Clouds

Common#

Enable Clouds	Toggles rendering of clouds on and off.
Ground Shadows	Toggles rendering of clouds shadows on the ground on and off.
Accurate Layers Sorting	Toggles correct sorting of intersecting cloud layers. Notice Enabling this feature may reduce ray marching quality as samples shall be distributed among all layers.
Transparent Order	Rendering mode for clouds relative to transparent objects (except water). Render Before Transparent — render clouds before all transparent objects (except water). Render After Transparent — render clouds after all transparent objects (except water). Sort Transparent — enable rough sorting for transparent objects relative to clouds (below the lowest cloud layer base -> inside the clouds -> above the highest cloud layer top).
Detail Distortion	Texture type to be used for clouds distortion. The following types are available: 2D Texture — more performance-friendly, but may cause an excessive vertical extrusion of clouds. 3D Texture — ensures homogeneous detail distortion and better image quality, but at a higher performance cost.
Soft Intersection	Soft intersection distance for clouds, in meters.

Quality#

Clouds quality rendering settings

Preset	Clouds quality preset: Low — low quality Medium — medium quality Custom — adjust the quality manually

Customizable Settings#

The following settings are available when the Custom preset is selected.

Clouds quality custom settings

Clouds Quality Settings

Sampling Quality	The number of noise samples used. This parameter affects cloud density. The following values are available: Low — 1 sample, low quality (higher density) Medium — 3 samples, medium quality (by default) High — 5 samples, high quality Ultra — 6 samples, ultra quality (lower density, the clouds are softer) Notice Visual difference between low and ultra quality is not significant. Therefore, it is recommended to use low settings, when possible, to gain performance.
Lighting Quality	The number of samples used to calculate lighting for clouds. The following values are available: Low — 1 sample, low quality Medium — 3 samples, medium quality (by default) High — 5 samples, high quality Ultra — 6 samples, ultra quality Notice This parameter has a significant impact on performance. Therefore, it is recommended to use low settings, when possible.
Samples Count	The number of samples used for clouds rendering. The following values are available: Low — 1 sample, low quality Medium — 3 samples, medium quality (by default) High — 5 samples, high quality Ultra — 6 samples, ultra quality
Step Accuracy	Toggles accuracy of ray marching steps. Higher values provide more accurate form and less noise, while lower ones gain more performance.
Downsampling Rendering	This parameter determines the clouds resolution based on a current screen resolution. The following values are available: Full — full resolution Half — half resolution (by default) Quarter — quarter resolution Notice This parameter has a significant impact on performance.
Interleaved Rendering	Interleaved rendering mode for clouds. The following values are available: disabled (by default) 2 x 2 4 x 4 8 x 8 Notice When clouds are viewed from the ground or from above (at significant distance) and the viewer's velocity is less than 200 units per second, enabling this parameter can provide a significant gain in performance.
Depth Based Reconstruction	Toggles using the clouds ray-marched depth for upsampling the downsampled clouds without obscuring the geometry and reprojection depending on the cloud depth. Recommended for flying through clouds. Notice Works only with Downsampling Rendering set to half and/or Interleaved Rendering set to 2x2.
Interleaved Rendering Temporal	Temporal accumulation of noises for the interleaved sampling. Notice Works only with Interleaved Rendering value set to 2x2.
Depth Based Reconstruction Threshold	Depth threshold value for Depth Based Reconstruction. This value defines the depth difference starting from which the pixels are considered to be related to the different surfaces.
Noise Step	The amount of jitter in areas within clouds that is used to reduce banding effect due to an insufficient number of steps.
Noise Iterations	The amount of jitter used to reduce banding effect due to insufficient number of steps.
Noise Lighting	The amount of jitter for tracing steps of lighting calculation, which is used to reduce banding effect due to insufficient number of steps.
Noise Step Skip	The amount of jitter in areas between clouds, which is used to reduce banding effect due to insufficient number of steps.

Lighting#

Lighting Trace Length	The maximum length of a sun ray traced inside a cloud, in units.
Lighting Cone Radius	Lighting cone sampling radius for clouds lighting. Notice Low values may result in unnatural behavior as the position of the sun changes.
Lighting Samples Distribution	The samples distribution for the clouds lighting. Notice Higher values provide lighting samples closer to the beginning of the range set by Trace Length.

Rounded#

Enable Rounded	Toggles visual curving for clouds on and off. This option can be used to make clouds look more natural imitating planet's curvature.
Planet Radius	Planet radius to be used for clouds curving, in units.

Dynamic Coverage#

Dynamic Coverage Resolution	The quality of dynamic coverage texture for FieldWeather objects. The following values are available: 128 x 128 256 x 256 (by default) 512 x 512 1024 x 1024 2048 x 2048 Higher values make it possible to preserve texture details at high distances. Notice Increased resolution significantly affects performance.
Dynamic Coverage Area	Visibility distance for coverage of FieldWeather objects, in units. Notice In UnigineEditor this area is marked with a bounding box. When the camera is outside this box, the FieldWeather coverage is not visible. Increasing dynamic coverage area leads to reduction of quality of FieldWeather coverage texture and loss of details. This effect can be mitigated by increasing Dynamic Coverage Resolution.

Dynamic Coverage Resolution

The quality of dynamic coverage texture for FieldWeather objects. The following values are available:

128 x 128
256 x 256 (by default)
512 x 512
1024 x 1024
2048 x 2048

Higher values make it possible to preserve texture details at high distances.

Notice

Increased resolution significantly affects performance.

Dynamic Coverage Area

Visibility distance for coverage of FieldWeather objects, in units.

Notice

In UnigineEditor this area is marked with a bounding box. When the camera is outside this box, the FieldWeather coverage is not visible.
Increasing dynamic coverage area leads to reduction of quality of FieldWeather coverage texture and loss of details. This effect can be mitigated by increasing Dynamic Coverage Resolution.

Last update: 2021-04-09

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