Real-Time Rendering of Volumetric Clouds

Rendering of Volumetric Clouds

Volumetric clouds are a great way to add depth to your scenes. Unlike traditional rendering techniques, they don’t require a complex computer model. In fact, they can be rendered in real time. To understand why this technique is beneficial, consider how real clouds work. In real life, light bounces off water particles and creates the shape of clouds.

Volumetric clouds can be created in three ways. In one way, they can be created from a single volume material, which can be customized through instancing. Alternatively, they can be created with material expressions. These are editable attributes that are available in the material input nodes of the volumetric clouds component.

Another important aspect of volumetric clouds is how they are rendered. They can be rendered using a range of textures and parameters. For example, using a greyscale material would result in a grayscale response. This would make the clouds appear gray, but it would still be possible to see their lighting.

Volumetric clouds are a great way to increase visual quality and add dynamism to a project. They also open up new types of gameplay experiences. Many interactive applications treat lighting and weather as static components, which ignore the fact that the sky and cloud structures change constantly. By utilizing volumetric clouds, you can increase the visual quality of your scenes and create new types of gameplay.

Real-Time Rendering of Volumetric Clouds

Real-time rendering of volumetric clouds is an incredibly powerful way to add a new layer of realism to the sky in your game. The technique can be optimized for performance and produce visually pleasing clouds. By reducing the number of steps towards the sun, the system can achieve scalable real-time performance while still producing a variety of realistic clouds. Another key feature of volumetric clouds is their ability to handle various times of day.

A number of advanced settings for volumetric clouds can greatly improve the quality of your output. You can increase the number of samples per sample, increase the sample count, or disable fast sky LUT to produce fewer visual artifacts. You can also tweak the values of r.VolumetricRenderTarget to achieve cinematic-quality results. You can also increase the number of samples for reflections and views.

One of the biggest bottlenecks of billboard-splatting volume clouds is the pixel fill rate. Fortunately, Harris and his team have found a way to reduce this problem. They have created a real-time demo of their method, LuckyCloud, which displays a cloudscape in real time and allows you to pan and zoom around the clouds.

Volumetric clouds are a great addition to many game projects. When using volumetric clouds, you can set up scene reflections for each cloud, or use a single octave of light multiple scattering (LOS) in your project. Another important feature is the ability to define how many samples are used for ray march and shadowing. With this feature, you can create realistic volumetric clouds for your games without sacrificing performance.