My attempt at non-plugin clouds

[ostov]

man that looks great :thumbsup:
But 10hours is to much :shame: How did u do the scene, show us some screenshots :D



ostov

[Dave Black]

Looks like face mapped particles with a radial gradient in the diffuse and opacity. Perhaps you have too many particles....or that you are instead using metaballs or something...

Looks great, but you can get better render times...

Funny you should post that, as I have some clouds I just added to a scene at work.

You can check 'em out here:

http://www.3dzealot.com/DownLoads/clouds1.jpg

That guy renders in 5 seconds on a 2.4Ghz machine, not including the rest of the scene. It's for an animation, and please remember it's still a wip, but that's not too bad an effect for the render time...I'm sure we can get your render times down...

I can make that file available for download if anyone is interested.

Your clouds do look great, though.

-3DZ

:D

[edaddy]

well i'm bored at work today (just rendering...) so lemme try out this cloud thing everyone is refering too


brb

[Dave Black]

In case anyone is interested, here's a striped down "let's not get 3DZ in trouble" version:

www.3dzealot.com/DownLoads/3DZ_Clouds_Example.zip

It's a 33k Max R5 file zipped up.

Perhaps it will spark sumth'n

Enjoy.

-3DZ

:D

[edaddy]

< only have 4.2 here at work but i'll check it out at home tonight

[jussing]

Hey everybody! Thanks a billion for the feedback! :bounce:

3DZ, that sounds great, I've downloaded your file and will look at it.

Yeah, the render time of 10 hrs (even in that ultra low resolution) sucks donkey balls...

The basics of what I've done is spheric particles (tried making them to faces for a render, but that just looked weird), 3000 of them (which isn't that much, really - what drags the rendertime seems to be the low opacity).

In the opacity channel they have a nested falloff setup:

- White in the middle (actually dark gray, to keep overall opacity low, to hide ping-pong ball intersections). (which then again requires many particles - which in combination with the low opacity makes rendertimes explode)

- That falls off into a noise map, in an attempt to make the particles puffy around the solid centers...

- And that again falls off softly into a black, to hide the perfectly spheric edges.

- And on top of that, a slight translucency, also in a falloff map, to create the characteristic white edges you see on clouds, when illuminated from behind (Afterburn simulates this effects annoyingly nice!)

I'll post viewport, map nesting, a longer animation, and the MAX file tomorrow... too tired to think about it right now.... ;)

See y'all!

Cheers,
- Jonas

[edaddy]

I started playing around w/ a setup very similar to the one you descibed in yr post jussing ^ only w/out the translucency falloff and my rendertimes were very resonable. I can't imagine the translucency map causing so much trouble.. or maybe our mat. setups aren't as similiar as they sound, or maybe it's just time for me to freakin' GO HOME !!!



sorry
....i'm so tired i can't think....:scream:

[jussing]

Hi again!

http://www.duck.dk/clouds03.gif

- CLICK HERE (http://www.duck.dk/clouds03_sorenson.mov) to download the newly rendered 500 particle version, which clocked in at 40 minutes...

As you see it's no so solid, and there are more "stray" particles... :hmm:

You'll also see a weird effect of the particles litteraly changing brightness, as we spin around them... :surprised That's sure to keep me awake tonight... I'm betting it has something to do with the translucency...

Anyway, I'll let the heavy version boil now, and then GO GET SOME SLEEP... I must be doing something fundamentally wrong with my particle systems if you people get much lower render times than me... hope you can help me figure it out!

G'night,
- Jonas

[jimcoldt]

hey...


Andy Murdock has a really nice max cloud tutorial on his "Lots of Robots" DVD... definitely worth a look.


http://www.lotsofrobots.com

just thought I'd mention it...

the other tutorials on there are excellent as well.


-jim

[jussing]

So,

http://www.duck.dk/clouds02.gif

here's the heavy version, which ended up rendering in 8 hrs, 20 min.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD (http://www.duck.dk/clouds04_sorenson.mov) (148K, Quicktime)

This animation does the same as the previous one - the particles change brightness all over, as we spin around....

I like the "puffy" look of the cloud, though.... and the white edges...

Cheers,
- Jonas

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