Clouds, Horizons and VRay's Physical Tools

[m_hinks]

That is v cool, I want one!

It it using a image for clouds or procedural?

[beestee]

Wow, those are some really nice results! Looks like I have quite a bit of messing around to do when I get a little time.

[WWX]

Thanx beestee, it looks great.

But trying to recreate I am not successfull. My light is not shining through the geosphere. I am using your maps, but what else to I need to set to make the geosphere "transparent" to the sunlight?

cubiclegangster can you explain in more detail what is ment by "comptex method"

vlado, using a daylight assembly and then switching it to a vray light, the photon emitting radius is not shown, is this suppose to be like it?

Thanks to all.

[vlado]

vlado, using a daylight assembly and then switching it to a vray light, the photon emitting radius is not shown, is this suppose to be like it?

It is only shown when the VRaySun is selected; I suppose that when it is inside a Daylight, the sun does not actually get selected itself... Some indication may be the bounding box indicators for the sun, which do get updated according to the radius.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

cubiclegnaster- how have you done this with no geometry?

[VKNT]

Comptex-method is using VrayCompTex map in the environment slot.

This is what I got after a little bit of fiddling:



Quick breakdown:

- add vray sky-sun
- copy sky-map from environmentslot in the mat-editor
- insert VrayCompTex and "keep old materal as sub-material"
- put a sky in the second slot
- operator: "multiply"

However, I can't get this working properly with noon-skies.
This has probably something to do with the HDR vraysky X LDR 2.2 image of sky..

Here what it look like with noonsky:



You can download the low-res noonsky for testing. Don't mind the stitching errors, I'll release the fixed high-res one soon.
http://www.vknt.be/forum_assets/chao...chaos-test.jpg

[Neilg]

Nice results! I was waiting till monday so I could upload the .mat file,
But yeah, it does depend an awful lot on the source you use for the clouds. Its not a catch all technique, but it adds a lot and works really wel most of the time. Ive not had great results using maps with an original sun in them either - ones with cloud cover or the sun edited out work best.

If you throw the .jpg of the sky into a colourcorrect plugin, you can then go nuts with that and get it to balance a lot better. Ive used it with scenes that had sun/sky values of 1 rendered with the physical camera, and just put the brightness & contrast of the map up to around 3000 or so.

[beestee]

Thanx beestee, it looks great.

But trying to recreate I am not successfull. My light is not shining through the geosphere. I am using your maps, but what else to I need to set to make the geosphere "transparent" to the sunlight?

Disable cast shadows and recieve shadows in the geosphere's MAX properties. I also have Generate GI turned off in the geosphere's VRAY properties.

[SonOfNimrod]

VKNT: that sunset looks really good.

i was just thinking about this as i was walking outside today. can an overcast / cloudy day be done with this method? can the clouds cast a little shadow on the ground?

...but the question would be, would arch vis ppl want to have their work shown in a 'overcast / cloudy day' tho??.......

[vlado]

i was just thinking about this as i was walking outside today. can an overcast / cloudy day be done with this method? can the clouds cast a little shadow on the ground?

You can probably do this with my file easily, I think; I made the clouds not "Visible to GI", but if you turn this on, and make them more dense, you should get something like an overcast sky.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dmerc]

Hi, this approach really is amazing. With a little fiddling you get pretty convincing results. Good one.

I tried to simplify the whole thing and make it procedural.
The procedural mix-noise with bump:



Works as well animated:
http://www.xoio.de/public/moving_sky.mov

(Would be nice in multiple layers, I guess ... )

It actually also works for cumulus stuff to make it less flat and real 3d. I am sure you could easily use it on some particle setup. Here I tried to mock up a pseudo-volumetric smoke tower/volcano/whatever ...



Not perfect yet ...

Ah, yes the file:

http://www.xoio.de/public/070803_clouds_Vray.rar

Any suggestions ?

Regards Dmerc

[stephan_MA]

suggestions?

yes, please post in max8...

[s0real]

hey dmerc - those look great!
i was having a quick play around with this yesterday however i was unable to get the sun to look like the first examples where it has the 'lens flare' sort of look to it - i was just getting a round sun in the sky.

is this something to do with the turbidity or ozone setting in vraysky or something? (still not quite sure what those do...)

btw i was using the vraycomptex method if that makes a difference.

[Neilg]

I used a very subtle glow from within the max atmospherics. Dont need much at all - just a bit to smooth it out.
I'll upload the scene later when ive got time.

[beestee]

I have had a bit of playing around with procedurals and the VRayPlane, came out with something I have never been able to do successfully in VIZ. This is a full day animation with animated clouds. It could use some refinement, but I thought the results were pretty nice nonetheless: http://rapidshare.com/files/53786044/C3.rar.html

Here is a higher res shot of the procedural clouds: