A shiny sky needs clouds too! Clouds are quite tough to implement due to the fact that graphics cards were not designed to draw half transparent objects, so you have to use various tricks to make it work, like sorting all objects every frame or implementing order independent transparency. Thankfully there's a lot of research on that - I chose to implement "Weighted Blended Order Indenpendent Transparency" invented by Morgan McGuire because its fast, comparatively easy to implement and delievers good enough results.
1. First working clouds with variable density (no WBOIT)
It uses efficient rendering methods so it can render over a kilometer of clouds quite easily (at least at this stage of the game)
2. Less ugly clouds after implementing correct transparency rendering using WBOIT
As you can see, the density and color of the clouds is just a value that can be changed anytime. This is important as I want to create different cloud patterns depending on the weather.
The cloud system is also using Shaders, so i can easily color them according to the sky colors during sunset (they are also vertically offseted here just for testing, I might make it a permanent feature):
Up next: More cleanup/refactoring and the beginnings of proper terrain generation.
Edited by Tyron
