Global Weather System - Shaders & VFX

[Isaac]

Hi Everyone!

We are currently working on a more robust weather system with a lot of customizability. So far we have support for rain, sandstorms and snowstorms, with plans for other types of weather as well. 

One of the more interesting features of this system is the ability to control the amont of weather and have it affect not just the sun, particles, and terrain, but also individual meshes. We are working with global values that will allow any material to have support for our weather, both through a replacement HDRP/Lit shader as well as simple SubGraphs that users can plug into their custom shaders.

These global values also have options for minimum and maximum heights, speed, scale and replaceable textures.

Here are some examples below:

Adding global rain to all surfaces:

Adding global sand to all surfaces:

Adding global snow to all surfaces:

You can also layer the weather effects, for instance having it rain on snow (in some very rare cases):

With our replacement HDRP/Lit shader, we can get weather in the HDRP Sample Scene!

Here is our current development of the particle effects:

Rain:

Sandstorm:

Snowstorm:

 

We are also looking into more advanced effects like tornados, but this may take further research and time to get right. 

Let us know what other features you would like in this weather system!

 

[Vexstorm]

This is great to hear!!! I would love love and all in one solution produced by you guys. Currently, I am sorry to say the current weather system that is in Gaia Pro, is well Ok, but not up to par for what I would like or in real life use. These images looking amazing , excite me and I love to see and hear about this progress. Great Job! I can wait to see what you all accomplish. 

Things I look for is realistic weather, and particle effects to match the weather needed, with respective gradients. One of the things I most love about Procedural Worlds software is how many things are "a click away". It would be amazing to have many custom profiles to choose from, where the weather could be set in just one easy to use inspector. A good example, that I might suggest:

Suggested flow:

Environments Controller :

Time of Day? (  I would assume some kind of draggable slider that represents day, month, hour, and so on, with a area to manual enter the number sought for those specific variables) 

Weather? ( would assume a bool check box, that will result in a dropped selection of additional options if selected)

- Weather Type  - ( Dropdown enum, reflecting the options like ; Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Snow, Hail, Sandstorm, Custom, etc.) - ( I would further imagine each drop have a custom set of profiles under them but in my opinion it should be left to be simple like so )

-Weather Intensity - ( Additional dropdown after selection of weather type, reflecting light, moderate, strong, insane, or custom, all enums of course)

- Weather Frequency- ( I feel this is a missed opportunity for many weather applications, and would be nice to have a easy way to set the frequency like so; Percentage Based I.E. 100% 50% 0% or Random Based)

- Fog - ( I feel this should be a subsection of the custom editor or custom editor window, where its further divided, between volume based choices such as; Sky Fog, Ocean / Sea Fog, Ground / Terrain Fog, Mid point, (or top of mountain) fog) then these volumes would auto generate in those areas, based off the color choices the user selects, as well as of course its intensity, much like shown above

 Of course you guys have your own ideas, I also develop software, but I think many people seek, that ever hard to get, easy button, and I feel like these features would be amazing for the novice normal everyday user. Giving the option of custom in those enums, would then afford more advanced users the ability to then change the particle effects, colors, and so on, etc.

I sincerely hope this helps, and appreciate all you all do.

 

Chris

support@vexstorm.com

Edited January 4, 2022 by Vexstorm

[BunnyViking]

One thing that is often missing in weather assets that I think is important is control over environmental lighting / reflection ... these are really important when you have caves (suchs as using digger or i imagine using genas spline caves) where the weather system is controlling all the ambient light/reflection and thus makes the underground have light it shouldn't have.

[Isaac]

Great suggesstions @Vexstorm and @BunnyViking!

Tagging @Josh for reference of these ideas, as he has been working on the design of the weather system along with a Time of Day system. The 'one click away' idea is great for users who want weather instantly added to their scene, with the minimal UI needed for slight adjustements (environment reflections, seasons of the year, weather type, intensity, fog etc..). I believe the current system does make use of weather profiles, in which users can swap out particle effects, audio, chance of occurrence, and more for those users who wish to customise it further. 

[Soak]

Excited to see this, I always loved the weather set with gaia pro and been looking forward to see that action in hdrp :D, loving the look of the snow one.

[Josh]

Yes we are very excited for this new HDRP weather system. It is all profile driven, the weather effects are all customizable and it's very easy to make your own effects. All the effects in the system use the weather interface so there is no limits on weather effects. With some randomization of the effects and so much more.

[Moria]

I know that WAPI is pretty much dead these days, but will there also be a globally driven solution for those with networking needs to keep various clients in synch?  And will there be camera effects for all of them...  thinking like a frost edge to the camera for cold, and raindrops running down the screen for rain?

I'm really pumped about the weather shaders all in the one package as that will save lots of messing around with different packages.

[Josh]

22 hours ago, Moria said:

I know that WAPI is pretty much dead these days, but will there also be a globally driven solution for those with networking needs to keep various clients in synch?  And will there be camera effects for all of them...  thinking like a frost edge to the camera for cold, and raindrops running down the screen for rain?

I'm really pumped about the weather shaders all in the one package as that will save lots of messing around with different packages.

Being able to sync up in the new system should be easy enough. We should be able to add a toggle within the system for Host or Client so only the host will process and just send the data to the clients we will sure add in some public funtions into the system to make it easy to sync settings from the host or hosted server, will just pass down the values and apply it to the clients while the host/server will get what's happening at runtime.

Hmm we don't have camera effect yet, but that sure is a great idea for immersive aspect. Also do note that this new system will only be in HDRP may have a URP version in the future but it's targeted at HDRP with all the new features in mind.

[Moria]

53 minutes ago, Josh said:

Hmm we don't have camera effect yet, but that sure is a great idea for immersive aspect. Also do note that this new system will only be in HDRP may have a URP version in the future but it's targeted at HDRP with all the new features in mind.

HDRP is fine,  I really have to start getting my head around HDRP and am assuming that most of my huge list of assets will need updating anyway, so this will probably drive me in that direction 🙂 and having a sub to Canopy will make me want to use as much as I can from the PW stable 🙂