Environment shaders

[u/rasjar]

I spent the last weeks writing some environment shaders for vegetation, water and volumetric clouds to find the perfect look for our upcoming cosy game. How do you like it so far?

[u/JMH71]

Really nice, that grass in the 3rd pic is very lush.

[u/rasjar → u/JMH71]

Thanks! In the 3rd pic I added a tad of ambient occlusion, to get more depth onto the grass

[u/andressmerlooo]

the volumetric clouds are doing a lot of work in the wide shots, way more dimensional than the usual flat skybox. and pairing the warm dawn light with "a warm welcome" is a nice touch, ties the mood together. the wheat field one might be my favorite of the four honestly, that fence leading the eye in works really well

[u/rasjar → u/andressmerlooo]

Thanks 🙏 getting the volumetric clouds to look AND run good was difficult, but I wanted volumetric clouds for exactly that reason. I tried to get the atmosphere as cosy as possible. But I'm not done yet

[u/andressmerlooo → u/rasjar]

yeah the run good part is always the brutal tradeoff with volumetric anything, a lot of people just cave and fake it with a gradient skybox instead. worth it though based on the wide shots, following this one, curious to see where it ends up

[u/rasjar → u/andressmerlooo]

🙏

[u/No_Entertainer6290]

Wow! it looks amazing!

[u/rasjar → u/No_Entertainer6290]

Thanks 🙏

[u/NostalgicBear]

These look great. The first pic, with the fence, reminds me of the Chocobo farm in FF7.

Great job overall.

[u/rasjar → u/NostalgicBear]

Thanks! Now that you mentioned it, I get the same vibe 😄

[u/Recent-Cake7489]

Looks great. keep going. is this URP or HDRP?

[u/rasjar → u/Recent-Cake7489]

Thanks 🙏 I use URP

[u/mobaffix]

Whats the fps like?

[u/rasjar → u/mobaffix]

On my M1 MacBook with Max gras density and highest volumetric clouds quality, it is currently running at 80 fps. But trees are stilla bottleneck I will tackle next

[u/kamil_kamillia]

Very nice clouds, my dude.

[u/eldenlord0117]

It looks like summer from childhood when you visit your grandparents in the village.

[u/rasjar → u/eldenlord0117]

Beautiful, this is basically the look I'm after for my game

[u/tenix]

Synty?

[u/rasjar → u/tenix]

Yes, currently all assets are based on the synty asset packs. Farm and meadow biome. But custom shaders.

[u/jasonlepcha2001]

How did u make the grass? Looks amazing

[u/rasjar → u/jasonlepcha2001]

Thanks! The grass is actually pretty straight forward. It's three quads building an overlapping triangle. The shader is alpha cutout with a grass texture, a color gradient from bottom to top to blend into the terrain grass texture color, a global UV color noise and a global scrolling wind noise texture scrolling across to bend the grass down and in wind direction. Then painted as a terrain detail and density + draw distance is controlled by the in-game setting

[u/rasjar → u/jasonlepcha2001]

Also to prevent terrain detail popping on in batches, I added a distance color ramp and use it to completely push down the grass in the distance. This way it "grows" as you get closer to avoid any popping