(TUTORIAL) How to make cloudy days in BeamNG better and more realistic using the world editor

Ever seemed like simply increasing the cloud cover in environment didn't help in creating more realistic or better cloudy days? Well, with using the world editor, we can easily make cloudy days seem more realistic, better, and specifically not as bright as it is when just simply increasing the cloud cover in environment. You don't even need to change the time of day to make the sky darker, so you can still simulate these better and more realistic cloudy days at noon (when the sun is the highest and brightest in the sky). What I can't do in this tutorial however, is demonstrate how to have cloudy days using 3d clouds, as BeamNG doesn't use 3d clouds in their game.

I'm using Utah for this tutorial, however you can use basically any map as long as it has an editable sky. Of course, the first step is to open the environment tab by simply pressing ESC and then clicking on the environment tab. Then increase the slider for cloud cover as much as you want, as long as there's enough clouds to not be considered just partly cloudy if you know what I mean. For this tutorial, I'll just increase it to the max.

You can initially see that the sun still shines bright enough to not make it feel necessarily like a cloudy day, despite the sky being fully covered with clouds. Next, you want to open world editor by pressing F11 on your keyboard. You want to make sure that the "scene tree" and "inspector" windows are opened. If they aren't, you can simply click on the window bar on the top near-left and click scene tree and inspector to open them up. Your screen should now look like this:

Now that you've successfully opened up the world editor and have all the necessary windows open, click on the search bar in scene tree, then search for "sunsky". Only one option should pop up. Click on it and then things to edit should appear in the inspector. If this is the first time for you, it can look intimidating, however as long as you follow all the necessary steps, it shouldn't be a problem. Your screen should now look like this:

Once we've done that, we now want to navigate to the "lighting" tab in inspector and then change the brightness value to around 0.100-0.300. We then want to navigate to the "scattersky" tab and then change the fogscale (click on the color icon) to a greyish color, change the ambientscale (same thing as fogscale) to a greyish color as well, and then change the exposure to around 0.600-1 (this is optional). Your screen should now look somewhat like this:

Now already your game looks more appropriate for a cloudy day, however I'd like to go an extra step. This part is optional however recommended. Now go back to the search bar in scenetree, then search for "cloud". One or two options may show up depending on which map you're on, however the main option we want to edit is the clouds that cover the majority of the sky. Your screen should look like this (or have one cloud option, and the folder doesn't technically count):

The option I'll be editing is clouds1, because it includes clouds that cover the majority of the sky. This section is completely based on your preferences or on what kind of cloudy day you'd like, so there isn't really a limit to what you can edit, as long you don't go too low on values. The coverage option is pretty self-explanatory, however what makes the exposure option different from the coverage option is that it can allow for clouds to look thinner or thicker, depending on the values. Windspeed and height don't really matter as much, however you can try messing around with those settings as well to see if you get something that you like. Your screen can look like this, however it can be different among other people:

And that is all I have for this tutorial! Of course, if you find yourself wanting more fog, you can go back to the environment tab and increase the fog density slider. If you want rain, you can click on the plus icon near the top, and then click on the precipitation icon (with raindrops). Then all you have to do is place the precipitation icon somewhere on the ground, and boom, you have rain. I hope this tutorial helped you out, this is my first tutorial I've done on the forums, so if you feel like I've missed something, misinterpreted something, or if you've misunderstood something or had any issues, feel free to put them below. Lastly as always, make sure to enjoy.

 

This is really cool as im very new to Beam, thanks for this.

 

No problem, if you have any problems just report them here

 

I cant get over the scale and depth Beam has to offer, its mindblowing tbh, ive been playing for 3 weeks and ive clocked nearly 50 hours already.