Clouds & Vray

[Alan Iglesias]

Yes, please.

Here you go...

-Alan

VrayFogClouds.zip

[Dave_Wortley]

Here you go...

-Alan

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18607[/ATTACH]

Cheers for that, Works quite nicely!

[jstrob]

A few years ago I did some smoke that could look like clouds for a short called "I Pet Goat II"
here:

and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkmvDYET96Q

I used fumeFX and I think I rendered in scanline at the time. But today I would try to do it with vray and phoenixFD.

I used a technique to create the business man out of smoke. I first took a polygonal model of a businessman and I animated a plane passing through it from bottom to top. I then rendered the plane view from top with a dirt shader on it. So I go an animation of the cross section of the businessman 3D model. I used this plane with the animation mapped on it and emitting smoke with the texture acting a a density mask. The result was the business man made of smoke. I think we could use this technique to model clouds.

[Alan Iglesias]

Cheers for that, Works quite nicely!

Most welcome!

-Alan

[davision]

Thanks from me too.

[Alan Iglesias]

Thanks from me too.

Appreciated!

-Alan

[Raven]

Here is Allan McKay's tut for clouds, uses FumeFX, but you could use Phoenix as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfYoGZ7xviw

[Dave_Wortley]

I'd be interested if anyone could make a procedural map that makes Nimbus clouds with fluffy tops and flat bottoms....

[Neilg]

I'd be interested if anyone could make a procedural map that makes Nimbus clouds with fluffy tops and flat bottoms....

I tried a while back. didnt get to spend long on it, needs more work. the attached max file needs the scatter bounces upping to 8.
the 4th map along the top is the one responsible for the bumpiness/flatness in the bottom of it.
clouds2.zip

e: if anyone works on this further, please share the results for everyone else. tia!

[Dave_Wortley]

I tried a while back. didnt get to spend long on it, needs more work. the attached max file needs the scatter bounces upping to 8.
the 4th map along the top is the one responsible for the bumpiness/flatness in the bottom of it.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]18626[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]18627[/ATTACH][ATTACH]18628[/ATTACH]

e: if anyone works on this further, please share the results for everyone else. tia!

Awesome thanks a lot for that! Will test it out for sure!


In return here is my handy hints.... How to see your 3d procedural in the viewport without rendering....

Requires Krakatoa, but may work without license as you don't need to render.

Create a box the same size as your gizmo, Create a PRT Volume, set it to your box, get a nice but not too heavy density.

Create a Magma Modifier.

Set up your node tree like this and put the same map you put for your environment fog density into the tree.

Put a Krakatoa Delete Modifier on top.

[Raven]

just saw this, have not given it a try, but could help

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/cloud-tunnel

[Teriander]

Ok,

I've seen some interesting replies here with some interesting results. But so far the bottom line is everything is really work-around options using plugins that weren't really designed to create clouds such as FumeFX. Except for Vue (Which has its issues in 3d max, operates as a separate program that isn't fully integrated, and can cost over $1000).

What bothers me the most is that I've seen some REALLY nice clouds in video games rendering in real-time! Granted, Video cards will render faster than the CPU, but the clouds I've seen do not require extreme complex processes to create them, such as using FumeFX or PhoenixFD in Max just to create a single cloud and hours of testing that one cloud. Take for example particles in game engines, you have an emitter, you have rules setup for that emitter, materials, and done. That's pretty much the same thing for 3D programs like Max. Why can't 3D Max or Vray have something similar to create clouds? In the CryEngine gaming engine, you can put clouds in your scene in like three clicks, and it animated in your viewport. Why can't this same concept be that easy in 3D Max?

I can understand if the year was still 2005 and you just can't do that on the new Max 7 and Vray 1.5, but Max 2015 is about to be released and Vray 3.0 was just released, and I still do not see ANYTHING supporting clouds (Im sure 2015 will not). Am I alone on this? Vlad, can you share your opinion about this?