irrClouds

[AlexL]

For my current game project, a dog-fighting game set in the future, I was in the need of procedurally generated volume clouds that ran at acceptable speeds. Though at this time I do not have any in-game screenshots, I thought I would post my current cloud solution here for the communities opinion and criticism before moving on to the next stage in my development.

At the current time I do not intend to release any sources, as we are pitching the concept to publishers right now; though as development continues and our studio goals change, so may the decision to release sources. So without further adieu, the screenshots, and with luck your thoughts on what to improve, remove, ect. Thank you for your time

[monkeycracks]

Amazing, I hope you guys decide to release the source. Those screenshots are great.

[JP]

Cool, they look nice! Not sure which i prefer though, these or the CCloudSceneNode!

[Rambus]

Clouds look good, n' so does the terrain.
One of the nicer out door irrlicht shots I have seen.

[AlexL]

Thank you all for the positive comments on the cloud system Lots of work has gone into obtaining a high visual quality to the project, and we hope to keep it consistant through-out the project as a whole.

Also, not really an update, but I have just gotten around to taking the time to make and upload a video to show off the clouds in real-time. You can find the video here at YouTube.

The cloud system has the following to be added before I am going to concider it complete enough to move on in the game project: Lighting calculations, shadow map generation for terrain, and a more realistic look to the clouds as a whole. I will post my progress on the system as I go on, and how the proposal to release the source to the system goes

[Saturn]

Very good. The volumetric nature of the clouds is showing. But, yes, scattering is missing. The uniform white colour makes them look a bit unnatural. But nice nevertheless.

[jimowns]

thats looks cool

with what 3D tool you maded it ?

[needforhint]

with what 3D tool you maded it ?

it is a terrain node with a cool per pixel light and a very amazing system of particles manager that AlexL wrote, obvious from a first look at the pictures.
Did not run it myself yet, but gonna....

[varnie]

yeah, it looks really amazing!
btw, could you give us a bit more info about how you've got such impressive looking landscape? it is not standart ITerrainSceneNode, right?

thanks for info!

[3ddev]

Looks good! However, how about performance? If you are using particles, then the FPS must be greatly reduced. Something that may interest you is this link and the screenshots http://www.stevestreeting.com/?p=432. Those clouds are rendered in the Ogre3d Graphics Engine. I don't think the Irrlicht engine is powerful enough though for this volumetric CPU rendering combined with shader and light logarithms. That is why I switched to Ogre.

[krama757]

Wow that does look great!

The only thing I would say right now is that the clouds dont seem realistic because they are pure white. Some kind of fake atmospheric lighting system should do the trick....Heck you could even change the textures on those clouds to have some grey at the bottom and it would look awesome!

Great job man.

[Virion]

any tutorial on this?

[roxaz]

nice clouds based on this i gues

[rooly]

this is just me, and i'm not sure if its even possible, i watched the video and i noticed that the clouds seem billboard based. once you've passed the cloud with the camera, it no longer renders, which can lead to a lowered visual effect.

i might suggest, if its possible, that while 'inside a cloud node' to increase the fog on the camera. this shouldn't affect close up visuals too much, and will hide the disappearance of the separate sprites.