New Tutorials: UDK Animated Sky, and Dynamic Sun.
Hello Everyone, I wanted to share my latest tutorials.
UDK Animated Sky
The first one covers how to create an animated sky dome from beginning to end.
Tutorial results can be seen here:
<<PDF download available here>>
UDK Dynamic Sun
The second tutorial is adding a dynamic sun to any sky material within UDK. The tutorial will cover material setup and material instance customization. Using this method, a Sun disc is automatically generated in the position of the main directional light, and its animatable via matinee.
Tutorial results can be seen here:
<<PDF download available on Facebook page (tutorials section)>>
Best Regards,
Juarez Julio
3dbrushwork.com
UDK Animated Sky
The first one covers how to create an animated sky dome from beginning to end.
Tutorial results can be seen here:
<<PDF download available here>>
UDK Dynamic Sun
The second tutorial is adding a dynamic sun to any sky material within UDK. The tutorial will cover material setup and material instance customization. Using this method, a Sun disc is automatically generated in the position of the main directional light, and its animatable via matinee.
Tutorial results can be seen here:
<<PDF download available on Facebook page (tutorials section)>>
Best Regards,
Juarez Julio
3dbrushwork.com
Replies
Pleasure being able to contribute.
I'm happy to contribute. Any questions or comments on how to improve, feel free to contact me.
Thanks, please tell me about your impressions after finishing the tutorial. I don't know why the FB page is not loading for you, but I will send you a private message with a solution.
Best Regards,
Julio Juarez
I already gave the sky one a try and made this:
http://youtu.be/de2qL83sfvs?hd=1
The textures aren't the best and I'm having issues with the moving clouds (the ones done in Photoshop). I will post the material setup later, see if I got something wrong that I'm just not noticing.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure that future tutorials are written in a similar style
Video looks cool
One thing that would improve the quality of the panning clouds is to paint over the Photoshop generated cloud image with brushes <<like these>> . At the end, the panning clouds would have a more realistic look. I'm planning to update the tutorial to implement that.
One page was added to the tutorial:
I decided to put it here also, therefore downloading the .pdf again would not be necessary. Cloud brushes can be downloaded here.
Sky with modified cloud mask:
Note: The panning clouds in this image are the bright yellow clouds.
It was just my problem, but it helped me understand materials that bit more (until now I used to make really basic materials with just detail normals and a couple things, or basic panners and basic rotators).
Again, thanks for the tutorials.
I will work on the clouds now and I will also delete the sun from my original sky so I can use the sun from your second tutorial.
I made a mask in Photoshop that indicates where the sun will be occluded. In the mask, the thick clouds are black and thinner clouds are a shade of gray. The red rectangle on the upper right is highlighting the last node of the sun network. Also important to note that I made that mask received the same animation that the sky color map does.
What do you guys think? Should I add it to the tutorial?
Best Regards,
Julio Juarez
For some reason, I'm unable to access the FB page to DL the tutorial, I was able to get the first one but not the second.
Is there anything special I need to do? It just shows me a timed out page, ALL the time. Would be possible for you to send it to me via PM?
Also, as for the sun occluded, yes please sir
Its a pleasure being able to help out yodude..
I'll send you an alternative via PM. As far as the sun occlusion goes, I'll write the extension once I get a chance, I'm currently doing an art test for a company in LA.
Enjoy
Thanks, I'll post a WIP in here very soon.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83969&highlight=space+skybox
Example: I place the dom direction light in scene. Sun appears where it should be, but if I were to draw a straight line through the light to where it is pointing another sun would appear.
I've seen the problem happen before, It exactly what you said, the light passes through an creates another sun in the opposite direction, it's noticeable using the sky box method, on sky domes it would be hard to tell. I'll take a look at it tomorrow and I'll tell you if I was able to fix that.
instead of running your dotproduct through a power, multiply it by -1, clamp it, and set the radius in your spheremask to 0.001 or 0.002. in reverse however, now the bigger the glow size, the smaller the rim around the sun will be.
Currently available on my website:
3DBrushwork
But I have a problem :
(Connexion fail, peer's certificate revoked)
Happen every time...
So I can't download your udk package. Why don't you provide a direct link as your pdf tutorials ?
(And honestly, I don't like the fact I need to use Facebook to read/access to a tutorial
2 Questions. Can I replace the Light Vector with another Vector so that I can create an extra sun and/or planet?
What does the Light Vector output?
Thanks
The light vector actually differs between light types (you just don't see it because the real shader work is compiled away from your eyes). If you get an old version of UDK (before they precompiled the main shader files, you can see it usually looks something like this:
I would personally use a second directional light for a second sun. For a planet or similar body, I would handle this in another manner.
I don't really want to use another light as I just want the disc for the 2nd sun purely for visuals I don't want it to light my scene.
I'm going to figure out a way for the planet, I was hoping I could replace the light vector with a simple 3 vector input but no chance :poly142:
If anyone can help me work this one out I think it would be great to add to the 3DBrushWork tutorial. The basics is to be able to achieve a Sun/Planet in the SkyDome by using custom co-ordinates without the need of the light vector (light direction). Also be able to have multiple Suns/Planets.
Luckily I still had the packages :poly124:
LINK
Here is a .rar with the original packages and the 2 .pdf tutorials
By the way I figure out the "Light Vector" replacement to create another sun / planet. Just replace the Light Vector with:
Normalize <---> Vector Transform ( Source:Tangent, Dest:World) <---> 3 Vector Param
Start with values of R:-6000, G:6000, B:100 for the vector param and tweak to get your position. Although this tweaking is proving difficult.
Could you expand on this more?
I also have an issue with the original tutorial setup. When I move across my map, the sun gradually moves in the skymap rather than being in a fixed position
Not off the top of my head, I'm afraid.
I didn't observe this when I set up something similar a while back, and it shouldn't be the case; a directional light lighting a skydome is entirely world space and shouldn't care where the player is.
Well the material takes into account the camera vector too so I believe this is what is causing the sun to move. I will post some images if you wish but I'll try to explain. I have a skydome with a sky material applied that already has a sun in it. When I line up the "dot" sun that is created by UDK with my sun everything is fine until I move across the map and then the "dot" sun starts to move off of alignment with the sky material sun.
I found a way to duplicate and offset the vector of the light and camera vectors. Instead of tuning a non relative vector you can simply do this:
Create a 3Vector Pram (*make it low, like 0.1,0.1,0.1) -> add it to the light vector -> then (THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART) run the result through a normalize node -> then Dot product it with the camera vector as normal
This ensures that any other disks you add to the sky will move and angle properly with the players view without having to shoot in the dark with a non relative vector.
Here is an example and a look at the node setup
I set it up just like you did in the tutorial and from a certain angle it looks fine. Upon further inspection, though I notice that there is another bright spot right at the top of my sphere where the uv's come together. As the light gets rotated so the sun reaches the top of the sphere the two bright spots stretch and merge.
I know it's something to do with the mesh as I brought in the generic udk sphere and it works fine but for the life of me I can't figure out what's different between the two other than the fact that mine has fewer poly's (I tried adding some, it didn't help). UV's look the same and all... I'm just confused. I can use the udk sphere but I'd like to know what went wrong.
this is the result of the sky with the clouds passing in front of the moon, the only problem is that the stars appear on top of the clouds and disapears in the cloudless areas. Any way to get the stars to hide behind the cloud and make it visible in the cloudless part of the sky ( res zones on the pictures)??
PS: also, the lightshaft stills shows when there is a cloud in front of the moon? anyone know how i could make it so the cloud would hide the lightshaft?
I might be wrong, but i had a deformed sun with my previous " skydom static mesh " due to the fact that it was badly unwraped, maybe it is the reason why your 2 suns are joining each other at this specific location. overlapping UV's maybe.
Really great tutorials! I did a similar Dynamic Sky for a class, but you did a better job.
Thanks for posting!
Now i got 2 question: first my sun is moving slightly with the player movement and i want it to stay still is there a way to remedy this? i gust its something to do whit the camera vector?
And second is there a way to put a texture in the sun disk as i want to do a moon and i would like a moon texture in it but i am a nood at material so any help would be nice!
Again thanks your tutorial rock!
thanks a lot!