Welcome to the EasySky homepage. EasySky is a plugin for Unreal Engine 4. This Multiplayer Ready Dynamic Day Night Cycle can be found in the UE4 Marketplace.

Most recent documentation and update notes:

Version 4.1 (Since 26/04/2021)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Added Puddle Formation Speed Multiplier
  • Added Puddle Fadeout Speed Multiplier
  • Added flag for manually changing presets
  • Converted CalculateTime output from string to integers

Documentation and update notes for older releases:

Version 4.0 (Since 02/04/2021)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Added thunder to weather types

Version 3.8 (Since 15/03/2021)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Fixed performance hick-up issue when recalculating scene depth every time the player moved 10 meters. This is now optional in a flag and by default turned off.
  • Scene depth is now calculated at begin play.
  • Added function to recalculate scene depth manually.

Version 3.7 (Since 01/02/2021)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Added BP_PuddleDebugger to debug the landscape puddles more easily.
  • BP_Audio now sets the correct audio files
  • Transition from day to night was expensive because of cubemap blending. This feature is now optional, and by default it will only use the daytime cubemap, and darken that during the night
  • “Min Max Skylight Intensity” parameter has been renamed and the behaviour has changed. Users complained that it was very hard to use. It’s now called “Skylight Intensity Night Day”, where X is the multiplier of the skylight intensity during night times, and Y during day times.
  • Puddles_Func won’t complain about Vector3 vs Scalar inputs when using a Vector3 input in the Roughness, Metallic and/or Ambient Occlusion slot.

Version 3.4 (Since 23/11/2020)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Fixed bug when setting a new preset manually.
  • Fixed replication to clients not working properly.
  • Added Emissive material property switch for light actors, so materials can also be manipulated during the switch to night or day time.
  • Removed some legacy blueprint code

Version 3.1 (Since 09/07/2020)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Rain occlusion is now re-calculated if the player moves 5 meter away from the previous location. The occlusion is only calculated for objects that are within 40 meters of the player. This is the default behavior now, but it can be changed to what it was before, so on small maps you only pay the occlusion costs at the start of a level.
  • Cloud shader has been improved. It had been suffering from the last updates, and the clouds were not so pretty anymore as they used to be
  • Preset defaults have been altered to work better with volumetric fog
  • Sun rays have been improved to work better with volumetric fog
  • The preset Clear Night has been replaced by a new preset named Foggy
  • Presets no longer have a time field. This was confusing as there is also a start time in the general settings. Now all presets just use the start time from the general settings
  • The callable function “Calculate Scene Depth” has been removed
  • A new array has been added called “Classes To Ignore For Blocking”. Classes in this array will not be taken into consideration when calculating occlusion for the rain. This can be used to exclude the player for example, or dynamic objects.

Version 3.0 (Since 09/07/2020)

Please note: This version requires Unreal Engine 4.20 or higher!
  • Fixed bug where the sunflare was not working
  • Added compass and ability to rotate the sky to your liking
  • Added debug log that shows the current day, hour, minute and seconds
  • Added dynamic rain
  • Added dynamic puddles material function
  • Added extra sun texture
  • Added Audio blueprint that switches between day and night audio
  • Added possibility to toggle between volumetric fog
  • Updated example scene with new rain content

Version 2.0 (Since 12/02/2020)

For version 4.16 – 4.19
  • Fog is now properly responding to different sky sizes
  • New feature: Scene light toggling. Stationary and Movable lights can now be toggled on and off during day/night transition. There is also the option to add actors, so multiple lights in one blueprint actor can be toggled at the same time.
  • Sky is set to “Always Relevant”. This fixes network replication issues on bigger scenes.
  • A Moon Color parameter property has been added
  • Users can now disable dynamic moon phases, and choose a phase of their preference. (Full moon, half moon, etc)
  • New feature: Sync Moon and Sun Cycle. When enabled, the sky will use realistic moon phase cycles. The downside to this is that sometimes you can have 2 directional lights in your scene: 1 sunlight and 1 moonlight. This could be bad for performance, so users can now disable the realistic moon cycle and sync the moon and day cycle, so there will always be 1 directional light active at the same time.
  • New feature: Rain parameters added. The rain parameter will influence the fog and clouds. In a later update this will be enhanced with particle effects and post-process effects. 
  • Cubemap parameters are now exposed for easy tweaking.
  • New feature: Presets! Presets are weather scenarios that include details like fog, cloud intensity, amount of rain, light intensity, etc. Users can alter the already existing presets, or create their own presets. These presets can be used in the next feature, dynamic weather:
  • New feature: Dynamic weather. This feature will blend between different presets, allowing users to create true dynamic weather scenarios.

Version 1.5 (Since 18/10/2019)
  • Added Moon Intensity property
  • Added Cloud Emissive Boost during Night Time property
  • Added Moon Flare size property
  • Added Night Atmosphere Color
  • Added Night Fog settings
    • Day and Night time can now have different fog settings
  • Improved error messaging when referencing an actor that is not configured properly
    • Because of an error in UE4, sometimes the construction script doesn’t show screen prints. Because of this, the error message is now also printed on screen at the start of the game.

Version 1.4 (Since 09/10/2019)
  • Improved cloud rendering
  • Added Random Starting Time option
  • Fixed Start Time replication between Server and Client for dedicated servers
  • StartTime can now be more than 24 hours

Version 1.3 (Since 09/09/2019)
  • Fixed Day Night Cycle time
  • Added possibility to use a different speedup time for the day and night cycle
  • Improved clouds
  • Added property to tweak black ring around the moon
  • Added clouds fade-out in the background
  • Cubemap blend improvements. Cubemaps start blending 1 hour in advance of sunrise and sunset

Version 1.2 (Since 12/08/2019)
  • Added Fog Night Color
  • EasySky now derives from AActor, rather than Static Mesh Actor
  • Added possibility to reference light and fog actors from the scene
  • Light with an intensity of 0 are now disabled so they don’t have a rendering overhead
  • Added Directional Inscattering color to the fog
  • Better sky gradients
  • Improved default lighting
  • Moon texture and Normal map exposed
  • Sun texture scale fix when scaling the skybox

Version 1.1 (Since 08/08/2019)
  • Fixed Cloud color problems during night
  • Added Moon Flare Intensity parameter

Version 1.0 (25/07/2019 – 08/08/2019)
  • Initial release