Volumetric atmosphere engine
Aether
Dawn above a sea of cloud. Scroll to descend through the light, or change the density and watch the horizon open.
01 — Density
Cloud is not a picture. It is a probability.
Every pixel casts a ray and walks it forward, sampling fractional Brownian noise at each step. Where the field is dense, light is absorbed; where it thins, the void shows through. The form is computed, never drawn.
Five octaves of value noise, advected by a slow wind vector that the scroll itself accelerates.
02 — Scattering
The sun is a second march, inward.
At each sample we step a short ray toward the sun and accumulate occlusion. Thin edges glow; deep cores fall to shadow. That single trick — light marching through density — is the entire difference between fog and a sky at dawn.
Henyey–Greenstein phase weighting pushes a warm forward-scatter halo around the light disk.
03 — Engine
One contract. Infinite weather.
The same scroll choreography drives camera, wind, and palette. Swap three uniforms and dawn becomes a cosmic storm — the look is a variable, not a build.
Build the sky