How to break up flatness at tops of cloud layer?

[Kevin Kipper]

Hi Everyone,
Is there a way to break up the apparent flatness at the top of a cloud layer?  In the attached image it looks as if the tops of the clouds have been sheared off and I'd like to be able to have them randomly extend beyond the maximum altitude.  I've tried having multiple cloud layers with slight offsets to the altitude but I still get a flat boundary at the top of the clouds.  (The far background cloud is a separate layer and can be ignored.  I'm concerned about the foreground cloud flatness.)
Thanks for your ideas and suggestions!

[Oshyan]

The cloud Depth setting defines the absolute upper limit of depth (height range) for the cloud. What you want to do is make the Depth larger than the average top altitude of clouds you want. It seems like you've been able to get the more rough appearance of cloud tops in the background, so there's something in your foreground cloud layer's settings that is essentially making them fill the cloud layer height range more fully, possibly a high positive Coverage Adjust offset (in either the noise function or the cloud layer itself).

- Oshyan

[Kevin Kipper]

Thanks Oshyan for your reply.  In addition to the upper limit of the depth setting I was crushing the white levels of the clouds to much within the density fractal node.  By making some adjustments I was able to get the attached image which was more to my liking.  Thanks for your help.

[Oshyan]

Looks great! Nice work.

- Oshyan

[D.A. Bentley (SuddenPlanet)]

I have also run into the issue many times, and it's always very time consuming to figure out the right density fractal levels to prevent flat top clipping.  Is there an easy way to find the right contrast levels of a density fractal so clouds don't suffer this clipping issue?  All I have been doing is just looking at the shader preview and trying to visually judge, but with a volumetric density fractal that has values beyond what a monitor can display how can we even judge?

Thanks,

-Derek

[pokoy]

I have also run into the issue many times, and it's always very time consuming to figure out the right density fractal levels to prevent flat top clipping.  Is there an easy way to find the right contrast levels of a density fractal so clouds don't suffer this clipping issue?  All I have been doing is just looking at the shader preview and trying to visually judge, but with a volumetric density fractal that has values beyond what a monitor can display how can we even judge?

Thanks,

-Derek

I think it's clipping when you reach RGB levels of 255 in the noise/shader preview. Still, something like a clip preview where fully white ranges would be colored red, for example, would be very useful. Or something like a compress node or a compress option within the cloud layer to make sure colors don't exceed full white.