Use Volumetric Clouds
Volumetric clouds can be added to your scene or game using the Volumetric Plugin. You can control their scale, look, and appearance with the material instance that you apply. The default settings can be customized to create the exact look and feel that you’re looking for. For example, you can set the Temporal Accumulation Factor to a lower value and see the effects immediately.
Volumetric clouds have several advantages, but they perform best in specific environments. For example, they are most effective when the camera is positioned below, inside, or slightly above the cloud volume. However, they may not be suitable for space scenarios, and at high altitudes they can show erosion tiling.
To create more realistic clouds, you should try using a Multi Scattering Approximation Octave. This will allow the light to be scattered multiple times through the cloud volume. Moreover, this effect also reduces the chance of ghosting, which can occur when the camera moves quickly and parts of the cloud that have no history must be rendered.
Volumetric Clouds have the ability to boost the visual quality and dynamism of your project, thereby opening up new possibilities for gameplay. While most interactive applications use static textures to create sky and clouds, Volumetric Clouds are able to render real-time weather scenarios. The volumetric multilayer cloud system provides high quality performance with low GPU usage.
How Do I Use Volumetric Clouds?
Volumetric clouds can be generated using the Cloud Map or Clout LUT texture. These textures define the shape of the clouds. These textures are channel-packed, each containing a grayscale texture. The texture is not trivial to create and should only be used in very specific projects.
The Volumetric Clouds system is a core part of the available atmospheric components. To use them effectively, you must first zoom in on the object. Otherwise, the far clipping plane may be too low to be visible in your viewport. You can also use the volumetric Advanced Material Expression (VSM) for the same effect without sacrificing performance.
When working with volumetric clouds, you need to choose the appropriate settings. By default, volumetric clouds are disabled. You can turn them on or off by editing their properties. However, they won’t be visible in ray-traced effects unless you enable them. If you’d like to use volumetric clouds, you’ll need to render the scene using the highest resolution possible.
Volumetric clouds are a great addition to games and can help elevate a beautiful scene. They come in different shapes and sizes and can also be combined with complex weather systems. Some recent games have implemented this technology in their graphics. For example, Horizon: Forbidden West and Red Dead Redemption 2 are two games that make use of this technique. However, these games do not always use volumetric clouds as they are expensive.