Hey guys, I figured now was as good a time as any to start posting my work on polycount so here it goes! I've been working on a day/night cycle in UDK for a project I'm working on and this is the progress so far. If anyone's got any crit and feedback I'd greatly appreciate it, I'm always looking to improve

Anyway, here's the current version, I've since fixed the wind issues with the grass (foolishly forgot to recreate the wind actor after a crash), and re-exported the trees with wind that doesn't look like a nuclear blast, so please try and forgive that until I get an updated version together

UDK Day Night Cycle - Test 1 - YouTube

The really distracting thing for me is it looks like your grass is just bouncing up and down, instead of being blown back and forth.

Originally Posted by jackalope

The really distracting thing for me is it looks like your grass is just bouncing up and down, instead of being blown back and forth.

Yeah, that's fixed, was simply a missing wind actor

Thats looking really good, currently im also working on a day/night cycle so its awesome to see what youve done.
With the clouds and shadows, how did you do that? just shadows off the skybox?
or something else?

Originally Posted by Dysengaged

Thats looking really good, currently im also working on a day/night cycle so its awesome to see what youve done.
With the clouds and shadows, how did you do that? just shadows off the skybox?
or something else?

Thanks, I haven't set up any cloud shadows yet, if/when I do I'll probably just set up a spotlight with a light function so that might be worth a try.

I also have an issue I hope someone knows how to fix as it plagues most of my projects so far but there seems to be an issue with transparent materials and their interaction with fog? This screenshot should make the problem clearer but it seems that the fog doesn't affect the water. I'm guessing this is an alpha sorting issue of some description?

From UDK Doco - http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsOverview.html

Material Properties - Translucency:
Allow Fog - Whether the material should allow fog or be unaffected by fog. This only has meaning for materials with translucent blend modes.

I think this should fix it?

the distracting thing for me is the light that flicks on at midnight and then off when it gets to the morning. I don't really think it's needed especially when there doesn't appear to be a source for it.

@Danpaz3D, Thanks, unfortunately I've tried that (as well as many other checkboxes) to no avail. I'm not quite sure whether the issue is with the fog, the material or the engine in general so it's proving difficult to find a solution.

@AzzaMat, Yeah, it's currently just there as a test for a flashlight for the project; I just wanted to get an idea of how it would illuminate and contribute to the atmosphere

Yeah ive done some dynamic clouds from a light, works but would be nice to have to shadows from the skydome.
looking really good
Do you have the night day working inside matinee? or is there other ways to do it?

Originally Posted by Dysengaged

Yeah ive done some dynamic clouds from a light, works but would be nice to have to shadows from the skydome.
looking really good
Do you have the night day working inside matinee? or is there other ways to do it?

Thanks! Yeah, it's set up with a matinee sequence controlling the sun rotation, material parameters, fog densities, etc and a few kismet delays to control the post process volumes. As far as I'm aware it's matinee or uscript and I only know reeeaaally basic uscript stuff.

its cool, yeah with your sky box is it just a rotating parameter? and the sky clouds just a part of your sky box, or do you have dynamic clouds?
how did you do fog densities? sounds awesome
with the light you used for the sun/moon what kind of light did you use, and did you just apply it to affect the skydome only?

anyway how goes the progress anyway?

The directional light rotates and the skybox uses light vectors to draw the sun at the relative location (and the moon at an opposite). Check out the UDN if you're not sure, there's plenty of info on matinee and parameters, etc. It's a similar setup do the default UDK skybox with the moveable sun.

thats awesome ill have to look into it

Have you use dominant directional light movable? I currentlly use it and have problem with sun light. Its just beats the trees when sun is under the horizont.

Yeah I had the same problem, didn't find a fix in the end so I simply keyframed the brightness and volumetric properties off when the sun reached the horizon