Can anyone from ChaosGroup or the public answer this? I’ve been waiting for a simple solution for years to creating clouds in 3D Max and Vray but the only ones that really exist are:
VRayEnvironmentFog - But it’s very complex to get a good realistic cloud system generated and can take hours or even days trying to get something to look decent.
Ozone or Vue by EOn Software - Looks great, but appears to not be very friendly when using custom gamma or linear workflow and really effects lighting on your scene. Especially if you have interiors involved. Is this still an issue?
HDRIs - Obviously as real as it gets, but some cases animated clouds, flying through clouds, or passing clouds is desired but can’t be achieved using this method.
Phoenix FD or FumeFX - Not designed for clouds, but can sometimes create really nice dynamic clouds at the cost of really high render times. Personally I think Phoenix FD should have a cloud system added on like they added Ocean and Water.
Sky Maps - Last resort if nothing else is available, but it’s not as good a HDRI.
Am I missing anything that’s new or better for creating clouds with VRay? It’s 2014 and it appears clouds is still an issue for 3D Max and Vray. I know Maya has a quick simple cloud option in the Visor section. Nice looking clouds in like 3 clicks and a spline. Why can’t Max have something like this? Any suggestions?
it’s not limited to max and vray, it’s just really difficult to do. I know of maya’s fluid option but I’ve never seen a render of them that looked good, all the tutorials look rough.
I did a while back. It’s tough to get the sim right because clouds are all about vapor condensing etc. If you get your data right it would prolly render okay. Here’s a bit of discussion:
There is a method for creating clouds with image planes. Create a blocked out shape for the clouds with solid geo, bake your GI to vertex color and pass that along to planes scattered over the surface. Renders in scanline and is pretty fast.
I saw this ( http://www.quadspinner.com/helios/ ) mentioned a few times when people were talking about clouds but since I don’t have Vue I can’t really give any feedback on how well it works. The pictures on their homepage look impressive though.
It’s a series of presets for vue effectively, or a nicer ui that links together some fractal settings that give nice results in vue. You still need xstream to use it inside of max so it gets quite pricey, can’t argue with the results though!
It looks great, but $500 for the main functions and $1000 to get render passes on top of vue is pretty steep. I’m just sad i wont get to play with it, it’s a no brainer for aerial vfx work
yes - we have created some lovely clouds with Phoenix FD.
We also used Vertex colour mapping successfully for a recent animation
What we have found for some instances is create basic geometry cloud shapes, export to After Effects as an OBJ and uses Red Giant Trapcode Form.
There are some tests on our blog - http://fingerindustries.wordpress.com/ but not got around to adding most of the above mentioned as yet!
Cheers
Marcus
A few years ago I did some smoke that could look like clouds for a short called “I Pet Goat II”
here:
and here
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.
