Tram Simulator Marketing Demo

[Guest shane.ploenges]

A screenshot taken from a video capture for a Tram Simulator marketing demo, this was put together in 1 day.

[ulf.schroeter]

Nice work, especially the aggregated snow at house walls...even tough I have never seen sharp sun shadows while its snowing, but this might be different down under :-)

[steve3d]

well, ulf are right, under heavy snowy conditions, there should be no direct sun light, so, there should be no shadow.

No wonder I see this picture and feels something wrong. :(

[Guest shane.ploenges]

You are probably right about the sharp shadows, however we have not implemented a cloud system yet, so this is not easy to do (obviously the snow flake particles and fog do not soften the sunlight in Unigine).. so i think clouds might do this? if not what would be the suggested way to achieve soft shadows, keeping in mind that it needs to be variable so that when the snow stops the shadows return sharp under sunny conditions.

 

thanks for the input.

 

Guess how i did the snow buildup? its a terrain under my scene that i then used a height brush on to raise it above my ground mesh where i wanted - this was very quick and gave some nice results :(.

[manguste]

Our tech artist suggested two variants for your scene:

 

* To create the effect of soft shadows:

• Increase a bit LightWorld node -> Shadow tab -> Softness to blur shadows. (Setting too high value would not be the best idea since shadows will look grainy),
  
• Increase Ambient to make the shadows less dark.
  
• Decrease the Shadow map size for more blurred shadows.
  
• We also recommend for you to turn on Main menu->Render->Ambient occlusion. If you will increase Screen radius, it will make the effect of soft shadows nicer. But there's a performance penalty for this option, of course.
  

* Another variant is to create effect of snowing in a sunny day (it does happen quite a lot, you can believe us since it's snowing most of the year in Siberia :D) though usually not with such heavy snow.

• Disable the fog.
  
• Enable light scattering.
  
• Set a high value for Render settings -> Scattering tab -> Mie. This will create an effect of atmosphere with a lot of particles in it.
  
• Set low Power to move the Mie effect closer to the camera.
  

 

 

(obviously the snow flake particles and fog do not soften the sunlight in Unigine).. so i think clouds might do this?

No, clouds won't soften shadows, though they will give the softer look to the sky.

 

what would be the suggested way to achieve soft shadows, keeping in mind that it needs to be variable so that when the snow stops the shadows return sharp under sunny conditions.

You can control parameters animation via Tracker system, just like in Valley demo. Each weather has its own set of light+scattering parameters.