Procedural clouds

[matanov]

The new procedural clouds are now part of the V-Ray Sun and Sky system. It's an easy way to create custom clouds without looking for the right HDR. You can find their controls in VRaySun.

All parameters are animatable, so together with a moving sun, you'll be able to explore even more interesting scenarios.

There are still things to polish, but good enough for most of the use cases. Don't forget to put the VRaySky texture into a Dome light for faster sampling . Here is a quick example of Chaos Scatter and the new clouds system:

[super gnu]

woo! now this is an interesting addition! cant wait to try it out

[BBB3]

These are really nice. Over here (working on the GPU) they're quite pixelated though. Nowhere near as sharp as in your render. Is there a way to increase the sharpness of the clouds?
Also, the sky map (plugged into a dome light) occasionally turns black in the IPR, though playing with the sun node fixes this.

EDIT: I see now that this seems to be a GPU-only problem. The clouds are sharp on the CPU. I also realize switching between the two that the sun's visible circle has disappeared again from the GPU version. This used to be the case in the early days of the new sky system but had been fixed later on.

[matanov]

These are really nice. Over here (working on the GPU) they're quite pixelated though. Nowhere near as sharp as in your render. Is there a way to increase the sharpness of the clouds?
Also, the sky map (plugged into a dome light) occasionally turns black in the IPR, though playing with the sun node fixes this.

EDIT: I see now that this seems to be a GPU-only problem. The clouds are sharp on the CPU. I also realize switching between the two that the sun's visible circle has disappeared again from the GPU version. This used to be the case in the early days of the new sky system but had been fixed later on.

Thanks for the reports, we'll fix the issues.

Regarding the pixelated clouds - it's because they are baked into a bitmap for VGPU. We'll try to to make them render without the need for baking for the official release.

[racoonart]

Fantastic! That's going to be a really useful feature. And man, it's fast!
Right now it's still a bit artificial. I sometimes get a very homogenous noise pattern, and it doesn't feel quite right. Also with adjusted height I get stepping artefacts and the highlights look a bit clamped.
What I could imagine being great for us is a gizmo to animate the cloud movement. Animating two spinners isn't really great. Sure, I can rig it, but a gizmo built-in would be awesome.

[Edit] Bonus points for the clouds casting shadows on environment fog! That's spectacular

[racoonart]

A little problem I seem to have is that the sun isn't occluded by the clouds. For the shadows, yes, but not for the camera.

[^Lele^]

Confirmed, the sun's brightness is unchanging between occluded and not.

[racoonart]

Another slight issue is that I can make it tile relatively easily. So, A rotation parameter and a seed would also be very welcome for randomization.

[vlado]

Very useful feedback, thanks! Can you get me a scene for the pixelated results? It will be a lot easier to debug.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

I managed to reproduce the pixelated issue and I'm working on a fix.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Vizioen]

OMG, what!!! I need to work and now I'm seeing this!? Can't wait to play around with it!!

[racoonart]

I managed to reproduce the pixelated issue and I'm working on a fix.

Sorry for the late reply, we had a few public holidays and I managed to get away from the PC for once I've still uploaded it just in case...
It seems to be more obvious with lower and thicker clouds.

[GregoryVFX]

As amazing these new clouds are, it would be even MORE awesome if they could render below the horizon line.
Meaning, if we could get the camera into and above those clouds.

Right now, they seem hardcoded not to render below the horizon line, so when the camera gets inside or above their height, they render bogus...

[GregoryVFX]

And some more variety to density and coloring, to simulate stormy or rainy clouds, would go a long way.

[vlado]

And some more variety to density and coloring, to simulate stormy or rainy clouds, would go a long way.

I will probably try to add a "darkness" control for stormy clouds.

Best regards,
Vlado