All language subtitles for 1月30日

Easy Fog is a lightweight

elegant solution for adding localized fog

clouds and mood to really polish up any environment

in Unreal Engine 5

if you've ever viewed the default

exponential height walking unreal

you'll know it's great

but it's a bit tricky to art Direct

and get the look you want with it

that

is where Easy Fog comes in and why it should be a part

of your unreal toolbox

using a blueprint here

you can quickly adjust the fog's shape

density and color

to integrate it as well as possible into your level

help make the fog match your sky and background color

giving you complete control over its appearance

you can even add wind effects however subtle

to breathe a bit of life into your world

etfog include 10 different fog alphas and

10 matching normal maps to level up your fog or clouds

by giving them a lot more volume

I built this tool out of necessity for my own project

because I needed a solution to place fog in a way that

allowed me to tweak

each individual fog card

without material instances

because that quickly

bloat your content browser with a whole bunch of files

with ethifog however

all you need is the blueprint

no additional materials are needed

if this is the tool you would like to get your hands on

I'm running a 50 off deal for the next week only

you can purchase ethifog on gumroad or

Art Station Marketplace

you'll find a link down below

now having

shown you what ezfog is and what you can do with it

let's jump into unreal so I can show you how to use it

and we can get started with how to install it

once you've downloaded ezfog

you can unzip the folder and you'll get two

additional folders here

we've got 5.0.3 and 5.1

initially i made ezfog on

unreal engine 5.1

if for whatever reason you're still on 5.0

you'll have a working version of the build there

so going into the 5.1 folder

you're gonna have the Ezfog

Unreal Engine project right here

so I'm gonna go ahead and open

this Unreal Engine project here

and

the first thing you see when you open up the project

is the showcase level showing you

each and every one of the

10 different cloud alphas that come included with Ezfog

additionally if you navigate to the

level folder in the content browser

you'll find

Level Demo which I'm going to open up right here

which showcases the more

real world use case of ezfog

so this may look a little underwhelming right now

but I went ahead and added a

camera for this level by going up here

clicking on seq demo

and clicking on the little camera icon right here

and so I've included this level primarily to show you

how it can work

right out of the box

to give you a good example of its potential

now having the ezfog project is all fine and dandy but

what if you wanted to just

add ezfog to an existing unreal project

you have two ways of doing this

the easiest way is to use unreal

built in migrate feature

so we're going to go to the content browser

and we're going to go to the Easyfog folder itself

you're going to right click on it

we're going to go to migrate

click OK what you need to do now

is you need to go to the content browser

of your desired project that you want to copy Easyfog 2

this entirely depends on where you have saved your

Unreal Engine project

so navigate to the Unreal project itself

and you want to select the content folder

okay so click on the content folder

click on select folder now

and just like that the Easy Fog folder

will be correctly migrated

to your desired Unreal Engine project

alternatively

the other way to do it

is to manually copy the files over

so in the

Easy Fog folder

that you downloaded from gumroad or any other

marketplace you bought it from

you can go to the content folder in that folder

and copy the EZ Fog folder itself okay

we're gonna copy that

and here we're gonna have

our desired target Unreal Engine project

so again depending on where you have it saved

navigate to wherever the unreal project is

open up that content folder

and you can just simply

paste the EV Fog folder

into your desired project

and everything from there should work just fine

so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to select

all of my ezfog actors here

and I'm going to delete them

and we're going to start off from scratch

to really give you a visual example of

how I would use ezfog in a real world situation

so to get started

the only thing you need to do

is we're going to go to the content browser

we're going to go to the blueprint folder right here

and you'll see here we've got the BP EZ fog

drag and drop this into your level

and we can rotate it into place like that

like such and we can just move it up and scale it up

as we see fit

make it the size you want

you can scale it up non uniformly however you want

you can flip it around

upside down however you like the choice is yours

now with the blueprint in our scene

let's go through

each and every

single one of the settings in the details panel

so starting off

with the core basics we've got base color Mabin

that is the base color of your cloud

so right now I've got to the very

low key tileable texture

this by default should work pretty good out of the box

you pretty much never really need to touch that

next we've got the opacity map

and the opacity map is what's going to

change the shape of your cloud

so in order to change that

let's click on the little browd button here

and it's going to navigate in your content browser to

the folder where

each and every one of your cloud alphas are located

so we've got 10 different ones here

if I wanted to have

let's say this cloud instead right here

you'll see we've got a totally different cloud shape

now if I wanted to use this one for example

we can have that too

if we wanted to use a very simple radio fog like this

we can have that too

the radio fog

is probably my favorite for really establishing some

very subtle localized fog in your level

this is often what I like to start my level off with

just establishing some

localized pockets of fog in our level

is a great way to get started and instantly

add some mood to your scene right

it doesn't get any easier than that

so for now

I'm just going to go ahead and use the default one

next we've got the normal map slot

and we're going to jump into that a little bit later

but really

this is where you assign the desired normal map

you'll see

each and every single one of the cloud Alphas

has their own respective normal map

with it

so in general you're going to want to make sure that

the noble map you use

matches the opacity map that you're using right

next up we have base color tint

that is how we go ahead and add a color

to our fog to really help it match the sky itself

so for example if I wanted to

match the color of the sky here

we're going to go ahead and use the eyedropper tool

and just click let's say

here like that

of course it's going to be too dark right

but it's okay

we're gonna go

click on here again and bump up that brightness

at least we have the correct hue now

so from there it's just a matter of

tweaking and getting

roughly the right saturation and the right value

for the cloud to kind of blend into your

sky correctly

next we have base color contrast

and that's kind of

where it's going to help the cloud here

fit in a little bit better in our scene

you'll see because of the base color map

we've got the tiling

cloud texture

you'll see these little

patches of dark

are a little bit too strong for my taste

and of course depends on your theme

there's no magical setting here

none of the settings here will work

100 percent of the time in every single environment

you're going to have to

massage and finesse your settings

based on your level

but for now I'm going to

turn the base color contrast to a negative value

to reduce that contrast

you'll see a little bit right here

if I put to like minus point four

now we kind of got rid of that ugly black splotch there

so already this kind of

feels a little bit more neutral

and blends into the sky a little bit better

next we have base color intensity

and that's kinda again like the name says

we can increase

the intensity of the base color texture itself

next we have emissive intensity

and you might not think that clouds emit light

because they don't

but the emissive intensity is

really the one I use the most often for really

finessing in art directing

my fall cards as much as possible

so if I hit the total like point 3

if I hit the 0 you'll see it just gets too dark

it's really like pitch black right

even though my base color is kind of bright

that's because these fog cards are lit right

so if I rotate it perpendicular to the sun right here

you'll see it actually gets lit correctly

but we don't really want our fog card to be lit quite

the way that static meshage would be lit right

and that's where

the intermissive intensity comes in handy

so like 3 is usually a good starting point

and just like that we're already

it is blending into our sky pretty well

I hope you can see in the video

but we do have a nice gradient here across

the faug card itself

next we have normal map intensity

and that's where things start getting interesting

so I'm gonna set this to 1

and you'll see of course

nothing

happened because we haven't assigned normal map to it

yet so I'm gonna go make sure that I'm going to

select the correct normal map

which is this one right here

drag and drop that here

and you'll see already

it was subtle but there was a change there

see before and after

before and after we're getting a little bit of extra

volume in this cloud like this

so if I were to

exaggerate the normal map intensity here

to something like 5

you'll see

suddenly we get

way more volume to our cloud

it's starting to feel like a real cloud

now if I turn this off

back to 0 back to 5

you'll see it's a tremendous difference

just a reminder none of just is volumetric

and yes in theory volumetric clouds are

better so to speak absolutely but

this way with ezfog

it makes it a whole lot easier to just place

very specific clouds

in very specific locations

to get the look that you want

next we have

fog density right here

it's how dense your fog cards will be

so if I were to reduce this to something like 5

you'll see as I adjusted it really changes the opacity

of the cloud itself

next up is where things get really interesting and

the geometry fading distance

is probably my favorite setting

in Easy Fog

so you'll see here that we've got a default of 1000

if I set it to 0

notice how now the fog really clips with the landscape

it does not look very good

and this is what would typically happen with

fault cards

that don't have the geometry fading built in

so it doesn't look very good

but as we increase the geometry fading distance

like this you'll see we can suddenly

start having it blend into the landscape completely

seamlessly

and taking a look at this example from the snowy scene

you can use the

geometry fading distance to really help the fog hard

blend in with the tree like this

it just helps the fog feel a lot more betterer

so feel free to experiment with that

next we have the camera fading distance and that

is a pretty interesting one

and it might not be immediately

obvious what it does because if I set this to 0

and back to 1000

you'll see nothing changes

but let me demonstrate

if I move the camera

all the way over here

notice how as the camera goes through the cloud itself

it just fades away doesn't clip suddenly

if I were to set

the camera fading distance to something like zero again

you'll notice that

we get this popping

right it doesn't look very good

there's no seamless transition

and that is where the camera fading distance comes in

really handy

if you want to have like an establishing shot

of the camera kind of

emerging through the cloud like this

you would need to have the camera fading distance

and so that's why I have a default value of 1000

now you'll see the camera just blends in

through it seamlessly

it's a good little setting to know about

next up we have the Cache Shadow option

but this is not going to work by default

because it only works

if you're using ray traced shadows in your theme

so if you're using alumin

the Cache Shadows option here is not going to do

anything

just so you know

and now we have one last trick of our sleeve

and that is the wind control

so you'll see right here we've got wind yes or no

it's a value between 0 and 1

I'm gonna put this to 1

and you'll notice that

okay we kinda lost our cloud here

doesn't look nearly as

dent or opaque that used to be right

so due to the way that I made

the fog material

you're going to need to compensate

with emissive intensity or fog density

to bring it back up to how it looked previously

so

I'm going to increase the emissive to something like 6

now you'll see that

the wind is kind of moving in a downward pattern

but don't worry

we can choose the exact directionality of the wind

with the wind speed y and the wind speed X right here

so if I were to set this to something like 500

is that the wind speed to let's say minus 100

you'll see now we've kind of changed the rough

directionality of the wind here

now of course

I've exaggerated the speed for demonstration purposes

just keep that in mind

we can also choose the noise tiling

so if I increase this value to something like ear point

08

you'll see

now we've kind of changed the tiling of that noise

swirly pattern in it

and lastly we've got the wind noise contract and again

it's going to change

the contract of the wind pattern in it

so if I increase that like this

you'll see

now we're really getting some strong contrast there

if I reduce it to a negative value you can kind of just

reduce the intensity of the swirling in it

again

taking a look at the example in this other level here

I've used the wind settings here

to add a little bit of ground fog

in our scene

so this is a very handy little tool to know about

so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to re

add all the fog cards in the scene to show you

how I would use Eeveefog in a real world situation

all right so let's get started

usually what I like to do is I like to establish the

core basics Firth

really the main

elements of fog that I the one that really

stand out and what I like to do is

looking at these references right here

I love that Misty low hanging

foggy clouds that you see on the West Coast

so I'm gonna try and mimic that

on these mountains right here

so I'm gonna start by switching my fog alpha here

I'm gonna use this one instead

just that's a rough basic

and so right now we've got a pretty huge one

this is massive I may have to scale this down

but I like establishing the shape of things

pretty early on

I'm going to move just like that here

something like this

and I'm going to

duplicate it by holding the alt key and moving

and I'm going to change the alpha again

I'm going to use this one right here

and use the correct normal map as well

and remove this here

scroll it down like that

I like the fog alpha because they already

kind of had that

swirliness in them right

again looking at the snowy environment I made

right over here this is the classic use case of how I

achieve that swirly low hanging fog look

it's all thanks to these alphas

again I'm gonna duplicate this add another one here

and

rotate it into place

I got to

move it maybe a little bit closer to the camera like

that

and move it like that

again this might be too much

it's probably overkilled but again

we can control

a whole lot of things we can increase the

geometry fading distance we can reduce the

missive intensity

point two

and reduce the normal map intensity like point

one or point five just a little something

or just kind of

really were kit bashing clouds in our scene

again I'm gonna duplicate this I'm gonna add

and let's say I'm gonna let's say what else we got here

I'm gonna try

maybe this one

like that

and I'm going to use that kind of a low hanging one

in the foreground just come around

so something like this

over here duplicate that like that

like this it is quite literally almost like kit bashing

I'm going to rotate it invert it like this

that

cool so

now

we kind of get this low hanging fog in a foreground

and next before I get too carried away

I want to show you something that I actually

loved using EV fog for

and that is if I duplicate this over here

I always liked

occluding the tops of mountains with clouds

because again looking at reference

on really foggy days

the tops of mountains are almost always occluded

it's low there's

a foggy day

you don't see very high up because of that low pressure

in the atmosphere or high pressure

I don't know I'm not a meteorologist

but what I like to do is I like using the smooth

radial Alpha here

like this and really it doesn't have much texture to it

but the reason I like to use it is for the following

I'm going to scale this

way up to something really large

and scale in one axis like that

and just like that you'll see

just having a fog card with a very high

geometry fading distance value like this

it kind of

helped simulate the exponential height fog in Unreal

Engine now to be clear

EV fog is not intended to replace

the exponential height fog

it is meant to be used along sided

at a complement of a sort

so we've got this here I'm going to duplicate that

I'm going to move it closer

and I'm going to scale it down

just so that

it's really just going to clip the top of the mountain

then just they'll close it a little bit like that

we can also increase the fog density maybe

and so now again

the color might feel a little bit wrong so I might go

tweak the color a little bit

make it darker or brighter

saturation or reduce saturation just to kind of

help it match the background a little bit better

and from there

duplicating that card in the foreground again

I'm gonna move this over here

and I don't really like this

card right now

I want something again I want one of those

swirly textures on it right

so I'm gonna use maybe something like this

and with this

correct normal map right

there and I'm gonna lift it up and just like that

we do have that kind of magical feeling of

that low hanging swirly very early morning vibe

now of course keep in mind I'm doing this on a whim

if I had more time to spend on it it would be

a lot more finesse and polished

but I think you get the point

we're starting to get something that kind of

feel pretty good

very fast and so again if we really want to polish and

massage it in place

we can adjust the normal map intensity a little bit

we can play with the fog density right

we can also adjust the

geometry fading distance like that

we've got a little bit of wind in there

on the top which can definitely help

breathe a little bit of extra life in there

it might be hard to see in the video

but hopefully you can see

again this is all very subtle

and you're going to have to art

direct this the way you see fit

but now you know all the settings available in easyfog

so you can go ahead and start using this

in your own project

but really that's all there is to it

you can use the demo scene provided

as a starting point

to reverse engineer how I achieve this kind of look

and how you can apply that look

to your own level in Unreal Engine 5

as always thank you so much for watching

I hope you found it useful

again you can find easyfog

boat on

gumroad and the Art Fishing marketplace for download

linked below and as always folks

happy rendering