Overview

A real-time atmospheric environment built entirely in Unreal Engine 5, featuring a procedural aurora borealis effect over a snow-covered mountain range. The project combines a custom day-night cycle, a fully art-directable aurora material system, Niagara particle FX for snow and whisper effects, and cinematic sequencing — all driven by Blueprint and material parameters.

Skybox Blueprint

The day-night system is driven by a Construction Script that handles sun and moon rotation via Map Range Clamped nodes, mapping TimeOfDay values (DawnTime, DuskTime) to directional light rotation. A dynamic material instance is created at runtime on the sky sphere, exposing scalar parameters for star visibility and star movement.

Branch nodes control FX visibility — EnableSnow toggles the snow particle system and EnableAurora toggles the aurora FX, allowing the environment to shift between weather states.

Skybox Material

The sky material layers a SkyAtmosphere pass with a procedural star field. Stars use a tiling grid with flicker speed driven by noise, producing a subtle animated night sky.

Aurora Material

The aurora effect is a fully procedural material with art-directable color, flow, fresnel, and opacity controls. A flowmap (T_TilingNoise01) drives the organic ribbon motion, while a gradient noise texture (T_AuroraGradient02) shapes the overall aurora silhouette. Depth fade and edge multiplier create soft volumetric blending against the sky.

FX & Sequence

The aurora glow is driven by NS_Aurora, a Niagara particle system layered on top of the material pass for volumetric depth. Snow uses a separate FX_Snow system with a spawn rate of ~4836 particles, controlled by the skybox blueprint's EnableSnow toggle.

Final output is composed in Sequencer at 30fps with exponential height fog (density 0.05), multiple CineCamera actors for cinematic framing, and keyframed visibility/transform tracks for the aurora and snow systems.