Making A Day & Night Cycle in Godot 4

In this DEVLOG 0, I create a dynamic sky system with atmospheric light scattering and a full day and night cycle in the Godot Engine using the new sky shaders in Godot 4.0.

💛 Get GodotSky - A Dynamic Sky System for the Godot Engine

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✅ This Week in Godot

0:00 Intro
0:12 GodotSky
0:38 Understanding Atmosphere Physics
1:40 The Shader
2:54 Establishing a Day and Night Cycle
3:32 Creating Atmospheric Scattering
5:03 Using EYEDIR Variable
5:56 Creating the Sun Disc and Adjusting Sun Characteristics
6:33 Day Night Cycle Test

Resources:

#skyshader #godotengine #godot4

[stayathomedev]

💛 Get GodotSky - A Dynamic Sky System for the Godot Engine

[JonHuhnMedical]

Outstanding work! I've been working on a VR flight sim in Unity as a hobby project, and I don't quite have the same mental prowess you have at figuring stuff out, so I had to come up with my own workarounds. I downloaded an eval version of Vue Esprit, and rendered a series of vertical slivers of sky. Basically one sliver for each altitude increment (starting at 0 feet and going up to 200k feet, in increments of 5k feet). And for each altitude, I also rendered several vertical slivers of sky representing different times of day, making sure to avoid rendering the sun or its bloom. Then in after effects I composited the slivers into one texture map. Then in Unity, I blend strips of the texture together based on the camera's altitude and the time of day, then take that final composited strip and stretch it across the sky dome to create the final base coloration of the sky. It's very crude and still needs some more elements, but that's what ya gotta do when you're much more right brain than left!

[crigz]

What an amazing tutorial mate! Fantastic info in this one.

[maniksharma]

It will look even better with better environment to show cases it.
You can use the new port of lumbard yard scene.

[MichaelH-zbgg]

This looks very interesting, well done

The only thing Godot 4 is missing and that is stopping me from moving to it full time is the lack of a 3d terrain editor (like unity), maybe someone will address that in the future...

[lifeleft]

Awesome! This gonna save me from a lot of headaches.

[devbre]

i was going to build a daynight cycle myself... but you did such an amazing work here. Great stuff.

[Mrtargi]

It would be great if you add README to your project. It took me a while to understand everything. Also you can add moon phases with smth like float sphere_intersect( vec3 view_dir, vec3 sphere_pos, float radius )
{
float b = dot( -sphere_pos, view_dir );
float c = dot( -sphere_pos, -sphere_pos ) - pow( radius, 2 );
float h = pow( b, 2 ) - c;
return h < 0.0 ? -1.0 : -b - sqrt( h );
}

[ezzie_baby]

Thank you for sharing, this is badass!

[INeatFreak]

I'd wished you would've added a bloom like high exposure effect to the sun during the day that reduces as it reaches to the horizon revealing the circular shape of the sun.

[nezbro]

Appears to be working in 4.2.2 see the itch link for further details.

[CrushingJosch]

That's a really nice setup. Thanks for showing in detail how you made it and for offering it in your shop :)
Ooooone question:
Do you see any way to add shadows being cast from the clouds to the objects in the scene? I experimented with something like that back in UnrealEngine3 (there the system I used was called "light functions") and it added a whole lot of atmosphere to the scene.
I am currently working on a top-down game where I also am implementing a day-night-cycle. I might use yours, as it is just set up a lot better than mine :D But then, as it's top-down, I don't see clouds or sun-disc anyways. BUT I would see moving shadows from clouds, which could look pretty neat.

[_gamma.]

Does this work for 4.2? Did v2 ever come out?

[morgan]

i think it would be more accurate to dot the sun vector with the sky dome vectors so that it’s redder near the sun and bluer on the other side

[ianhall]

How do you generate or find the precalculated atmospheric scattering table?

[YannAbdel]

Can you make a tutorial on terrain in godot 4

[gnastygames]

Looks fantastic, but what is the game about? what kind of game is it? I look forward to the next devlog :)

[sarang-games]

keep going bro. godot sky must beat unity/unreal sky

[appleminecraft]

Great video but where can i get the look up texture

[friendlyfox]

how do i get the stars and galaxies to work in godot 4.2?