.4 version have to be setup like this? or is there some sort of automated setup?
     
  36. Legacy

    Legacy

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    Okay so i resetup the storm but i realized your logic wont work with the turning rain on and off when walking inside or outside because what happens if i look outside? no rain lol
     
  37. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser2007 The logic is correct I tested it multiple times. There are 2 separate scripts, one that turns it on, and the other turns it off. You have to have your player tagged with "Player". Put each script on a separate game object with a collider and IS TRIGGER checked. It depends on how your scene is set up. Do players manually walk into houses or are they transformed there through script? Either way the scripts work you need to logically place them. If you go in the rain turns off, if you go out the rain turns on.

    If your players can walk into buildings without a level change than the rain has colliders and will not pass through objects.

    If you gave me more information I can figure out why it's not turning on.
     
  38. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    Seeing a lot of

    The class defined in script file named 'CloudMover' does not match the file name!

    This a javascript/C# thing, or Unity 3.5 maybe?
     
  39. BHS

    BHS

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    @jc_lvgstn that's weird, that means that the script name isn't matching with the actual name, but JavaScript does this automatically so it should matter what the name is. We haven't tested UniStorm in 3.5 so maybe this is why? We will be testing this latter today, but I'm not convinced this is a 3.5 issue.

    We'll figure it out and let you know how to resolve this.

    Has anyone else who bought UniStorm used it in unity 3.5? If so, please confirm that it works okay.
     
  40. Legacy

    Legacy

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    the rain is turning on its just only affecting a 30x1x30 area, my zones are all open world zones(i have built a zone engine for an MMO) the houses are all in the open world like wow or any other mmo, if i attach the rain and mist effects to my camera and i walk inside the houses the camera follows me inside the houses and if i have those scripts turning off the rain if i look outside there will be no rain :p you know what i mean? like i have open doors and see through windows that you can look out of heres a screenshot.


     
  41. BHS

    BHS

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    Alright got it, in this case you don't need the rain trigger on and off because the rain does this automatically with the world particle collider. Make sure the world particle collider is attached to both your particle fog and rain. Then it will still be raining outside while you're inside buildings, as the rain will be colliding with the house's roof. Also make sure your rain is high enough that it will collide with the house's collisions. Make sure the min kill velocity is set to .5 or 1.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2012
  42. Legacy

    Legacy

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    The problem is if the rain only affects 30x1x30 if i set it too high the rain dies before it even hits the ground and i cant attach it to the camera because the rotation on the camera changes with my player since it moves with the player.
     
  43. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser2007 You can extend the life span of the particles by increasing the min and max energy. As for the small parameter of the rain, increase the ellipsoid amount to whatever you'd like maybe 50x50. As for the last thing you attach it to your player not the camera. If you don't care the rain being affected by real time movement you can uncheck "simulate in world space" in the particle's settings. This will make the rain fall continuously without being affected by your player's movement, but will look somewhat fixated on the screen.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2012
  44. Legacy

    Legacy

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    I will give it a try thank you :) also what about the swirling black cloud pillar thing lol is that supposed to surround the zone? and also what about the mist that doesnt have collision correct? if not it would go through the buildings.
     
  45. virror

    virror

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    Only thing i have noticed so far is about 14 shader warnings. Did not have the time to set it up yesterday though.
     
  46. BHS

    BHS

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    @Virror thats odd we don't have any custom shaders in UniStorm 1.2 so I don't know why that is. Can you post the error code? It's probably just an asset that some how made it into the project when we didn't intend for it to, like when we were developing 1.2. I'm sure it's not an issue.

    When we release 1.4 we'd like to just have separate unity package files so you can just import them into your projects. We'll have one for pro and one for indie. Making unity package files is a lot easier because it allows us to test opening the same scene our buyers would in multiple ways and situations.

    @Efacer2007 alright let us now how everything works. Yes, you will need to apply a world particle collider to the mist cloud particle also. Just do the same as I described above.

    We're getting ready to test UniStorm 1.4 on Unity 3.5. Everything should works fine, we'll be posting the results in a few.
     
  47. virror

    virror

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    I'm at work now so don't have access to them. They will probably be gone with 1.4 anyway i guess : )

    Edit: Ohh, clear skies is a wish from me, i think that's needed to make a complete weather system. Weather is not all about storms, even though your storms looks super nice : p
    Not a hurry though.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2012
  48. Legacy

    Legacy

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    Btw i love your mystic forest pack :) i purchased that a while ago and ive been using it ever since.
     
  49. virror

    virror

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    Been looking at the forest packs as well and they look very good!
    I think i will buy the mountain tree pack later and maybe some other pack as well, will fit our game good.
    Will also fit the snow update very good ; )
     
  50. BHS

    BHS

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    @Efraser2007 Thanks, great to hear.

    @Virror Thanks, glad you like them. We will also work on the clear skies.

    We have tested UniStorm version 1.4 on Unity 3.5 without a single error! Everything works flawlessly and on the desktop computer we tested it on we got 100 fps!

    As for flash, there were some errors, but this is due to Unity changing some of the way the used to do their JavaScript in Unity 1.4 we'll try to resolve this issue, but this means we have to change some of the programming on the UniStorm weather system script which might cause problems for the version the works with Unity. So, we'll have to see how we're going to approach this.

    Flash has many issues with everything because it's still in its beta test stage so I'm sure time will also help. I don't understand why the programming is different though, it's kind of..annoying. I know that a lot of people are having issues with flash, Unity can't even get flash to support their terrain system yet.