Unreal Engine 5:One Course Solution For Sky & Weather System

Build a Dynamic Sky & Weather System in Unreal Engine 5 using Blueprint & Niagara & Material

What you'll learn

Dynamic sky system with drag and drop lighting solution

Multiple sky presets with corresponding weather

Nighttime sky with moon and stars

Cell bombing and Tri-planar projection material

Different Footstep FX with physical material

Build different Niagara Weather VFX

Write custom Niagara module script for advanced particle behavior

Learn the best coding practices for Material/Niagara/Blueprint

Build beautiful Volumetric Cloud material

Deep dive of different properties for lighting

Create decal materials for weather system

Animate weather FX through blueprint and material parameter collection

Requirements

Experience for Material or Niagara is required(Or has taken my material or niagara course in the past)

Description

Welcome to your ultimate solution for Unreal Engine 5's Dynamic Sky and Weather System. In this course, you'll embark on a journey to create a robust sky system featuring a dynamic day-night cycle, mesmerizing volumetric clouds, immersive snowy weather complete with footprints and intricate snow particles, and even rainy weather with lifelike raindrops, puddles, and captivating lightning effects. Best of all, we'll be starting from the ground up.In the first section, we'll delve into creating the fundamental day-night cycle. We'll bring stars, the moon, and detailed variables into play, enabling us to fine-tune the appearance of our sky system. Our journey begins with crafting a Blueprint Dynamic Sky Actor, offering a streamlined lighting solution. From there, we'll employ the construction script to lay the foundations of a basic time-of-day system using Blueprint macros. As we progress, we'll explore the concept of a sky sphere and a sky material, introducing our own customizable stars and moon through blueprint variables.Moving on to the second section, we'll introduce 2D clouds and volumetric clouds to our dynamic sky system. This adventure starts with creating a Blueprint enum to define distinct cloud modes. We'll then enhance our sky material, built in the previous section, to incorporate 2D clouds seamlessly. Additionally, we'll delve into planar projection, uncovering its role in projecting volumetric clouds onto the sky. We'll explore volume texture and volumetric advanced output for heightened realism and harness normalized altitude masks and macro variations for intricate detail and captivating shapes. After breathing life into our clouds with animations, we'll expose more properties to our blueprint, offering greater control over the final appearance.In the third section, we'll construct a basic landscape complemented by an automatic landscape material, enabling texture bombing, tri-planar projection, and slope blending. We'll initiate the process by sculpting a rudimentary landscape using the noise texture at our disposal. Subsequently, we'll delve into the concepts of texture bombing and tri-planar projection, revolutionizing our landscape's tiling capabilities.In the next section, we'll introduce snowy weather into our system, complete with footprints, snow particles, snow blending for landscapes and objects, and dynamic snow blending. Our journey commences with an exploration of snowy weather lighting within a testing environment. We'll introduce the notion of data assets, blueprint structs, and how they serve as repositories for various lighting properties and weather switching mechanisms. The creation of a snow blend mask for both landscapes and objects will be followed by insights into using material parameter collections for global weather FX control. We'll also explore anim notifies, blueprint macro libraries, decal materials, and Niagara systems to selectively spawn footprints during snowy conditions. Additionally, we'll develop a custom Niagara module for efficient particle generation, using it as a template to produce our snow particles. Lastly, we'll implement dynamic snow blending, employing a timeline within our blueprint.In the final section, we'll tackle rainy weather, complete with raindrops, puddles, interactive splashes, lightning, and post-process raindrop FX. The journey begins with the creation of a new data asset for rainy weather. We'll delve into the intricacies of generating procedural puddles and employing flip book animations within our materials to create ripples. A custom material function for wave generation, as well as the blending of puddles with our landscape, will be covered. We'll then master the art of crafting performant rain FX by establishing a master liquid material and a rain Niagara system. Our exploration extends to custom Niagara input scripting and dot product utilization to scale raindrop brightness based on both distance and viewing angle. Generating splashes through collision events and user parameters for rain FX will be seamlessly integrated. We'll also explore the concept of physical materials and how they define surface types, allowing us to spawn splashes when characters tread on puddles. Lastly, we'll create a material for lightning and initiate work on the accompanying Niagara system. Finally, we'll transform surface raindrops into a post-process material for our system.This course is the most comprehensive guide you'll find online for creating a sky and weather system. Throughout the course, applied tasks and section challenges will ensure your comprehension and ability to replicate each step.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Course Intro

Lecture 2 What Does Dynamic Sky Weather System Need?

Lecture 3 Some Common Questions You May Have…

Lecture 4 Create A Starting Project

Lecture 5 How To Get Help?

Lecture 6 Material Hotkey Cheat Sheet

Section 2: Day Night Cycle

Lecture 7 Day Night Cycle Section Overview

Lecture 8 Environment Light Mixer

Lecture 9 BP Dynamic Sky Actor

Lecture 10 Construction Script

Lecture 11 Time Of Day

Lecture 12 Handle Moon Rotation

Lecture 13 Blueprint Macros

Lecture 14 Mini Challenge Answers

Lecture 15 Nighttime Sky

Lecture 16 Adjust Blueprint Properties

Lecture 17 Sky Sphere

Lecture 18 Material Refresher

Lecture 19 Stars For Nighttime Sky

Lecture 20 Vertex Normal

Lecture 21 Channel Mask Parameter

Lecture 22 Star Visibility

Lecture 23 Moon

Lecture 24 Section Challenge: Moon Visibility

Lecture 25 Share Task: Share Your Sky

Lecture 26 Adjust More Properties From BP

Lecture 27 Optional Challenge: Add In Your Own Sun

Lecture 28 Section Wrap Up

Section 3: Clouds

Lecture 29 Clouds Section Overview

Lecture 30 Blueprint Enum

Lecture 31 2D Clouds

Lecture 32 2D Clouds Adjustment

Lecture 33 Sky Atmosphere Tint

Lecture 34 Adjust 2D Clouds From Blueprint

Lecture 35 Planar Projection

Lecture 36 Volumetric Clouds

Lecture 37 Volume Texture

Lecture 38 Volumetric Advanced Output

Lecture 39 Influence Radius Refactoring

Lecture 40 Norm Altitude In Layer

Lecture 41 Macro Variation For Clouds

Lecture 42 Panning Volumetric Clouds

Lecture 43 Adjust Volumetric Clouds From Blueprint

Lecture 44 Multiple Sampler Type Support

Lecture 45 Section Challenge: Volumetric Clouds Variation

Lecture 46 Section Wrap Up

Section 4: Landscape

Lecture 47 Landscape Section Overview

Lecture 48 Preparing For Landscape

Lecture 49 Noise Sculpting

Lecture 50 Texture Bombing Default

Lecture 51 Texture Bombing Voronoi

Lecture 52 Triplanar Projection Default

Lecture 53 Rebuild Triplanar Projection

Lecture 54 UV Triplanar Projection

Lecture 55 Triplanar Bombing

Lecture 56 Landscape Layer Process

Lecture 57 MF_TextureBombingVoronoi

Lecture 58 MF_ComputeLandscapeUV

Lecture 59 Assemble Landscape Layer

Lecture 60 Ground Layer Base Color

Lecture 61 Params For Base Color

Lecture 62 Ground Layer Normal And ORD

Lecture 63 Slope Layer

Lecture 64 Slope Blend

Lecture 65 Adjust Nighttime Settings

Lecture 66 Section Wrap Up

Section 5: Snowy Weather

Lecture 67 Snowy Weather Section Overview

Lecture 68 Lighting For Snowy Weather

Lecture 69 Data Asset

Lecture 70 Blueprint Struct

Lecture 71 Switch Weathers

Lecture 72 Full Refresh

Lecture 73 Snow Blend Mask

Lecture 74 MF_SnowyWeatherBlend

Lecture 75 Material Parameter Collection

Lecture 76 Section Challenge: Snow Object Blend

Lecture 77 Anim Notify

Lecture 78 Blueprint Macro Library

Lecture 79 Decal Material

Lecture 80 Niagara Refresher

Lecture 81 Footprint Niagara System

Lecture 82 Preparing For Weather Particles

Lecture 83 NMS_GetCameraProperties

Lecture 84 Snow Particles

Lecture 85 Smoke Particles For Snow

Lecture 86 Toggle Niagara System Component

Lecture 87 Section Challenge: User Parameter

Lecture 88 Animate Snow Coverage

Lecture 89 Sync Default Values

Lecture 90 Adjusting Snow Animation

Lecture 91 Section Wrap Up

Section 6: Rainy Weather

Lecture 92 Rainy Weather Section Overview

Lecture 93 Rainy Data Asset

Lecture 94 Lighting For Rainy Weather

Lecture 95 Properties For Puddles

Lecture 96 Ripples

Lecture 97 Puddle Waves

Lecture 98 MF_GenerateRainyWeatherPuddles

Lecture 99 Smooth Step

Lecture 100 Toggle Rain

Lecture 101 Liquid Master Material

Lecture 102 Main Rain Drops

Lecture 103 Brightness By Distance

Lecture 104 Brightness By Look Up Angle

Lecture 105 Collision Event

Lecture 106 Rain Splashes

Lecture 107 GPU Rain

Lecture 108 Section Challenge: Toggle Rain FX

Lecture 109 Rain FX User Parameter

Lecture 110 More is on the way…

Intermediate Unreal users who want to know how to build a sky system,Learners who want to learn more advanced Material and Niagara techniques