Anyone have any amazing cloud .tgd files to share?

[moodflow]

Since clouds take ages to render and test, does anyone have any amazing cloud .tgd files they would be up for sharing?  I'm still working on a few of my own, but would like to see what others have pulled off so far. 

[Tim O'Donoghue]

Here's a clip file of an atmosphere with some nice cumulus clods.

[Tim O'Donoghue]

... errr that's clouds, not clods.

[buchvecny]

i think they should improve this... if u want to get some nice cumulus u just HAVE to use 1500+ samples and that makes FAR too long render times.

[rcallicotte]

If you ignore the terrain and look at the clouds, these aren't amazing but are pretty thick and believable.

[moodflow]

i think they should improve this... if u want to get some nice cumulus u just HAVE to use 1500+ samples and that makes FAR too long render times.

Well this sample method is in a way a necessary evil.  I did read that they were looking into ways of optimizing the renderer, so that could shed time off eventually.  But I like the fact that we now have ALOT of control over sampling the scene, even at the expense of render times (as it does make sense for true quality).  It seems TG2 renders things nearly how the real atmosphere does, which is why it looks nearly photo-real.  Multi CPU support will make this app shine even brighter when it becomes available.

True volumetric clouds are going to be render hogs regardless.  I also bought Vue 6 Infinite a few weeks back (before I knew the preliminary version of TG2 would be out-but thats another story).  Vue's procedural clouds are also amazing, but take just as long, if not longer to render, and they don't have as much depth as the TG clouds, in my opinion.   In Vue, I created a volumetric storm cloud scene that did come out well.  But the 4000x3000 render took over 96 hours.

[MeltingIce]

I was able to get some cool clouds in my latest render:



You can download the .tgd here: http://www.meltingice.net/downloads/index.php?share=4&path=scenes%2FSky%20Explosion.tgd

[monks]

 Absolutely awesome looking clouds...- real picture book stuff.

monks

[RealUser]

Try this ...

[rcallicotte]

Try this ...

WOW!!!     

[buchvecny]

now just buy me C2D extreme and we can start renderin..

[Oshyan]

1000 or more samples certainly should not be necessary for realistic clouds. Certainly you can create situations where you need samples that high to get rid of grain, but these are generally not situations that would result in the most realistic clouds anyway. The edges would have to be very sharp, density very high, and likely depth also quite high. Luc Bianco's well-known cumulus cloud render didn't even use 1000 samples, much less 1500+. Personally I will never render an image with more than 512 samples. If I find it needs more than that to get rid of the noise I either A: assume it's a problem of my settings and adjust things, B: use a post processing noise reduction filter (Neat Image, Noise Ninja, etc.) or C: just give up and start over.

- Oshyan

[Sethren]

Dang i love those high detail cotton-like clouds. This is what i am after as this is good for those very high rising cumulonimbus towers as well.     

I think i will have to wait a year until i can render those suckers.     

[ProjectX]

I tried plopping in a twist and shear shader into the cloud shader, AFAIK it did nothing. Has anyone else tried it with success? I've also tried the strata and outcrops shader on it, to see what it would look like. Shoving a power fractal into clouds seems to have a nice effect though. I wonder what an alpine fractal would result in?

I'll put up my planetary render (with clouds) in a sec, for now here's my first successful 800x600 render, I think the cloud came out ok.

Ooh, and here's my second successful render, I was trying to copy one of Oshyan's sea renders as a lesson on water, I think the waves are too choppy, and they miss that golden glow, but other than that I think I've learnt enough with them to carry on.

[Yongkiatk]

Hello there Melting Ice:

I tried out the cloud scene you posted

http://imagehost.meltingice.net/viewer.php?id=viu1167517281a.jpg

but culdn't get such nice deep / refine render like yours. Any tips on that?

Regards,