Enhanced Sky

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Arl
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 10:57 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by Arl »

LypyL wrote:I've further improved the clouds. They're again faster, and I added a buffer, which allows for the option of higher-res clouds as they aren't being generated on demand.

Nice looking clouds indeed!
My Deviantart page, I have some Daggerfall stuff in there.

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Nystul
Posts: 1501
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by Nystul »

nice! looking forward to try it ;)

I would like to share some thoughs/questions of mine:
as far as I understood when i digged into it, the enhanced sky mod is using unity's procedural skybox and overlays it with clouds and a flare layer. the clouds are mapped onto a sphere - which is relatively close to the camera - compared to the far terrain of my mod for example.
The sphere is assigned to a layer "skylayer" which is rendered by the skybox camera - which must render first. It works nice so far, but all the build-in unity shaders that use the skybox somehow miss the additional cloud/stars objects provided by the sphere as well as the flare layer stuff (though I think this is a good thing - flares are not part of the sky).
So my question would be - could you think of a way to somehow make it work with the unity standard shaders and techniques?
I thought of introducing a rendering pass for the skybox that renders the procedural skybox and its overlays into a cubemap skybox and use this as scene skybox - it would have to be updated/rendered only on a skybox change due to moving sun, etc.
but I don't know if one could really get it to work.

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LypyL
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 3:48 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by LypyL »

Yep, that's pretty much it. It's a hodge-podge of different stuff :lol: As to the flare, I've ditched it in this update...I like the way it looked but it was too much of a problem for such a small thing.
So my question would be - could you think of a way to somehow make it work with the unity standard shaders and techniques?
I honestly don't much about shaders - I wish I did! It would have undoubtedly made this project a lot easier! :lol: I was actually going to see if you'd be interested in "taking over the sky" so to speak after this update, as except for some small changes here and there I've taken this about as far as I can and am interested in, and I'm sure someone with more knowledge of shaders and the like could do more with it. As the the sky & extended terrain projects go hand in hand anyways, it would probably be for the best to have them more unified anyways.

No worries either way of course! :D

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Nystul
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Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by Nystul »

LypyL wrote: I honestly don't much about shaders - I wish I did! It would have undoubtedly made this project a lot easier! :lol: I was actually going to see if you'd be interested in "taking over the sky" so to speak after this update, as except for some small changes here and there I've taken this about as far as I can and am interested in, and I'm sure someone with more knowledge of shaders and the like could do more with it. As the the sky & extended terrain projects go hand in hand anyways, it would probably be for the best to have them more unified anyways.

No worries either way of course! :D
hey, thanks for your permission to extend your mod - don't know if i should really take it over completely - because lots of stuff I still don't understand good enough ;) but I would love to contribute in some way.
You did amazing work and I learned so much of it when I took a look at your code - lots of recent improvements to my scripts arouse from looking at your mod's scripts ;)
My shader knowledge is though still very limited - I would like to know much more, but I am still a beginner ;)
Unity is always surprising me in an unpleasent way when something doesn't work as expected - and this happens basically everytime I try out something new :D

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Arl
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 10:57 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by Arl »

Sorry if I make assumptions too soon, but could this mean that now the extended view distance mod is going to be something that covers both terrain and sky? 'Cause that would make perfect sense to me.
My Deviantart page, I have some Daggerfall stuff in there.

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Nystul
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by Nystul »

I am not sure if uniting both mods would really be the right decision. I could think of people who just want the enhanced sky but who do not want to use the increased terrain distance mod.
though Lypyl's permission to make improvements to his mod could result in a better interplay of both mods of course
nevertheless I think both mods are already quite progressed with the latest updates anyway ;)

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LypyL
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 3:48 am

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by LypyL »

Nystul wrote: hey, thanks for your permission to extend your mod - don't know if i should really take it over completely - because lots of stuff I still don't understand good enough ;) but I would love to contribute in some way.
You did amazing work and I learned so much of it when I took a look at your code - lots of recent improvements to my scripts arouse from looking at your mod's scripts ;)
Wow, I'm flattered! :oops: :) Thanks! I hope you didn't look through the last version to closely, I left it a bit of a mess as I got tired of working on it :lol:

And I'm completely blown away by what you accomplished with the extended / improved terrain - it's way beyond anything I ever imagined was possible. I was looking through some old screenshots I made the day that Interkarma released the streaming world update, and it's funny looking at them now compared to how it looks with the extended terrain - it's like comparing Daggerfall to DFTFU :D


I guess I should have made a post that I put the latest version up:

viewtopic.php?p=196#p196

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quasifex
Posts: 56
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2017 5:23 pm

Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by quasifex »

I recently tried this mod and want to share some of my ideas:

1) With sun of this size, Tamriel would be a scorched land! I think it should be decreased in size.

2) Is it possible to replace skybox in this mod? In comparison with vanilla, skybox in this mod seems bland and empty to my taste. I can find some HDRI skyboxes, or maybe even try to make a handpainted one (similar to ones from 2000's games like Outcast and Giants:Citizen Kabuto, colorful and with dramatic huge clouds).

3) Why sun flare was removed? I think it could be made optional in mod settings.

4) Post-effects such as sun shafts would suit well with this mod. I made some research and found that there are free sun shafts scripts for Unity on the net. But since i'm not a coder I'm not sure i can implement them myself.

5) Is it possible to create some kind of mask for skyboxes to make sun hide behind clouds?
Last edited by quasifex on Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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VMblast
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Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by VMblast »

quasifex wrote:2) Is it possible to replace skybox in this mod? In comparison with vanilla, skybox in this mod seems bland and empty to my taste. I can find some HDRI skyboxes, or maybe even try to make a handpainted one (similar to ones from 2000's games like Outcast and Giants:Citizen Kabuto, colorful and with dramatic huge clouds).
Hand painted skys (and clouds) would work better with the original Daggerfall's style and atmosphere...however, someone needs to paint them... :P

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quasifex
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Re: Enhanced Sky

Post by quasifex »

VMblast wrote:Hand painted skys (and clouds) would work better with the original Daggerfall's style and atmosphere...however, someone needs to paint them... :P
I was assuming you are too busy with other things, but if it's not a big deal for you, i will happily handle this job to the pro :)

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