Very simple proof of concept for doing clouds using phoenix

V-Ray V-Ray Common Gallery
1

Heya,

just did some testing a bit back to see if this might work and it seems it might with a bit of research put into. This is not really tweaked shading wise, the sim is too low res and generally could use some tweaking. But it is a start.

-Approx 30mins setup
-Few mins to sim 100 frames (using only frame 25 in the end)
-Approx 1 min per frame at 1k.

Regards,
Thorsten

2

the real clouds are not just a “smoke”, the vapour start to condense above some altitude and because of this the clouds are flat underneath. so, without some fake you can’t achieve realistic results i think. i made a fast setup for clouds and it is included in the samples, the above mentioned flatness is made by modulation with a texture.

3

Cloud research …

We did some research here as well, quite happy so far, just could not get the real longrange feeling done yet.

http://www.xoio.de/public/110523\_Test\_Clouds.wmv

Some weird thing:
Using a precalculated IR-Map took ages to render. Using this one per frame went really fast, but produced “Lightning” Storms in the dark areas …

But is all WIP

Regards, Peter

4

looks good, but really the ir map produces flickering. one suggestion - what if you precalculate a single frame ir map for some near position, and then use it for the whole animation? the lighting is not changed during the whole animation, you just need the map with the bigger resolution.

5

Or you can calculate the irradiance map with the “Use camera path” option, or incremental add…

Best regards,
Vlado

6

As I said, weird enough, using a precalculated IR-Map took ages in the render-pass. Never had this before. That’s why I switched to the perframe-solution to get an impression.

Still interesting that the flickering is mostly in the dark areas.

Regards, Peter

7

actually why you need GI? phoenix can calculate the internal scattering , ant you can use dome light with sky map to replace the GI sky lighting.

8

Interesting point certainly.

But what you see is a test for a bigger scene, with various objects, that certainly would benefit from a proper GI-solution. But thank you anyway!

Peter

9

Any chance of sharing the technique?[quote=“edenux, username:edenux”]
We did some research here as well, quite happy so far, just could not get the real longrange feeling done yet.

http://www.xoio.de/public/110523\_Test\_Clouds.wmv

Some weird thing:
Using a precalculated IR-Map took ages to render. Using this one per frame went really fast, but produced “Lightning” Storms in the dark areas …

But is all WIP

Regards, Peter
[/quote]