This month I've started working on an extense time of day system, there's still work to be done on it but it's starting to look good, Skyboxes are just a collection of object layers now and are fully scriptable.
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If you go up enough you can even see the curvature of the tiny planet and watch the stars:
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As with our shaders, they're open to be iterated upon from community developers to their taste, you could use this as a base to add planet specific atmosphere scatter in a space game you'd want to make.
You can still use this on static scenes as well, and the atmospherics will conform to the lighting on the scene, should help in getting the look of your map right without hunting for skybox textures if you choose (Traditional Skyboxes are still supported).
attribute 'class' not allowedattribute 'class' not allowedattribute 'contenteditable' not allowedattribute 'blocktype' not allowedVRAD3 will bake extra information that includes what I'm calling Sky Coverage which works as sort of a directional occlusion for the sky, meaning indirect light from the atmosphere itself will not have constant flat appearance or that such light would bleed while you are in a subway, but if you see a grate leading to the surface, the atmosphere light should gradient through as you'd expect and not interfere with any baked indoor lighting.
I'd want to have sun shadows that would extend to near infinity, I think there's a case to be made with the demand people have for big maps that retain fidelity no matter how far you go or what time of day it is, traditionally such techniques would be very taxing on perfomance, so VRAD will also bake SDF information about the geometry that allows us to trace far shadows for far away geometry very efficiently, among some really interesting effects that I want to expand upon on a later post.
While it's interesting to talk about the technalities, Artists and Mappers will not even have to worry about what's behind this, it should just work.
attribute 'class' not allowedattribute 'contenteditable' not allowedattribute 'blocktype' not allowedA skybox scene object doesn't have to be just the infinite sky, but can really be anything and you can easily add it as a layer, I want to improve on the atmospheres later on adding a cloud system.
