UDK - Clouds/Smog - Volumetric Solution (or closest thing to it)

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I was wondering what is the best solution for volumetric like clouds effects in UDK? I know that it still doesn't support them, and taking a look at some of the older packages, I came to the conclusion that a particle is in order for such a thing.

However, the thing I was wondering, is this really the best solution? What about close to ground smog effects? Or if I wanted to have planes with a camera flying close to said clouds, what would the best solution in said case?

Cheers, and ciao.

sprunghunt

to make a 'close to ground' smog effect try using a heightfog.

Ace-Angel

I tried that, but the results were pretty 'solid' shall we say? I was hoping for a more dynamic solution, as if the smog had movement in it.

Something like this.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7t80nT1wps[/ame]

haiddasalami

Something like this?

http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Mist_Fog_Tutorial.html

tharle

you again?!

it sounds like what you want is particle effects - a few slow moving mostly transparent particles on top of each other should work nicely.

eat 3d do a great tutorial by hourences called Unreal Development Kit 2 - Creating Cinematics & Environmental Effects that goes over fog, rain, lightning, fire, camera work and some other stuff which i found really good.

that or it might be possible to put an animated texture on the heightfog actor to get some movement into it - i'll just open udk and look....

doesnt look like heightfog does but the FogVolume actors have a slot for putting in a material which you could easily animate similarly to the chris albeluhn tutorial above i reckon.

Ace-Angel

haiddasalami: Well, looky at this, that was very useful, thanks! Do you think this method will also work with higher planes and not cause any clipping issues?

tharle: Er, yeah it's me? I guess I do post alot, har har.
Also, thanks for the info, I never tried FogVolume, might do just that and check also UDK CCEE tutorial and buy it. And yeah, I tried particles and they looked fine, just experimenting with different techniques so I can get something more 'volumetric' a la Silent Hill style.

haiddasalami

clipping issues could most likely be solved with depthbiasedalpha but that comes at a cost. One flaw might be indoor and outdoor spaces so you would have to make a custom mesh.

ambershee

I did this using particles a while back, and unfortunately I don't still have my prototype as a reference. I basically used large sprite particles with spherically mapped materials, with a small amount of physics. Performance was more than reasonable.