Summary of "Introducing EasyRain for Unreal Engine 5"

Summary of “Introducing EasyRain for Unreal Engine 5”

Product Overview

EasyRain is a tool designed for Unreal Engine 5 that adds highly realistic rain effects to any level, suitable for both games and cinematic projects. It supports a wide range of rain intensities, from light drizzles to heavy downpours, and is optimized to perform well even on lower-end GPUs. EasyRain is available on Epic’s new marketplace, Fab, with seamless Unreal Engine 5 integration.

Key Features

1. Rain Control

Full control over raindrop shape, size, wind gust variations, splash appearance, and rain curtains (wispy sheets of rain).
Two rain spawning modes:
- Localized mode: Controlled by spawn radius.
- Camera-centric mode: Rain spawns around the camera.
Separate spawn rate controls for rain and splashes (primary spawn rate and rain amount).
Automatic rain stoppage under ceilings, with adjustable shelter height limit.

2. Visual Enhancements

Rain backlighting for shimmering, glowing raindrops, especially effective in nighttime scenes.
Rain glimmer effect to add glints on raindrops.
Ambient color sampling to tint raindrops based on screen color (use cautiously).
Rain alpha controls overall opacity.
Rain curtains feature three configurable layers (base, mid, detail) to simulate depth and wind effects.

3. Material Functions Included

World puddle material: Adds puddles to landscapes and surfaces, controlled via the EasyRain blueprint.
Droplets and leaks material: Adds animated droplets and leaks to any model, compatible with MegaScans materials.
Integration tips for Fab MegaScans materials (requires duplicating material functions into Fab content folder).
Full displacement and Nanite tessellation support.
Puddles rely on height maps for blending but can use a global mask if none is available.
Ability to keyframe world material settings by adjusting system tick rate.

4. Rendering Tips for Cinematics

Guidance on using Unreal’s Movie Render Queue with EasyRain.
Use temporal samples for motion blur but reduce EasyRain’s motion scaling to avoid double motion blur artifacts.
Adjust raindrop texture sequence FPS for variation and better motion blur appearance.

Known Limitations

Issues with translucency and depth of field due to Unreal Engine’s handling of translucent materials.
Rain does not naturally receive depth of field; changing translucency modes can cause inconsistent visual artifacts.
Splash depth can appear incorrect or inconsistent.
Requires Mesh Distance Fields enabled for Niagara collision system; disabling collision in Niagara can be a workaround but is not recommended.
Performance considerations when using high spawn rates for rain curtains due to alpha overdraw.

Usage Guidance

Comes with demo levels to explore and troubleshoot settings.
Settings include tooltips for ease of use.
Users are encouraged to experiment with spawn rates and visual settings to achieve desired effects.
Blueprint-controlled settings can be overridden or reset to defaults easily.

Future Updates

The developer is open to feedback and plans to provide free updates.
Updates and news will be shared on Twitter and Instagram.
Related tools include EasyFog, EasyMapper, and EasySnow.

Main Speaker / Source

The video is presented by the developer/creator of EasyRain, who also created EasySnow and other related tools. The speaker provides a detailed walkthrough, tips, and transparency about limitations and performance considerations.