Unreal Engine 5 is transforming game development, VFX and 3D visualisation. Now it turns out it can be used to show us what the weather's like.
A technical artist developed a system that combines multiple APIs to create real-time weather visualisation and time-of-day effects in Unreal Engine 5. Enter a city, and it shows real-time visuals based on the real weather conditions at any given time.
Real-time Weather in Unreal Engine 5 using OpenWeather and Cesium | Dynamic Weather System - YouTube
Nils Bakker's dynamic "Find your city's skies" system displays real-time weather on environmental visuals of the requested location. The tool isn't publicly available, but Nils has shared a breakdown of how he built it, and the tools can all be found online, allowing anyone to recreate the system.
Nils used OpenWeather API to get the real-time weather conditions, World Time API for time synchronisation and OpenAI 4o mini for processing the longitude and latitude of the requested city. After OpenAI estalishes the location, the photorealisitc 3D environment is created using Cesium's photorealistic 3D tiles. Real-time weather data from OpenWeather is used to add clouds, rain, or snow as along with appropriate lighting for the time of day as per World Time API.
When you move from one city to the next, the weather and lighting transition smoothly thanks to cloud transitions built with the Ultra Dynamic Sky plug-in available in Epic's new Fab Store. It's an impressive demonstration of the creative possibilities that can be opened by combining different tech, and I feel like it could have great applications for weather apps.
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
