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Natural Level Game Studio

Quick Start

Five minutes, four steps. By the end you will have a ticking clock, a moving sun, drifting clouds, and dynamic weather running in your level.

1. Prepare the level

Section titled “1. Prepare the level”

Before adding the sky system, you must remove every default lighting and atmosphere actor from your level. Dynamic Volumetric Sky brings its own. Leaving Unreal’s stock actors in place will cause double-lit scenes, washed-out colors, conflicting fog, and Z-fighting in the sky dome.

Delete from your level:

  • Directional Light
  • Sky Light
  • Exponential Height Fog (or Atmospheric Fog if present)
  • Sky Atmosphere
  • Volumetric Cloud
  • Any Skybox or Sky Sphere mesh, including the default BP_Sky_Sphere Unreal adds to new levels

2. Enable the required plugin

Section titled “2. Enable the required plugin”

The system depends on Unreal’s Movie Render Queue plugin. It is mandatory even if you never plan to render cinematics, because the sky uses it internally.

  1. Open Edit → Plugins.
  2. Search for Movie Render Queue.
  3. Tick Enabled.
  4. Restart the editor.

3. Drop the sky into your level

Section titled “3. Drop the sky into your level”
  1. From the Content Browser, open Content/DynamicVolumetricSky/Blueprints/.
  2. Drag BP_DynamicVolumetricSky into your viewport.
  3. Place it anywhere. Position does not matter.

You should immediately see the sky, sun, fog, and clouds appear.

4. Verify it works

Section titled “4. Verify it works”
  1. Hit Play in Editor. You should see a ticking clock UI, a moving sun, and clouds drifting across the sky.
  2. Bump Time Speed to 100 and watch a full day cycle through dawn, day, dusk, and night with the lighting following.
  3. Set Weather Weight to 1.0 and wait. Precipitation should kick in, and the camera-lens rain effect should appear when it rains.

If any of these do not happen, jump to Troubleshooting.

Where to next

Section titled “Where to next”