The Vray Sun and sky is great, but now, is it possible to have clouds?
Thanks.
Not physical, but there are a number of different ways of achieving it here:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20507
It works very well though, and I cant imagine physical clouds being the easiest thing to code in.
something to make clouds that are very ‘volumous’, if there’s such a word, and interacts with sun/sky
yes thats sometihing i wished too..
something as intuitiv and realistic as vue6 athmosperic skys, but also working with vray without difficult integrationsteps..
Tom
A built in cloud generator that interacts with the VRay sun/sky would be a nice addition to the VRay sky.
I think with the capabilities in the 3S, Fast 3S, and 2 sided shaders, a volumetric shader wouldn’t be too far of a stretch. Actually, I have gotten pretty close simply using falloff maps and cloud shaped meshes.
i think to write a decent cloud engine (not procedural based like all of the existing ones) but actually voxel based clounds, its as much work as to write vray or any renderer for that matter from the ground up to what we have today. Asking for cloud engine, is really an unrealistic request.
Quoted for agreement…I’d rather have Vlado work on more actually renderer-related features 
Regards,
Thorsten
what like aura? :lol:
aura. what a magical word. just uttering it makes ears around the world perk up
i’d always sort of wanted to implement something like this Features recent news | Game Developer but never really found the time to play with it 
more info at Cloud Rendering
theres also source at GDmag, and a video on her website at http://niniane.org/clouds/CloudsInGames\_NinianeWang.mpg
combined with some of the fun stuff in the other cloud/sky thread i think it could be interesting.
And all of this is running realtime in 2003.. sooo.. hey and on her site theres also links to the gmax script, and some sample cloud files to play with.
haha you funny guy 
no, voxel based is not aura or fume. Its much more then that. For intance, proprietery software called storm; chris nichols would have more info on that, but it did allow them to simulate nice clouds and other smoke like effects. Cache files are enourmous though.
my point was that I agreed with you, that as much as I’d like to see this sort of thing, look at the development time of aura, which in an abstract sort of way is similiar to what is being asked for.
Doesn’t Dreamscape do this sort of thing already, specifically for clouds?
Best regards,
Vlado
Hi,
I know it doesn’t help posting about internal tools others have, but it seems pixomondo wrote some nice cloud tools for their red baron VFX. Check it out here:
http://www.pixomondo.com/web/effects/index.htm?myid=78
Best regards,
Dieter
Hi Vlado,
Well, dramscape does make clouds, but the athmospheric effects are rather poor, compared for example with vue6.
what i would like to see most, was an implementation, where the real energy throug clouds could be used.
meaning floatingpoint, to get realistic shadows and so on.
i just tried to get this with vue, exporting skys to vray, but i only can get usual images.
Tom
What do you mean by “use the real energy through” the clouds…like a HDR with proper propagation of light that travelled through the clouds ?
From what you tried it sounds like Vue is not able to output proper float HDRs ?
Did you try TG2 Preview ? it is supposed to create proper EXRs tho i didnt test that.
the atmosphere looks pretty nice in TG2
Another possibility to spice up DS skies is using Afterburn together with DS. DS for high and not so dense clouds and AB to create cloud towers specifically where they are wanted. Can get tough to get it right the more far you get away towards the horizon (as max doesnt really offer a curved planetary groundplane :P)
Regards,
Thorsten
Hi Thorsten,
well thats exactly what i ment.
I am able to output an hdr, but i cant get the floatingpoint to work, what i would expect.
in vue i can adjust this after an image gets rendered, but i am just new to vue x-stream, so maybe its only my problem here.
well what i would wish,
is that vue just would make vray a native renderengine…
vlado .. just couldnt you call them and tell them, mentalray is old ugly, unnessesary, …
they have to use vray ?
Tom
Ah,
well , i just have taken a look to terragen.
It seems to be on the same level as vue…
impressive immages.. What i love in both of them of course is the ability to get very detailed athmosperic images.
if on could just implement this in a seamless slick interface to max-vray…
Tom
Another option might be the new major release of DS. They claimed some pretty nice stuff to be coming…They claimed it would come this year…but i got no idea if it will. As they got VrayGI to work with Fume i guess DS support for VRay should be better too in case of a new major release.
Regards.
Thorsten