Clouds R&D

[Neilg]

Those do look great.

I think one of the biggest issues with using env fog for clouds is getting the density right - like how clouds are flat & darker at the bottom, and as you move up through they get more billowy and less dense/absorb more light.
Maybe time to start mixing gradient ramps set to world z in with the noises. using a comptex should burn away the top of the noise fairly realistically...

[Neilg]

The base is receiving too much noise - or at least the noise it does receive is too small. I think the next step is to break it up even further and use gradient ramps to have different noise patterns on the top & bottom of the cloud for more control. The lower part of my cloud has way too much of the main noise cutting into it, it needs to be much smoother. If i had time i'd set it up so that noise is larger & contributes less and then have an 'upper noise' and 'lower noise' series of comptex/gradient ramp setups. it's late and it's getting complicated though.

I've attached the scene - be nice if anyone who finishes this off and makes it usable could keep it shared.


How difficult is it to package a material up into it's own shader with only a few controls visible? I'm imagining it working a bit like an attribute holder but i've never heard of it being done. If it's possible I might try and finish this off myself and lock away all the unnecessary numbers. There's only a handful of relevant values tucked away in all this.

[cheerioboy]

I upped the scatter bounces to 8, make the cloud nice and fluffy

the material setup is intense... I'll need more time to dissect it

thanks for sharing

[Neilg]

I've never actually used that... makes such a big difference

i'd go through and bring in the source maps into the density, or just an early comptex - should give you a pretty clear impression of how they contribute.

[DaveGrafix]

Dude! These are looking pretty good. I prefer the first 3. Were the mountains just displacement? Could you share some more info on the environment?

Thanks Morne! I like the first 3 better as well, they use a satellite cloud map to drive the cloud position and thickness. The last 2 images are using various procedurals to create the main cloud volumes.

The backgrounds are a map applied to a squashed sphere, simple setup. Very nice high-res maps created by one of my talented colleagues here at Teague. I just grabbed an exiting environment setup and started dropping clouds into it.

--Dave

[DaveGrafix]

I've never actually used that... makes such a big difference

i'd go through and bring in the source maps into the density, or just an early comptex - should give you a pretty clear impression of how they contribute.

Nice setup cubiclegangster, I'm going to try implementing some of this into my current setup when I have a few spare minutes... could be a while before that happens though! :P

--Dave

[wyszolmirski]

Thank you for showing some really good examples. This thread turned into exactly what I've expected.

Personally I see a lot of potential for production usage, but how do you guys deal with render time ? Ideally around 1 h / frame for 1080 p would make me happy.

Best,
Tomek

[wyszolmirski]

I've managed to get a bit of time to play with clouds again. But so far the best I could get was 2h/frame with motion blur. Here is what I've been testing it on, clouds still need a lot of work, at the moment it's just cellular map blended with height map, to get few layers of clouds. I will try to optimize it further while working on better clouds .

[Jorq1H]

Damian Nenow (Platige Image) showed us how he made the gorgeous clouds in his Paths of Hate movie a couple of years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBovH7_um_s
He use a combination of Advance Painter, Vertex paint tool and Translucency Mod to get the his translucent clouds. He then adds a lot of alpha planes on which he projects the same vertex paint to get the diverse and detailed edges.
The absolute seller with this method is the render times. There are no advanced light scatter calculations done at render time since it's all baked. I'm not sure how well it suits your project but it might be worth a try.

[wyszolmirski]

Thanks for bringing that one up, as it's very good example. I did play with this technique few years ago, but I need something less stylized and something that works well with changing light conditions. Obviously vue is very good example, but I willy try to push vrayfog + 3d maps as far as I can.

[Neilg]

If this is for a commercial job and you're going for realism i'd just cut your losses and get ozone. Your render times will be similar (if not lower) and it'll look so much better for that kind of shot.
http://www.ozone-plugin.com/showcase/
there's nothing that can come close imo. might be worth grabbing the demo, you can set up & test your clouds at a low res and only buy it if you're happy with them.

[yyk]

If this is for a commercial job and you're going for realism i'd just cut your losses and get ozone. Your render times will be similar (if not lower) and it'll look so much better for that kind of shot.
http://www.ozone-plugin.com/showcase/
there's nothing that can come close imo. might be worth grabbing the demo, you can set up & test your clouds at a low res and only buy it if you're happy with them.

I agree Ozone if great but out of curiosity, did you brute force your way around it? I'm asking because it took me a lot of time to figure out the right way to use it. The manual was not of much use regarding how to setup Vray & Ozone.

[Neilg]

Pretty much yeah, was a bit of trial and error.