Weather and Environment Improvements #326

MathiasBaumgartinger · 2023-08-08T16:46:31Z

Weather and Environment Improvements (Refs: #312)

New rain system

A new rain system was implemented to replace the old one which had certain limitations (e.g. wind-direction). The new rain-system consists of:

RainDrops: near and individual rain drops
RainSheets: A whole texture with multiple rain drops to make a more "dense" effect
RainSplashes and RainRipples combinen with GPUParticlesCollisionField: Auto-emitted once RainDrops "collide"
RainDistantFog: Fog-textures to make the mid-distance somewhat "hazy"

Also has clear parameters for dynamic configurations.

New Lightning Scene

Creates Lightnings in a certain cardinal direction around the player. Lightning effect has also a alpha texture as a cloud to make the clouds appear lit. Not every lightning strike truly produces a lightning "chain", but only uses the cloud texture (aka weather-lights).

Preconfigured Weather

The UI exposes preconfigured weather scenarios (Clear Sky, Few Clouds, Overcast Drizzle Rain, Heavy Rain, Gusts, Thunderstorm, Foggy).

Environment Effects

Environment effects are polished and have more options (e.g. ambient occlusion, cloud density) and mutual effects on each other.

Cloud Wind

Clouds are properly affected by wind-direction and speed again.

The old rain system showed unflexibilities and had room for visual improvements, hence it was replaced The new rain system is a fixed node that has rather clear parameters that dynamically change the rains behaviour Refs: #312

… value is changed

…system

WIP: lighting is part of World scene; lightning is randomly created somewhere around center node WIP: adjust code such that it can be enabled from code (still buggy as of now) Refs: #312

Lightning effects are visually polished and many options are exposed as export variables (color and albedo gradient, distance, spawn-interval). Lightnings are now more "grouped" and arent just randomly spawned around the player; can be adjusted via rotation degrees Refs: #312

Refs: #312 ; ecd188c

Clear sky, few clouds, overcast, drizzle rain, gusts, thunderstorm, foggy can now be applied via dropdown Refs: #312

…; disable rain and lightning by default Before, volumetric fog was permanently applied which led to too dark sceneries when the sky is clear/no rain Refs: #312

Refs: #312

…or "weather lights" Adds a texture that makes the clouds appear lit once a lightning strikes Instead of always having a thunder, only by a certain change a true strike will be emitted otherwise "weather lights" Refs: #312

This avoids weird movement when strong winds are applied

The weather category has to be set after the WeatherManager was instanced

SSAO and skylight are affected by cloud-coverage. Clouds are not as strongly affected by a bright skylight (change in shader), therefore lights are stronger in general (bluer sky). Refs: #312

Setting rotation is required via radians instead of degrees since Godot4 Refs: #315

Set color_alpha to 0, such that the effect still works once used (as opposed to setting visibility)

Exposed in UI and in weathermanager, preconfigurations adjusted accordingly Refs: #312

Changes in the cloud shader were necessary; texture reads are multiplied with a wind-direction Refs: #312

kb173

Thanks, looks great and the implementation looks very clean too! just some nitpicks on documentation and performance

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:02:38Z

World/WeatherManager.gd

-		emit_signal("rain_drop_size_changed", new_rain_drop_size)
+		rain_drop_size_changed.emit(new_rain_drop_size)
+
+var lightning_enabled := false :


Maybe we could expose the frequency of lightnings rather than a bool? we'll probably use the Thunderstorm preset most of the time anyway, but could be practical

I agree, i changed this with commit 33386e4. A frequency of 0 automatically means lightnings are disabled.

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:03:41Z

World/WeatherManager.gd


-var rain_density := 100.0 :
+var rain_density := 1 :


Also add documentation for sensible range of values here; also, maybe a rain_density of 0 is enough to imply that rain is disabled, and we can therefore remove rain_enabled above? (would avoid ambiguity/confusion when setting the rain_density but forgetting to set rain_enabled)

I agree with the range, however I am not sure if I would want to remove rain_enabled. The Rain node is - to a large extent - just a group of GPUParticles. GPUParticles in Godot are closely resembled by and enabled and a density via their properties emitting and amount. That is why I personally designed it this way. Do you think the avoidance of ambiguity has higher priority?

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:04:22Z

World/WeatherManager.gd

+		lightning_enabled_changed.emit(lightning_enabled)
+
+
+var lightning_rotation := 0 :


Not really intuitive what this means (rotation relative to what? what's being rotated? deg or rad?)

I see. I hope 3911177 clarifies appropriately.

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:07:28Z

addons/clouds/clouds.gdshader

@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ vec4 march(vec3 pos,  vec3 end, vec3 dir, int depth) {
 	vec3 p = pos + hash(pos * 10.0) * ss;
 	const float t_dist = sky_t_radius-sky_b_radius;
 	float lss = (t_dist / 36.0);
-	vec3 ldir = normalize(LIGHT0_DIRECTION);
+	vec3 ldir = normalize(LIGHT0_DIRECTION) * 0.6;


Maybe add a description of why we did this so we recognize it in the future, e.g. // Multiply by 0.6 to make the sun appear darker behind the clouds instead of creating a large purely white area in the sky (trick to simulate that the sun is always at a larger angle to the viewer than it actually is)

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:37:52Z

World/Environment/Lightning.gdshader

@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+shader_type canvas_item;
+
+void fragment() {


this file seems unneeded?

True. Removed via b78ea31

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:39:04Z

World/Environment/Lightning.tscn

+material_override = SubResource("StandardMaterial3D_x464h")
+mesh = SubResource("QuadMesh_jseao")
+
+[node name="SubViewport" type="SubViewport" parent="LightningMesh"]
 disable_3d = true
 transparent_bg = true
 handle_input_locally = false
 msaa_2d = 3
 use_taa = true


does temporal anti-aliasing make sense for this viewport?

World/Environment/Lightning.tscn

kb173 · 2023-08-08T19:43:31Z

World/Environment/Rain/Rain.gd

+		distance_radius = val
+		if get_child_count(): set_extents(detailed_radius, coarse_radius, val)
+
+var heavy_rain_threshold := 0.5


Also add a comment describing what this means

Reacts to Geodot commit boku-ilen/geodot-plugin@363f2b6

…andscapelab into weather-improvements

Refs: #326

Instead of a plain enabled, the frequency can now be altered using a value from 0 to 100 (0 no lightning, 100 extremely frequent lightning) Refs: #326

…andscapelab into weather-improvements

… rename _time_scale to wind_speed We previously "lowered" the light direction to make the sun appear darker behind clouds. New comment should avoid confusion. _time_scale was no longer a fitting variable-name as it clearly now correlates with the how the wind interacts with the movement of the clouds.

…iewport

Previously the render mode was set to always regardless of whether an actual lightning was visible. Now we set it to visible once animating then set visibility to false again.

Previously only the albedo of the cloudmesh was changes instead of albedo and emission.

A prior commit set the rendermode of the subviewport to VISIBLE

…tion and adding comments

kb173 · 2023-08-16T13:27:41Z

Thanks for the changes, looks great! ready to merge imo

Mathias Baumgartinger~ added 18 commits August 2, 2023 16:01

feat: Custom UI-element SlideAndSpin also sends out a signal once its…

816eef8

… value is changed

refactor: restructure UI-weather code and apply changes for new rain-…

eae39d6

…system

feat/wip: add lightning to world scene and add ui controls

fa859d9

WIP: lighting is part of World scene; lightning is randomly created somewhere around center node WIP: adjust code such that it can be enabled from code (still buggy as of now) Refs: #312

feat: expose rotation option of lightning scene to UI

92dcbb6

Refs: #312 ; ecd188c

feat: add preconfigured weather categories

1fe6524

Clear sky, few clouds, overcast, drizzle rain, gusts, thunderstorm, foggy can now be applied via dropdown Refs: #312

fix: volumetric fog is only applied upon reaching a certain threshold…

0ac3cd7

…; disable rain and lightning by default Before, volumetric fog was permanently applied which led to too dark sceneries when the sky is clear/no rain Refs: #312

feat: add new weather category "Heavy Rain"

4b7d888

Refs: #312

fix: set the initial velocity of rain-particles

90182bf

This avoids weird movement when strong winds are applied

fix: weather category was not previously set automatically

2588866

The weather category has to be set after the WeatherManager was instanced

feat: implement environment effects in a more correct way

e9067d5

SSAO and skylight are affected by cloud-coverage. Clouds are not as strongly affected by a bright skylight (change in shader), therefore lights are stronger in general (bluer sky). Refs: #312

fix: remove unnecessary test meshinstances from scene

57b7c8e

fix: rotation was set with degrees as opposed to rad

7104f2f

Setting rotation is required via radians instead of degrees since Godot4 Refs: #315

fix: initially hide lighting cloud effect

63f43d3

Set color_alpha to 0, such that the effect still works once used (as opposed to setting visibility)

feat: expose cloud density parameter

187d26e

Exposed in UI and in weathermanager, preconfigurations adjusted accordingly Refs: #312

feat: apply wind settings to clouds

ce2f372

Changes in the cloud shader were necessary; texture reads are multiplied with a wind-direction Refs: #312

kb173 reviewed Aug 8, 2023

View reviewed changes

LandscapeLab Office and others added 11 commits August 9, 2023 13:07

refactor: require GeoData to inherit from RefCounted instead of Resource

33386e4

Reacts to Geodot commit boku-ilen/geodot-plugin@363f2b6

Merge branch 'weather-improvements' of https://github.com/boku-ilen/l…

6c04d6e

…andscapelab into weather-improvements

refactor: remove unnecessary shader

b78ea31

Refs: #326

refactor: changes lightning_enabled to lightning_frequency

6914ecb

Instead of a plain enabled, the frequency can now be altered using a value from 0 to 100 (0 no lightning, 100 extremely frequent lightning) Refs: #326

Merge branch 'weather-improvements' of https://github.com/boku-ilen/l…

db67b08

…andscapelab into weather-improvements

refactor: remove unnecessary temporal anti aliasing in lightning subv…

4f74533

…iewport

perf: optimizes lightning viewport to render only when animating

632dd3b

Previously the render mode was set to always regardless of whether an actual lightning was visible. Now we set it to visible once animating then set visibility to false again.

fix: changing color of lightning will properly change all materials

dc4664e

Previously only the albedo of the cloudmesh was changes instead of albedo and emission.

refactor: give lightning color a proper default color

99c8e42

perf: set initial visibility of lightning to false

ec3288c

A prior commit set the rendermode of the subviewport to VISIBLE

Mathias Baumgartinger added 2 commits August 16, 2023 14:24

refactor: add clarifying comment to variable heavy_rain_threshold

376c78c

refactor: clarify lightning_rotation by renaming to lightning_orienta…

3911177

…tion and adding comments

Merge branch 'master' into weather-improvements

67cb187

MathiasBaumgartinger merged commit c375a71 into master Aug 17, 2023

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Weather and Environment Improvements #326

Weather and Environment Improvements #326

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kb173 commented Aug 16, 2023

		lightning_enabled_changed.emit(lightning_enabled)


		var lightning_rotation := 0 :

Weather and Environment Improvements #326

Weather and Environment Improvements #326

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MathiasBaumgartinger commented Aug 8, 2023

Weather and Environment Improvements (Refs: #312)

New rain system

New Lightning Scene

Preconfigured Weather

Environment Effects

Cloud Wind

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kb173 commented Aug 16, 2023