billowing clouds

[altruizine]

First let me say that what you have so far looks pretty good... could you post the settings for that shader??

Now on to the subject: Unfortunately, there is no raycasting in maya complete (what you need for nice volumeness self shadowed goodness). So, I'm fairly certain that you're out of luck w/ the self shadowing billowing clouds & smoke.

This is and effect you can achieve w/ maya fluids, however. If you've got unlimited. Why alias didn't at least throw the complete users a bone and include some of the shaders and render capabilites w/out the fluid dynamics, I'll never know. :(

Please, also keep in mind that you're not restricted to maya's render engine. Losing confidence in maya because it doesn't have one feature is a bit of a stretch.

However, this particular situation is why many places use a different rendering engine, a custom raycaster, or a completely different package, like 3dsMax w/ Afterburn, LW & it's hypervoxels or some other combo.

I would love to hear if someone has found a decent cheat for this w/ in maya, but I personally haven't come across one.

-JF

[boraddd]

you can get this look easily with maya fluids... i hate them though.. try fluids first..

you can also assing fluid shaders to maya particles to get self shadowing(refer to manual)

an other trick might be using light hitting angle on a particle to color it.. like lambert shading.... this is a nice fake which doesn`t require much rendering time....

[DeathBrain]

How about try this one (http://3dtreat.com/pages/tutorials/mainframeset_tutorials.htm) ? :)

[abie1]

Try this one if the other didn't help; Personally, I've used both and love both.
http://cade.scope.edu/courseware/notes/phenomena/index.html
:thumbsup:

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