Soc 2006 SkyGen Test Windows Builds. 15/08 (LGuillaume)

[Dani]

Hello!

I haven't seen anyone play with the skygen project from blender soc?

I thought a build available for everyone could help the developer in some sort of way, mostly providing feedback and bugs !

So here's a test build by LGuillaume (thnx!):
http://blendertestbuilds.de/index.ph...ngine/windows/

[EDIT][Deprecated paragraphs here][/EDIT]

Now you might as well test it!
hint: add a sun lamp, move it around and explore the world and lamp panes!

test file link: http://barbeau.daniel.free.fr/bbuild/skytest2.7z

Ciao
Dani

[Dani]

Here are my notes:

The sky is great! You even have blooming effect around the sun! that's soooo nice!

But since this is an early development snapshot there are some problems:

*You can have more than one sun, but I noted a quite visible limit around the bloom created by both suns (in the case there are 2 suns in the scene).

*The sky is not visible to raytracing. No reflecting it, no illumination with AO skycolor.

*Envmap render incorrectly, basically the same sky is reproduced 6 times in the cube instead of showing 6 different view of the sky.

That's all for now! Keep up the good work!

Dani

[Roy]

Hmmm,

Cant actually get anything to work, ie: no sky effects? Any hints or tutorial appreciated!

[Roja]

Can you post some screenshots and/or renders?

[Dani]

Hey good remark ^^

First you need to activate the sky engine in the world panel (f8):
next to the preview there's a sky button. That enable the sky engine.
There's a new floating panel in there where you can set:

• "turbidity" of the sky. As I understand it, the higher means that less high frequency light enters the sky so it becomes more red.

• "Nat" : Important: to see all the colorful effects from the sky engine, activate the "Nat" button right there (or else, it will use the Ho and Ze settings from the world).

• "One" : will ask you which sun light you want to use if you have many of them and only want to use one of them.

Then add a sunlight. If you look at it's panel (F5) you'll see a new floating panel where you can set the time of the day, the day and the month. Beneath these buttons there's a "Use date and location". But I'm not sure this is really usuable right now.

Now, as I understand it, if you haven't activated "Use date and loc..." following the global Z position of the sun lamp you'll get, for high Z : midday sky | for low Z : birth/end of day sky.

For the moment that's all I know!
I hope this helps!

images...
High Z:


low Z:


same with hight turbidity:


the bad envmap problem:


and non-reflected sky:


Note: in the pics i combine the sun lamp with a hemilamp for backlight and a arealight for shadows

Dani

[Lguillaume]

Hi Dani, can you post a blend file, I don't arrive to your result, never see the sun.
And another think, for a mesh in effect panel, do you see you have a clouds panel, when create new, nothing happens, same thing for you?

[cekuhnen]

did i understand it right that you also will bring volumetric looking cloud simulation which is menionted at the website you posted?

http://www.ofb.net/~eggplant/clouds/

I am very interested in this particle/sprite based solution because I noticed that in various games producing very good results already in ordinary game engines.

[Roy]

Thanks dani, but I still get nothing...
When engine enabled just get a black sky, regardless of the sky colours I set. I have tried turbidity settings and brightness of the sun lamp etc.

[Cire]

Either some step has been left out . . . or it don't work. I've tried everything you mentioned Dani, but all I get is the World color background.

Your renders look nice, though . . . any other advice for us?

[Aligorith]

All you need to do (in world buttons) is:
- turn on sky in preview panel. leave all other options off
- turn on nat
- adjust turbidity (time of day or tone of sky it seems)
- optionally turn on one, and set a lamp

Voila! It works...

Aligorith

[MicWit]

****OK, I got it to work, you have to move the camera down and angle it up more so that you can see some of the sky.****

There is an infinite plane that renders black and the default angle of the camera makes it look like a black sky. Is there some way of adding an infinite terrain? If not, could be a pain using the sky. Plus, I notice that the sun does weird things with lighting.

Cant wait to see the direction this project takes, will the sun be rendered as a volumetric light down the track? that would be cool. Cant wait to see those clouds either.

MicWit

[Dani]

cekuhnen : I'm not the dev! credits go to Sionix aka Dmitriy Mazovka
But apparently he has planned to add clouds and their volumetric rendering.

MicWit : In fact, the sky is only rendered for the upper part of the world. I'm not sure if Sionix is planning to enable the rendering of the lower part. Does it make sense? I'm not quite sure. I'm not even sure the model he uses describes that ^^.
So yes, hint : to see the sky make your camera look upwards!

Lguillaume : here's a basic test file:
http://barbeau.daniel.free.fr/bbuild/testsky2.7z
And yes, for the moment the cloud button doesn't seem to do anything.

EDIT... in the bug series, the range and exposure settings from the world buttons don't seem to do anything on the sky engine.

Have fun!
Dani

(BTW, I haven't been able to point this thread to sionix, so if anybody sees him on irc or somewhere else, please do!)

[Cire]

OK, got it to work. My problem seems to be that my default scene has the camera constrained to track an empty.

So for anyone else who has a similar setup: Point the camera up and remove any constraints from the camera!

[Roy]

Thanks Cire, I had the same problem, curious, if the camera is constrained to an empty, it doesnt work! Investigated, seems to work, but I can see its still early stages, but this could turn into a great feature.

[Lazareus]

I'm compiling this code from CVS, and having some issues.
I'm having to add a relative path to BSG_SkyGen.h in a number of files.
Surely there is a more elegant solution?

[Dani]

Hello Lazareus:

What I did is modify the Sconsript file in the SkyGen dir so that it includes more files.

I also had to do this for src/render I think. I can't rememeber exactly, but I didn't modify the source files just the concerned Sconscript files.

I hope this helps
In case, I can post them here if you don't manage to untangle it ^^

Ciao
Dani

[Lazareus]

I suspected that would be the answer, but I don't know scons that well. I'd love to see your config. Thanks!

I'm on Linux, but I can translate from Win32. :-)

[ZanQdo]

Hi, I compiled skygen to test but I'm still lost

Here it is if you want it

[Lazareus]

Originally Posted by ZanQdo Hi, I compiled skygen to test but I'm still lost Here it is if you want it

I just meant to point out that there is a pretty good explanation of how to use it in this thread. :-)

[ZanQdo]

I know, I'm gona read

Edit: oh... so it was not me, only thing the skygen does is a color gradient right? it still doens't illuminate or add clouds etc?