Volumetric Clouds

Negative... No console issues/warnings.
Will try to see if it is something else...

 

I'm unable to get the Depth Blend to work. It shows cloud but they don't blend with environment or objects.

I've added Write Depth Textures script you posted and tried with various Rendering Paths.

 

What OS are you using ? Shader forge or the standard one ? Does the shader displays the 4 check boxes (Depth blend, edge blend, complex lighting and normalized lighting) ?

 

OSX, Unity 4.6. I have the 4 checkboxes. The Depth Blend changes the clouds but without blending with objects.

I think the standard one, I'm use the one click cloud prefab.

 

Could you check if unity's soft particles acts in the same way ? (Enable soft particle in unity's settings, put a soft particle material over a mesh and make that mesh clip with another non-soft particle mesh)

 

Version 1.3 finally available, here's the change log :

Spoiler

Version 1.3 :
New Features

• Light color intensity can now be controlled via the alpha of the base color.
• Rewrote how the planes are generated, the script can now generate curved planes.
• Created a second shader which will only be used to cast shadows, really fast compared to the older one !
• Wrote a custom inspector for the script.
  • Added the functions above.
  • Rearranged variables position.
• Rewrote the custom inspector for the shader.
  • Design changed from messy inspector to a little bit more practical.
  • Extensive help available inside the inspector, a little toggle will show a description and some tips under each variables.

Bug Correction

• Fixed an error with the normals calculation in the shader, it shouldn't shade the wrong direction when the light direction is horizontal.

 

Hi just bought this as it looks really great, but I'm having trouble getting it to work in a 2D environment. I want to simply rotate the Game Object's x axis, but I get what looks like barcode if I do that. If I leave the rotation alone I can see the clouds in the y direction. How can I get this to appear correctly as a background for my 2D game? I'm not using shader forge. Just standard.

 

@Naphier Hi ! Sorry for the late reply, you could curve them or give them a rotation below 90 on the x axis. I'll pm you a specific shader that'll get rid of this.

 

Sweet, I've got the modified shader and it seems to be working perfectly. I haven't read through the code for it yet, but I'm curious if it is fully compatible with the original shader or breaks its functionality?
Thanks!

 

@Naphier I changed the UV being calculated using the x and z axis in world space to a UV mapped to the geometry(same thing as an uv for your 3d objects).
It wont break anything besides world alignment.
You're welcome !

 

Unfortunately the new shader doesn't appear to work on mobile (Android 5) for some reason. The original does and I can set the x axis to 315 deg and see it working. New shader works perfectly in the editor.
Any clues?

 

@Naphier That's really strange, it might have something to do with how i fake the double sided rendering(saves performances when you aren't looking at clouds), could you try running the shader with the option "Curved" turned on, input two segments and reorient them to face the direction you want.
If that didn't work, could you write down the exact process you are going through when using them on mobile ?

 

I've tried a few different options now and no go.
Current setup:





I've tried flipping normals, rotating the meshes 180, and using curves.
I hope this helps and I appreciate the assistance!

 

@Naphier I sent you another pm, hope that fixes it.

 

I seem to have an issue with the clouds flickering at higher distances, is there something I am doing wrong?

 

@Andit I can't seem to reproduce your problem, what's your setup ? What version of unity are you using ?
Is the flickering happening in play mode too ?

 

Ok it seems that my problem was due to some scripts that were not calling animations properly. Thanks anyway!

 

Does this asset work with Unity 5?

 

Yup, I am using unity 5 atm and it works just fine.

 

Hi there Eideren,

Can you update the cloud shader to use Light Probes in unity 5? Using a single light probe to sync the color gardient of the clouds with the sky could be amazing...

 

@Project Mysh Unity changed quite a lot of stuff with version 5 and they didn't really document any of them ...
I'll try to implement that as soon as I know about it !

 

Awesome plugin, with a great price!



Also take a peep at a small video here and here!

 

Hey,

I just got your asset and I really like it. It works perfectly. But I've come across a problem when I enable shadow casting. This is how the clouds look when I enable it:



Am I doing something wrong?

 

@Goldenvale That's really strange, could you share the settings of the shader and the script ?
Are you using a custom shadow map, something like Shadow Softener ?

 

@Eideren


Here are the settings:




I'm not using any custom shadows

 

@Goldenvale That's not it, if you strip down everything in your scene does this strange shadow still appear ? If so, could you pm me the project with what's creating it ? And if it still does it after the strip down, do you have another PC or device to test it on ?

 

Nevermind, I think it's something in my scene that's creating the issue. I won't be using the shadows feature anyway. Thanks for the reply and keep up the good work.

 

Just bought. Black background on deferred, fine on forward. We use Unity 5 deferred...

 

Also seeing that strange fringing. Mac, Unity 5, deferred.

 

@hippocoder + @garyhaus
Sorry about that !
Deferred and legacy deferred are fine on my end and I'm using the latest update ...
The shader should supposedly render in forward mode even in deferred rendering since transparency isn't supported in deferred.
I don't remember if I changed anything since the last update so I'll send you my files.

If it still doesn't work, could you try out the shadow caster material alone on a unity plane and then the cloud material to see which of the two bugs out ?
Could you post some screenshots as well ?

 

More info: we use linear with HDR on camera and classic tone mapping (as is necessary for HDR).

Tried the latest you linked to but no joy. Regarding screenshot, well it's just overwriting skybox with black from what I can see. The clouds are still present, it just is on a black background.

 

@hippocoder So that's your setup ?

It's fine on my end...
It might be a drawing order issue, anyway, I sent you two other shaders, I hope those works.

 

Will give it a go ASAP. Thank you!

 

Correct, but camera must have HDR ticked on, and the post effect tone mapping applied. The camera's clear settings are set to Skybox and the skybox is applied within the Lighting window (procedural unity skybox)

 

Another issue I notice is when installing your package, shader keywords break in other packages. I wonder if you're using a lot of them?

 

@hippocoder + @garyhaus
I guess those shaders didn't work either.
I'm currently looking for another PC to test the shader on, I'll try to fix those problems if I can finally recreate it.

That shader has 4 on and 4 off, I could probably remove the off and put an #elseif.
It's probably because you hit the 64 keywords limit, I dont know if it is still the limit though.

 

It breaks Amplify Motion's one. I guess it's project wide so I should start trimming shaders. Did you do your tests in DX11 or are you on a mac?

 

@hippocoder Dx11.
128 seems to be the limit according to unity's doc.

 

@hippocoder & @garyhaus I finally got my hands on another PC, did a clean install of unity and I still can't replicate that error...

@hippocoder Are you using a mac as well ?

 

@hippocoder & @garyhaus I sent you a cutoff shader, it shouldn't have the same problem but it wont support transparency.

 

Seems like it has magically cleared itself up... Ugg I cannot figure out why it is all of a sudden working again... Anyway, it works and thank you...

Gary

 

Have you tested the CloudsShaderForgeEdition with Unity 5.02p1 and ShaderForge 1.13(latest version)? I'm getting this when I try to use it:



I've seen this kind of thing before from ShaderForge. I think it was an old version corrupting shaders.

 

That's just shader forge 1."something" defaulting the rendering to dithered cutout, you just have to open the blending menu, turn off dithered alpha clip and compile it.

 

Thanks, that was it. Now to figure out why the SF shader is so much darker than the other one.

 

I've been playing with this on my own with no luck: Is there any way to get blurrier(not as hard edges), lighter(less alpha) shadows with the cloud shadows? I'm just trying to make them appear a bit more like real life while still having hard, dynamic shadows from objects close to the ground.

 

Well, if I knew that it would already be implemented .

Before Unity 5.0 it was impossible without a lot of trickery (aka using projectors which are a pain to set-up and don't really work on complicated situations) since the pixels in the shadow map(light attenuation) where either black or white(black = shaded, white = lit) (I wont really explain why since that's a really vast subject and It's not entirely related to this feature).

The guys at Unity changed the way shadows are filtered in Unity 5.0 and now it is technically possible, alpha objects are rendered in the shadow map using dithering (it's kind of like creating holes in the shadows, +transparent -> +holes) and then the shadow map is filtered(blurred), the holes are averaged and appears as if they are a lighter kind of shadow.

The problem is that it's only available on their "Standard Shader", I didn't find any documentation as to how we are supposed to implement it.

If you did find something that could help, drop by this thread and I'll be happy to look at it and implement it.

 

Isn't the Standard Shader source available or is it just impenetrable to read? I'll have to do some more looking into those shadow changes in Unity 5 you're talking about.

edit: Oh yeah, does this support Deferred render? I get black halos at the edges of the clouds when I switch out of Forward.

 

Hi Eideren,

Just wanted to say I'm loving these clouds.. will aim for 2x layers in the final build.

 

We might find something by skimming over the builtin shaders but it's a gigantic mess, I'll try to dive back to it when I have enough free time.

Yeah, some people reported that but i can't find why it would render that way, you got the same thing with the SF shader and the normal one, right ?

 

Looks really nice !
Really nice job on that map, is it based on real world data or did you reproduce it ?