NatureGL Weather · Rain, snow, lightning, fog and wet surfaces

#Your scene, your materials, their weather

NatureGL Weather adds its particle meshes to your scene and patches your MeshStandardMaterials. Nothing is swapped out. Call weather.update(dt) every frame. Then render with weather.render() for volumetric fog, puddle reflections and bloom, or keep your own renderer.render(scene, camera).

Follow the quick start or compare the two render paths.

loadPreset('thunderstorm') on a running drizzle. Rain, wind, fog and the strike rate all ease to their new targets, and the demo sky follows the preset's time and cloud.

presets, one file each: 7
quality tiers, low to ultra: 4
rain streaks on ultra: 90k
per frame on high (Apple M5, 1280×720): 5.5–10 ms

#What's in the box

Rain that reacts to light
Up to 90k wind-slanted, motion-blurred streaks with a bright head. Drops glow toward the sun and moon and around your street lamps. Splashes land on the ground and on roofs.
Snow that settles
Swaying flakes that streak in strong wind and glint. Snow cover builds up over time on up-facing faces, roof slopes included, and shades cool blue.
Lightning with thunder
Branching bolts and multi-pulse flashes that light the ground and the fog. Thunder arrives after distance / 343 seconds, and on('strike') and on('thunder') tell you when.
Volumetric height fog
Raymarched fog with shadowed light shafts, lamp halos and lightning in-scattering. On the plain render path it falls back to a matching THREE.FogExp2.
Wet world
patchMaterial() adds wetness darkening, puddles with raindrop rings, snow cover and wind sway to any standard or physical material.
Dry under roofs
A top-down occlusion map that follows the camera. Rain and snow stop under roofs and trees, and the surfaces under them stay dry.

#Seven presets, ready to load

Every preset is a plain object in src/config/presets/. loadPreset eases to it, set changes any part of it, and getParams() prints the current weather as a new one.

Downpour preset — Downpour`downpour`Heavy evening rain, full puddles, street lamps on.

Thunderstorm preset — Thunderstorm`thunderstorm`Night storm, strong wind, frequent strikes.

Snowfall preset — Snowfall`snowfall`Calm snow over a settled blanket.

Foggy dawn preset — Foggy dawn`foggyDawn`Low ground fog, sun shafts, dewy ground.

See all seven presets

#Minutes to a rainy street

main.js

import * as THREE from 'three';
import { WeatherSystem } from 'naturegl-weather';

// renderer, scene, camera, sun and your meshes as usual
const weather = await WeatherSystem.create({ renderer, scene, camera, preset: 'downpour' });

// any MeshStandardMaterial can get wet; `ground: true` adds puddles and a full snow blanket
weather.patchMaterial(ground.material, { ground: true });
weather.patchMaterial(houses.material);

weather.setOccluders([ground, houses]);   // no rain under the roofs
weather.setLighting({ sunDirection: sun.position.clone().normalize(), sunColor: sun.color, shadowLight: sun });

renderer.setAnimationLoop(() => {
  weather.update(timer.getDelta());
  weather.render();                      // or renderer.render(scene, camera)
});

#Surfaces keep a history

weather.set({ rain: 1, … }) on a dry afternoon. Wetness builds by about 0.08 per second at full rain. Puddles open once the ground is past 30 % wet, and raindrop rings ripple in them.

Wetness and snow cover are state, not settings. Rain wets the ground, sun and wind dry it, snow piles up and rain melts it. Presets ease the surfaces to their own values over about 4.5 s, and then the natural accumulation takes over again. Read more in Wet surfaces and puddles.

#Part of the NatureGL series

NatureGL Weather takes its light from NatureGL Sky and draws its rain over NatureGL Water's ocean. NatureGL Island uses all three.