[Removed Support] Olander's Realistic Weather for Time of Day

With Time of Day being controlled by the ORW the humidity controls the density of the clouds. Time controls the angle/rotation of the sun. So each client simply needs to be fed these values. If the values are the same then the weather is identical.

What you are attempting to describe is a Weather Zone. I already have these working in my private version....which is now becoming the Pro version to let others enjoy how nice this works as well as getting some game/company funding. Weather Zones function just like the Weather Master of the area. When you enter the outer edge of the sphere the weather begins to change into that Zone. When exiting the weather returns to the global weather of the area. The changes are not instantaneous either but change by an amount you determine in the zone editor per each interval of the weather (default 10.0s). So it is very configurable to how you wish.

In reference to your B....in the distance they should see a storm where the weather zone is. With the given technology level of the particles and Volumetric Clouds what you are seeking is just not technically feasible yet. For example. I can do exactly what you are asking with particle clouds. To make the visuals right the clouds are made of clumping spheres and flat cones. There are 20-30 per cloud to make the clouds look acceptable as well as fly through. and there are 100 cloud formations set at ~50m above the camera to give a nice cloud feel. I simply randomize which cloud spheres are turned on and the number is controlled by the current Weather Level (determined by humidity). Up to 300 particle objects are being used which works on desktop but it does take quite a bit from the FPS loading. v5.3.4+ handle this really well with the new GPU instancing so this is plausible. I may include this in the Pro version but yet to be determined. It may be a support nightmare. Would be a nice feature to have though.....have to think on this.

Rain, Snow, Wind Direction & Velocity (Pro), Lightning, Thunder, Weather Zones (Pro)....may be 100% network sync'd. The randomness with the particle system per client cannot be sync'd....nor would you want to because of serious performance hazards (object instancing). Having Events happen at the same time, all clients in the same weather keeps immersion. The randomness will not break immersion.

Hope that answers your questions.
Cheers
O

 

Thanks for all your explanations, I'm waiting for the pro version (of course) and I'm starting to think to some nice visual effect to render the distant storm (maybe with beautiful distant lightnings and distant thunder's sounds) - maybe an image effect to attach to the camera.

In my game I'm planning zones where it rains anytime and should be really nice to look there from miles and see the storm in progress, while approaching to make some quests.

Thanks again and please keep us informed on the pro version progress.

 

Distant rain and snow with the associated misting is no trouble at all. You can do that now in this free version if you wish. You will not have the Weather Zone effect but you can see/plan the look and feel now (you will need to add your own misting in the free version). The dynamic clouds are the issue....but for planning....use the Ground Fog I have provided as clouds. Works decently. Once Pro is ready this process will be automated and look better.....but have at it with the current stuff...works well.

Cheers
O

 

I'd love to hear what your new source is?

 

Not quite certain on what is being asked here. I suppose perhaps the new source being Unity 5.4 for the new GPU boosts? 5.3.4 is very robust as well but does not perform as nicely.....still though....very robust.

Cheers
O

 

You said you were dropping ToD. Since it hasn't been updated in a year, unfortunately I'm probably going to have to do the same thing so I was wondering what you were moving to.

 

I understand now. Thank you. I am using the standard default Unity 5 directional light (when properly treated are quite excellent) and tweaking the colors of it on a gradient. Several Gradient templates will be provided to simulate various types of planetary lighting. In this fashion we keep the quality very high and the process is dead simple. The skybox is either the 6-Sided or the Cubemap/HDRI....not the procedural.

One thing to note....this weather and lighting does not move like other systems. There is no trickery camera work. The environment is truly the environment size and clients/players simply are part of the world. This makes it much easier to understand how to set your environmental settings. The way it should be.

Thank you for the clarification.

Cheers
O

 

Thank you very much Olander for this contribution!

As I have promised my wife I won't spend any money at the asset store, can you help me out by specifying what needs to be done if I have my own time of day already? I also am going for iboxdb, but you have hinted at how to get that working.

It would really help me out if you went over the steps briefly, any help at all is appreciated!

P.S. when is your pro version going to be released?

 

Pro version is coming soon and I will have a separate forum for it. I will of course post here. As for your own Day/Night Cycle......the ORW is made to work on its own. The Time controller included handles the 24hr Day/Night Cycle which with the code pastings shown in the 1st posting in return control Time of Day. This version of the ORW also controls Time of Days clouds as well. So without a 0-100.0% cloud blending solution you would need to adapt the ORW to rotate a skybox and blend different skyboxes together. The Pro version covers this but this Free version does not.

The answer is....for this Free version....you have some work to do. For the Pro version (~1-2 weeks Price is under assessment...but will be well priced) you get it all in one package....but you end up spending money on the Asset Store.....ohh the quandary.

Good Luck.
Cheers
O

 

HEY O!

its been 4 weeks. Got an update on your PRO release yet?

 

Actually it works really well. But because of the new Unity 5 Subscription Changes (Especially a Pro user like myself) I have been on the fence about selling the ORW as a Pro set and just making it free like this is for the Community. Unity also stumped me on my selling my excellent Hair Shader on the Asset Store with no explanation at all. Kind of pisses one off. I can accept a reason but just stating nothing except declined by our team. Frak that.

In any case. The ORW Pro will most likely become a Free Edition with its own pictures and setup instructions. It was developed in 5.4 but works in 5.1.2 and any versions that the particle effects are not broken in. So I would say 5.1.2, 5.2.2, 5.3.4, and 5.4.0 and later. Such a frakking mess.

I will make the final touchups tomorrow on the Weather Manger Editor, do some regressive testing the rest of the week and make a new ORW Pro forum posting then. Remember this new ORW Pro done not require any additional addons....it 100% works with default Unity 5 things which means if they break it is Unity's fault not ours.

Cheers
O

 

Hi Olander,

Didn't know there had been changes for store sellers. Can you not sell off a private website? You know if it's worth the extra work.

 

Hi docsavage,

I have been working in Unity and UE4 simultaneously for some time now. I like Unity but have been on the fence with the mess that it is....especially doing a lot of back end things where there a numerous work arounds to get things to work. Call these bugs or features but they have been there since Unity 4 when I started. So...I guess they are 'Features'.

I could sell the Hair Shader, ORW, and other things from my private site but with the Unity Sub method the fence has finally cracked and I am done with Unity for good this time. Which means I really do not want to maintain future support. Give these to the Community and let you folks expand/grow the system.

In any case, the ORW Pro looks really good and is really easy to use. Regressive testing is important to nullify bugs which makes the system super robust. I shall post here when it is up and ready.

Cheers
O

 

Sorry to hear that it's got that bad. Thanks for sharing with the community though. I had a couple of ideas for asset to sell on the store but after seeing how things seem to working out for asset store devs I have kicked it into touch for the minute and will stick to the games I have planned. Looking forward to trying ORW though. Thanks

 

Sorry to hear about asset store problems. I tried the current free version and I love it but did not finish setting it up yet.

 

Hi Olander,

I'm working on a project which gets real weather info from Accuweather API every 6 minutes and then updates the scene to current weather on Gear VR device. I'm using Time of Day for the sky dome and the sample url (Current Conditions By LocationKey):
http://api.accuweather.com/currentconditions/v1/335315.json?apikey={your key}&language=es&details=true. I would like to know how best way to match the Accuweather API data to which variables should be mapped, ignored or disabled in gWeatherMaster. Thank you very much!

 

Hello. Indeed this weather system has been designed so that external data can drive the internal weather. You will need to decouple the simulation of Humidity and Temperature and drive that via your specific external data. The ORW data is in Float (single decimal format) that you will control. Someone else in this forum also was doing something similar which then I updated the initial posting with this....

Syncing Multiplayer and Multiple Scene to a Master/Server:
*the technicals of networking language I leave to you since there are many different systems.

There are two places you can determine to sync to.....gWeatherMaster and gWeatherData the same variables can be used in either place.
gWeatherMaster (Preferred) determines the weather outcome.
gWeatherData is responsible for storing data to the database


Please have a look there and you will see what variables are needed. Remember that in the ORW Humidity and Temperature control the Rain and Snow as well as the cloud density/brightness of Time of Day Clouds.

Note: the new ORW Pro version will also be easily decoupled for external data since is closely related to this free version. It functions differently though because it handles everything and does not rely upon another developer's method upon doing things. In the end the method of decoupling will be very similar but with the added effect of controlling the clouds via dynamic wind....which also can be externally controlled by a Float Wind Speed in m/s and Float direction 0.0-359.9. This means the clouds will also move in the direction of the wind.

Hope that helps your idea/need.

Cheers
O

 

Hi all,

Olander's Genesis Weather (ORW Pro) update.

Weekend regressive testing went very well on the full simulation. This was done in 5.4.0 with 65.3 to 69.1 FPS throughout the entire testing. This was throughout each Climate Type and the full range of Humidity and Temperature ranges. There were 2 issues that surfaced which I will be fixing today....did not expect them actually but good to see them surface.

Lastly, I have decided that this ORW Pro will be Free and Donate. Meaning if you like it (which I am certain you will) I would much appreciate a donation via my paypal account. Details forthcoming.


ORW for Time of Day (this version)

This continues to function with Time of Day's current version. It is being updated but he has been very quiet about what he is doing....most likely with clouds. Because of the very solid new Genesis Weather I will not be updating this ORW version for whatever Time of Day releases. Since this is a Free for the Community as a whole someone else can update this version if they wish and I can update the linked file. I leave the choice to you folks.

Well...back to work.

Cheers
O

 

I cant wait to donate to you for the PRO version. I really appreciate it so much and have always loved neverwinter nights.

 

Really looking forward to the Pro version

I'm currently using this with TOD and it is a great combination with really good performance!

 

Hi All,

Olander's Genesis Weather (ORW Pro) update

Looks like I figured out what the 2 issues were while in the testing simulation. One was a really simple fix. The other has proved to be very ugly. The good news is it is solvable so I am taking care of that coding now and shall put it back into a 48 hour testing simulation once again. As stated prior. Testing is extremely important so that both you and I can have ease of mind without silly errors. Too many devs do not go deep into testing and it shows with lots of support issues.I know promises are promises but it really looks like this will be fully complete....finally.

Thank you all for being patient.

Cheers
O

 

Thanks for your reply about accuweather API integration. I've one question regarding params in WeatherMaster script: nTemperatureZone and nPrecipitationZone. Are those required? As you know, I'm using accuweather API and there is no any response field to get them from my current location. Currently, I match the fields from API response to WeatherMaster: precipitation --> gWeatherMaster.nWaterContent, relativeHumidity --> gWeatherMaster.fHumidityPercent, feelTemperature --> gWeatherMaster.fTemperatureMax, temperature ---> gWeatherMaster.fTemperatureMin, gWeatherMaster.sHemisphere according to latitude. Do you any suggestion? Thanks for all!

 

You are correct. Those are for the simulation of weather. Once you decouple Temperature and Humidity in the ORW the simulation parts can be simply deleted. If I were in your position I would keep the original and then with your new version delete all the simulation stuff. Then simply control humidity to see it control the Time of Day clouds, ORW rain and snow. You will still need Accuweather Rain and Snow events to control the actual Emission of the Rain and Snow within the ORW with emission rates as well....the emission rates are easily quantified from Accuweather in mm/hour of rain fall (which they release often enough). All in all....it is all there. This is not as difficult as you would think. Just make sure to cross the T's and dot the I's and it will work flawlessly.

Cheers
O

 

Hi All,

Olander's Genesis Weather (ORW Pro) update

The stubborn bug has been resolved. I have tested this in 5.1.2 as well and it works very well. The snow particles though can be quite heavy with the older Unity 5 versions. I am now installing the 5.4.0f3 and testing that. I would Highly recommend any Unity 5 projects to migrate to the 5.4 updates. The performance enhancements and from what I am seeing and the stability have been very good.

Last items to add prior to uploading for your use.
- Dynamic Snow Piles.
*Note: the output is 0.00 to 1.00 which can also control things like UBER Shader for the Snow
- Rain Output for external shader control (same as snow in reference to UBER Shader)
- Finalizing the Weather Manager (Unity Window)
- PDF Manuals being fine tooth combed and split apart for ease of use.
- Recording videos for visuals (using Gaia and Unity Standard Assets for the video on a 10,000 x 10,000 terrain).

This is a huge system that works out of the box and integrates with standard Unity 5 things. So less breaking of things in general. If you love Time of Day then you can keep using this version if you wish. The choice will be yours.

Thanks for being patient.
Cheers
O

 

Thanks again O.

haha your avatar is Sir Lancelot! I knew it was bugging me for some reason.

 

@meeeep
You are correct! It is and shows some age to know this! haha! In my younger years I was able to wear a suit of armor exactly like this...in fact...I looked so much like Sir Lancelot from a couple paces that a couple of screen shots from Excalibur became the Avatar for Olander.

Thanks for noticing.
Cheers
O

 

Hi Folks!

Almost there! Yay! I had to pull the dynamic snow piling (the 3D meshes). It works but needs quite a bit more work and tweaking as to making it efficiently 'Fun' placing snow with cylinders and boxes to get nice distribution with out hand placing every one. I could place them with the Gaia Stamper but that is more broad base where this is specific to snow piles which rise out of the terrain. Once the Snow Piling is working this Time of Day version will also get the update. So both versions will have it.

*Note: Even though Snow Piling is being held back the out put values will still be there and working to control the shader(s).

Side note on Snow and Terrain and Shaders. To get the Snow right there must be shaders in use that support 0.00 to 1.00 ranges to show snow building. The Weather System will feed that value into the shader (UBER and RTP are awesome) which will propagate Snow and Melting of the Snow automatically (once tied in). Which is a really nice effect for a very realistic weather system and environment. Unity 5.4 does actually play very well in this dynamic environment. So much so that I want to stick with Unity Tech and continue to see the improvements. Very nice indeed!

In any case. Sorry for the ramble.
Cheers
O

 

Loved that movie, mainly for its excellent use of Siegfried's Funeral March and O Fortuna. It's hard to imagine a better use for those two pieces.

 

Indeed! Awesome! My personal favorite is:
Trevor Jones - Igrayne's Dance

Now where is she!
Ever notice in that movie that ALL the men SHOUT and just don't give a rip. LOL!!!

 

@Olander are you saying that you've gotten this package set up to work using only Unity without TOD? I'm asking because I am getting my project set up for my game and plan to also use your latest package (even if it's a paid version). Also are you looking at adding updates soon (month or so)? Thanks!

 

There are two versions.
1) I shall keep this Time of Day version as it is. If ToD is updated we shall have to cross that bridge if that happens. If the clouds turn out to be a real prick to play with I may simply not update and leave it with this version of Time of Day. He has not updated in a year and the method he uses for clouds will be really difficult to expand upon....probably why he has not updated the clouds. In any case...all speculation. We shall see what happens here.

2) There is a new Genesis Weather which will have its own Unity Forum posting. This is the version I have been using privately. I have removed the need for Time of Day for a 100% Unity Standalone version which makes it incredibly robust and less reliant on 3rd Party Solutions (Yes I understand the humor here! haha!!). It has been tricky getting it 'Right' with 99% Standard Unity 5 assets. That 1% is me copying the standard one and making a very slight adjustment for unlocking hidden variables or such. The secret has been figuring out the best methods to control those assets...Unity simply had them set up incorrectly by default. I also made custom meshes for the cloud layers along with a Volumetric Clouds (particles) option that can be enabled.
*I have no other choice but to only offer Genesis Weather to 5.4+
*Genesis Weather shall be Free and/or Donate (as with a lot of stuff I am polishing off that shall also be Free and/or Donate)

I believe in this fashion we all win with a Free Super High Quality system that does what you want it to do that is extremely easy to integrate and network....and robust. As developer you can make that decision to Donate via paypal or not.

As stated prior I shall post here once I have Genesis Weather up on my web site and the new Unity Forum posting.

Cheers
O

 

Thanks for this Olander.

 

Hi folks. Small update.

I have been out of pocket for a couple of weeks while making the final move to Nevada USA. Been kind of nice away from the computer...but then also kind of boring.

Last Issue that I know of is what I have posted here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/gi-lightmap-issue-with-day-and-night.427765/

This issue will not hold up release of Genesis Weather but this has taken quite a bit of time to try to isolate why the Nights are not looking like Night...which ruins everything at night! This has been driving me insane.

Added a Simulation Enable Toggle which makes controlling the weather from outside data simpler and fully integrated.
Everything else is working flawlessly. So I shall post up a new Forum Thread this weekend on Unity as well as updating my website with the project/files.

I was not really happy with my original video so I think I may simply stick with pictures. The entire system is very large so perhaps multiple smaller videos would work better. In any case there plenty of pics and a very detailed PDF manual. Feels good to finally be here. And with that there will be only 1 more posting for the new Genesis Weather here which will be the Its Alive Posting. I assure you that the pictures and system is mouthwatering.

This forum will simply return to the Time of Day support version.

Cheers
O

 

Hi All! It is Almost Alive! I have created the new Unity Forum posting for Genesis Weather here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/olanders-genesis-weather-free-and-or-donate.429367/

This version of the weather system will return to just the Time of Day version. Please post questions and ideas and such in the above linked forum for Genesis Weather related items.

I will continue to support this Time of Day version in the Current Version of his system. If/when he changes his clouds (or system)...depending how fraking different it is I may update this. Only time will tell on that.

Personally I will be continuing to use Genesis Weather myself since the quality is incredible and fully dynamic....hey...it turned out really great!

Cheers
O

 

Very very very nice, thank you SO much for this. Can anyone help me sync TOD over Photon, please? PM me if you can. I just need the time synced, thank you.

 

You are welcome.

If you wish to sync the weather over Photon (or any other networking protocol) please look at the 1st posting...down a bit from the top after all the pictures....this area

Syncing Multiplayer and Multiple Scene to a Master/Server:
*the technicals of networking language I leave to you since there are many different systems.

I give some details on how to sync this over a network. It works really well. Remember that for the Client you will need to disable the simulation portion of gWeatherMaster. Not too difficult. Then simply write in the data over your network when there is a Master available. Every 10 seconds is good enough....weather is really slow. The simulation is running at every 10 seconds so an update then will be enough.

Cheers
O

 

Hello @Olander

Your resource was used in the old Rust Legacy, and I'm trying to bring life back to It. Giving It additional objects, etc. Sorta hard.

Is there a way you could tell me how to enable snow, rain and stuffs like that using code? I "hacked" myself into the client and the server, I can change anything using CIL.

Your help is appreaciated

 

Hello.
Enabling Snow, Snow Mix, and Rain is completely controlled by the Weather Master script.(gWeatherMaster.cs)..in 5 variables. This is explained in the first posting of this thread but I will help below with some detail. Controlling 'The Code' is actually quite simple in this very of my weather system (Genesis Weather is completely stand alone but is not as simplistic as this combination....similar concept but much deeper system).

public int nInColdFront
(0 or 1) Set to 1 to begin Cold Front
Currently in Cold Front. Humidity Condenses to form Snow, Snow Mix, and Rain. Humidity is decreased during this process.

public int nInWarmFront
(0 or 1) Set to 1 to begin Warm Front
Current in Warm Front. Humidity Collects/Absorbs into the air raising % Relative Humidity.

public int nFrontDuration
Current Duration of the Front (decrements by 1 every 10 seconds to 0 then changes randomly). Set this directly to how long you want to continue a particular front....weather cycle.

public float fHumidityPercent
Simulated Relative Humidity of the air saturation. Dewpoint not considered since this is synthetic environment.
Set this directly to control Humidity. This is updated every 10 seconds with weather cycle.

public float fTemperatureC
Temperature: Snow, Snow Mix, and Rain (Celsius Temperature controlled).
Set this directly to control Temperature. This is updated every 10 seconds with weather cycle.

Cloud density is controlled directly by Humidity. So as humidity rises the clouds become more dense as well as the sun becomes less intense. Sun and Clouds are part of the Time of Day system....only the control of the density and intensity is controlled by the ORW Weather Master.

I hope the above gives you what you need to control the weather/clouds/sun.

Cheers
O

 

I see. So five variables to enable any system? Quite good. Thanks, will check this out and let you know if i got it. Weird though gWeatherMaster cant be found in the assembly, but gonna look further.

Edit:

I think I missed the info when i googled. I gues TOD (Time of day) is not yours?
That's the recource that legacy uses. I guess that doesnt have the rain and snow features

 

When I go to download the 7z file, Avast says it's malware and blocks it. Any idea why?

 

Hey mate, I got another challenge for you, message me when you get a moment

 

Tried the links here and works fine. The file is not a 7z file....it is a .unitypackage file. The PDF is just a PDF as well. Perhaps clear your browser cache and history....then shut down the browser then fire it back up after 30sec. Then try again.


On a side note about Genesis Weather 2.0 for Unity 5.6+ it is working well but I have not had time to finish it off. Work has been crazy busy and as such have been living out of more hotels. LOL!! Usually there is 'Homework' while having a movie providing the ambient noise whilst trying to figure out why things that worked 25yrs ago are no longer working for the customer! Welllllll.....it Just Might Be....You Need To Buy An Upgrade To You System! LOL....Buuuuuuttttt....Can you JUST get it working Now and We will Upgrade soon! Promise! LOL!!!! Story of the automation pro life. hahahaha!! In any case. Genesis Weather 2.0 is well in hand. I will post again here as well in the 1st posting when it is ready and the details for the download. Remember that Genesis Weather 1.0 will no longer be supported/improved as it works perfectly for 5.4 and 5.3-.

Cheers
O

 

I figured out it's the included Excel file. Avast considers that highly risky. But no worries.

 

That is strange. Not macros in that either. Good that you found it.

 

eset changed their opinion of your site but several others allege Phishing and malice
https://www.virustotal.com/#/url/41...448a0eda683e201c17b2a2b9706254e08a2/detection

 

Not sure what is causing it only a forum there with me as the only user. I re-linked the files above to my main domain and tested the downloads...works fine.

 

Removed Support for this. File links also deleted.

 

hello, can you please help to get free assets for realistic weather effect?

 

Really? What are you a troll? Cannot be serious. And some people wonder why I mostly stopped helping Unity forum folks.

This system HAS BEEN REMOVED by MYSELF because the Time of Day author is pretty much a DICK. There are PLENTY of other weather systems out there that are either FREE or INEXPENSIVE. So go browse the Asset Store and see for yourself...try UniStorm or Enviro first. Or you can try Genesis Weather (mine) for free at the link in my signature...it is more complicated but more realistic.