Maps with night & day cycles

[4TX4]

Over the course of, say, 10 minutes, the sun comes up, moves along the sky(box), goes down, dusk fades into starry night, lights come on, dawn breaks, etc. Could be combined with various weather fx if so desired. Basically you get several maps for the price of one, and, if done right, a unique, almost hypnotic gaming experience. :cool:

Would such a thing be possible in UT3, and if so, anyone feel like giving it a try?

[Nawrot]

This requires to use one dynamic light that cast shadows and light on almost whole map. Even separate rooms with windows, etc. would be light up by it. And dynamic lights (that light up many meshes) mean big performance hit. I do not say it is impossible to make such map that is playable, but its quite hard, and map should be designed for just that effect.

You can always do fake lighting, use static ambient light, then just change sky, but that would kill your idea.

And making just animated sky, that has clouds, different textures for sky background that can go from blue to dark stars seamlessly etc, is a big challenge.

[Shakeno]

well, I read the new unreal engine 3 supported what 4TX4 said.. seamlessy day/night cycle

[Nawrot]

Can you find link to that info I would love to see how to make it. If its easy and does not make game crawl, I want to do that.

[Kronos]

The people over at metaball did a night & day cylce flawlessly with Unreal Engine 3. You dont need to cast dynamic shadows on every single mesh for it to make your jaws drop in aww.

http://www.metaball.org/media/misc/DailyCycleMatinee.mp4

[Nawrot]

He wrote that he did it with shaders, at least sky. It is not an easy task to make every single texture on level as shader to emulate changing brightness of light. But anyway I may play with that idea some time.

Maybe it turns to be easy task when i learn all those light tricks from new engine.