Export Clouds to OpenVDB

Started by AtlJimK, January 26, 2016, 09:43:38 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

AtlJimK

Feature request. Would be very helpful. Thanks.

Oshyan

This is definitely something we are considering for the future. What would your specific use be?

- Oshyan

AtlJimK


Oshyan

Thanks for the quick response. So you are hoping to do primary rendering of volumetric effects in Vray, using Terragen-generated cloud shapes?

- Oshyan

AtlJimK

That is correct. Sooner the better for me. I assume that the animation would carry over also. Thanks.

Oshyan

I'm not sure if this is something we'll be able to offer soon, but as I mentioned it's definitely something we're interested in. Can I ask the specific reasons why you'd prefer not to render the volumetrics natively in Terragen?

- Oshyan

AtlJimK

My group uses 3dsmax/VRay for Arch/EngViz exclusively. TG is the best environmental renderer out there but there is no practical way we could move our work into TG for production purposes.

Oshyan

Yes, I understand. For the cloud/volumetric rendering on its own you could certainly render in TG and output to isolated cloud render elements with alpha. But I realize it may not be worth it for the adjustment in workflow.

- Oshyan

Tangled-Universe

I find that a bit curious though...

Adjusting your pipeline is something you ideally wish to avoid, but at what cost?

TG's cloud rendering is one of the best out there, if not *the* best.
The first Vray/whatever renderer outperforming TG visually and in speed for cloud rendering; I haven't seen one so far.

So you can stick to your pipeline and still try doing it through openVDB and get slower and less good looking results.
Or you can render nicer results quicker in TG to render passes and composite those in.

It's something you need to consider and the consideration has probably been made, but I often get the feeling there's a strong bias even *before* it's being considered.

paq

I don't think people will use .vdb to export complete cloudscape from Terragen to replace a sky backplate. (Files generated will be way too huge).
But a way to export localized cloud would be awesome. (If it's technically possible).

Mostly all render engine now can render .vdb volumetric, maybe not as good as Terragen, but it's possible to get really nice result.

But here are not many tools to generate 'realistic' clouds shape, and the existing one are really slow, because they work directly with voxel grid.
Changing a setting in an houdini cloud rig can take many minutes just to re-generate the grid.

Gameloft

KyL

I had to do something like this at work.
The amount of points you need to export to match details out of a Terragen render is just *ridiculous*. It can still be usefull to get the general cloud shape, but you will have to add procedural details, the same way you do in Terragen.

One solution I ended up doing was rendering clouds elevation maps. This is not a correct representation of the volume, but you can use that to generate a volume that's quite close to the one rendered in Terragen.

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 03, 2016, 07:27:06 AM
The first Vray/whatever renderer outperforming TG visually and in speed for cloud rendering; I haven't seen one so far.

I second that, I still haven't seen a better volumetric renderer.

Alexn007

I would love to see open VDB supported in Terragen 4. I could model specific cloud shapes export vdb's and then render in terragen 4.  I believe this could open up many opportunities for VFX work. Terragen is definitely one of the finest if not the finest cloud rendering software, then to have completely art directed clouds...  That's huge.

My two cents,
Alex

Darknight

I second what Alexn007 said. If we can get some sort of clouds sculpting geo to direct the volume of the clouds to make it more art directable, that will put Terragen even higher in terms of what it is used for in games and film.
It's not who you are that matters, it's what you do.

Oshyan

You can bet we are are thinking hard about how to best approach these problems and what tech to implement. As we've said, Terragen 4.0 is just the beginning...

- Oshyan

Alexn007

That's great news!!  Looking forward to the future.