Irrlicht Engine

Virion: You can set the "center" where a cloud layer spawns around (using irrWeatherManager::createCloudLayer()). In the Irrlicht example, the clouds are at 6,000 on the Y axis.

In my simulator I have the clouds at a virtual 8,000ft like real cumulus clouds form at in temperate areas.


EDIT: Update on the clouds.

I added a new cloud palette for more whispy and natural clouds:





More:
http://skyreignsoftware.net16.net/Image ... uds3_1.png
http://skyreignsoftware.net16.net/Image ... uds3_2.png

wow, the clouds are getting better and better

impressive. the new cloud is totally awesome.

Now I've been working on the storms. No precipitation yet.

The new lightning system using Sudi's CBoltSceneNode. Lightning only comes out of the clouds of cloud layers that are designated as "storm cloud layers."

The storms aren't finished yet; I just started doing them last night.

Also, irrWeatherManager (the class) keeps a list of all cloud layers, and those cloud layers keep a list of all clouds in it. I thought this would be more organized and easy to keep track of layers (cirrus, cumulus, storm, stratus, etc. to be more easy to manage them).

The lightning strikes are completely random. Random number of bolts, random direction, random size, random host cloud, random life time and update time, etc.

It looks really neat in real time.

The host clouds are highlighted as blue for the moment until I think of another way to make them "flash."


Anyway, the previews:






More:

http://www.skyreignsoftware.net16.net/I ... torms1.png
http://www.skyreignsoftware.net16.net/I ... torms2.png
http://www.skyreignsoftware.net16.net/I ... torms3.png

a fractal randomization instead of a standard randomization will get the clouds to look better. thinked about that?

Hi. I've thought about this, yes. I might end up doing it in the future, but right now it's not necessary, I don't think.

Cool project. I've already integrated it in my framework. Thanks, cobra!
I will wait for new releases.

Hi, Leo.

Thanks! Yes, the coming releases will be much better than the previous.

I'd advise my atmospheric scattering as can be found in code snippets, and use that shader for atmospheric scattering within a cloud. atmospheric scattering is what makes clouds look so awesome. Do some research into that, also try to find a way of making rim lighting and self shadowing on clouds. HDR would help

Hi, Devsh.

Could you go into a bit more detail about how this atmospheric scattering would be done for the clouds? Just a general explanation.

Would it be applied to the material of the cloud as a whole node, or per-particle?

its a shader, if you use a lot of vertices for your clouds then you can run it in per vertex mode otherwise some kinda per-pixel every alternating frame. Also checkout the Flight Sim paper about having an Impostor technique, with the current development of relief mapping you can fake clouds that are mid to far away. By rendering them onto a octagon surrounding the camera and updating them once per second (without having to redraw every cloud every frame), it was found to be very efficient and convincing. Now remember back in 2004 there was no parallax mapping or parallax occlusion mapping, if you threw a depth map in, the clouds could occlude each other despite being physically flat.

Good suggestions, devsh. I was going to do imposters anyway, but not the way you described.

Thanks for the information.


Also, I want everybody to know that I'm moving active development to finishing a product of mine (a tool; not related to 3D).

This means that any other projects of mine will be put on hold, or short-time development, until I finish this completely and release it.

Thanks. And remember, the projects won't be dead. They're just on hold for the time being.

I'll be releasing a demo of my atmospheric scattering+shadows soon so maybe you could use some of that, at least for the skydome. At least when you releases it I give you permission to copy and paste code. I dunno how to scatter on clouds though I must figure out that one but I will do terrain first. A similar approach should work on clouds but its more kinda depth based rendering

is this using the atmosphere thingy? looks pretty good but the center of the sky (straight up) looks really odd at certain times a day. I think to really pull this off perfectly you're going to need to make use of many fine tuned shaders. sorry to state the obvious just putting my dumb opinion in here.

Goodluck with your project, nice job so far!

Midnight wrote:is this using the atmosphere thingy? looks pretty good but the center of the sky (straight up) looks really odd at certain times a day. I think to really pull this off perfectly you're going to need to make use of many fine tuned shaders. sorry to state the obvious just putting my dumb opinion in here.

Goodluck with your project, nice job so far!

Hey Midnight. Thanks for the input.

Yeah, the top of the sky looks strange at times. This can be fixed by changing the atmosphere texture.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good with shaders right now. Maybe I'll start experimenting some time.