Technical Artist Nils Bakker is passionate about exploring new tools and techniques, particularly in the realm of interactive 3D. Last year, he joined us to discuss his cool game prototype, which allows one to explore the entire planet Earth in 3D, created using Google’s Photorealistic 3D Tiles, ChatGPT, and Unreal Engine 5.
His latest project integrates Unreal Engine 5 with multiple APIs to create a dynamic visualization system that displays real-time weather and provides environmental visuals of the location. The setup combines OpenWeather API for real-time weather conditions, World Time API for location-based time synchronization, and OpenAI 4o mini for coordinate processing.
When you enter a city name, OpenAI gets the longitude and latitude location, loads the 3D environment through Cesium, and pulls in current weather data from OpenWeather. The weather system uses that data to dynamically adjust the environment, adding clouds, rain, or snow based on actual conditions. At the same time, it compares your device’s time with the local timezone obtained from OpenAI and the World Time API, ensuring accurate time-of-day lighting. As you move between locations, both the weather and lighting transition smoothly. The cloud transitions here were built with Ultra Dynamic Sky plug-in.
Although Nils Bakker’s weather visualizer isn’t publicly available, all the tools used to create this type of project can be found online. Follow him on LinkedIn to stay updated on his work, and don’t forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
