"I thought you guys already had clouds..."
Our game has been present in development using planes and jpegs for skies for almost entirety of it's existence. I have used this approach in both of the trailers to achieve some pretty decent results.
However, we wanted to use a more modern and sophisticated tool suitable for a fixed perspective project like this, featuring authoring with the benefits of procedural generation, so we made our own sky and cloud system.
It is not the usual skybox, nor a plane or a png. Instead we are using something that works only inside our post-processing volume.
As we rely heavily on exact cloud formations and compositions — this system allows us to control that, while introducing generation elements such as noise, thickness, smoothness, extinction etc.
The clouds can also cast shadows on themselves, receive real-time lighting from the sun and the sky itself. All this is possible using only one single channel texture as an input.
How it works?
It consists of 2 main parts: a foreground layer and a background layer.
The foreground layer is the meat and is generated from the input texture, allowing to draw any shape as base. Then this shape is authored through generative elements.
The background layer plays a supportive role by introducing more randomness and believability to it, while being generated solely from noise.
Results
I'm still getting used to all the settings and knobs, but here are some of them in action.
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