Tropics Sunset - Cloud tests (Blender tests pending)

Started by RogueNZ, July 14, 2023, 11:53:40 AM

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RogueNZ

After seeing Terje Hannisdal's cloud tests in Blender using Terragen VDB's (posted on Artstation), I had to give it a go. I started by modelling a decent cumulus cloud in Terragen, but initial tests show the cloud looks better in Terragen... so I decided I would create a simple scene to showcase it first.

I'll post here some of the testing I've been doing in Blender, comparing different shader variants. Unfortunately the VDB looks a fair bit softer in Blender than it does in Terragen, even at 2000 million voxels (doubling from 1000 made no visible difference...). Could be due to differences in the shaders between the two programs potentially.

I have to say though, the Disney cloud VDB asset looks incredible in Blender with these new shading tricks... better than any other render engine, to my eyes.


Dune


RogueNZ

Forgot to post these results of testing.

I get a feeling that Terragen is not exporting the VDB with as much detail as it should be. I tested between 500m, 1000m and 2000m voxels, and saw no change in detail in the Blender renders. Yet the Terragen renders retained more of the small wispy details.

Terragen does a better job with this cloud, however with VDBs generated in Houdini's Pyro sim, and the Walt Disney cloud, Blender does an incredible job and beats anything I have seen out of Terragen.

Despite this, Blender is an absolute nightmare for landscape scenes, coming from Terragen. It has no inbuilt atmosphere shader, and is buggy when trying to implement workarounds. It has terrible performance when working with scattered objects. Clunky workaround methods for creating terrains. Awful viewport navigation...

BlenderVsTerragen.jpg


pokoy

Do you see increasing file size for the VDBs exported in higher resolutions? If yes, and you don't see any detail added in Blender, do you have a parameter called 'step size' somewhere in Blender's VDB object/shader or render settings? Maybe it's set too high, in that case any detail lower than that value will not be visible.

The cloud detail in TG is derived form the noise function, while the exported VDB is the voxel cache used for lighting/GI.
Divide the cloud extents in meters by the voxel cache count in any axis, that's what the real voxel resolution is. For massive clouds it can still be 10, 20 meters per voxel, and that's much less detail than TG uses internally for rendering.

As for rendering clouds - same here, I saw some recent renders from Blender with cloud VDBs simulated in Houdini - both the render and clouds were beautiful, the best I've ever seen to date, absolutely stunning results. TG struggles with some non-physical behavior while all the path tracers have a clear advantage here. TG's results might be 'artistic' and good looking most of the time but it takes quite some time to get good realistic results... and they still lack the shading quality and detail of other renderers' results.

I wonder what the strategy is now that clouds simulated in Embergen or Houdini are much more advanced and realistic than anything you could get in TG after days of tweaking. Also, the inability to import VDBs in TG and the noise-based random clouds heavily limit artistic freedom. TG's advantage is a relatively care-free realistic atmosphere but cloud shading is quite lacking to be honest if realism is the goal. TG's restrictive EULA when it comes to selling VDB cloud assets generated in it might not be helpful, too.

BTW, that cloud looks great!

pokoy

Since I mentioned it, here are the links to some twitter accounts showing off Houdini sim'ed cloud VDBs rendered in Blender with Cycles:

https://twitter.com/samuel_krug
https://twitter.com/byccollective
https://twitter.com/brendan_gully

aknight0

Quote from: pokoy on August 14, 2023, 08:37:47 AMSince I mentioned it, here are the links to some twitter accounts showing off Houdini sim'ed cloud VDBs rendered in Blender with Cycles:

https://twitter.com/samuel_krug
https://twitter.com/byccollective
https://twitter.com/brendan_gully
brendan_gully = RogueNZ btw 😉

Nice clouds!

pokoy

Quote from: aknight0 on August 14, 2023, 03:29:55 PM
Quote from: pokoy on August 14, 2023, 08:37:47 AMSince I mentioned it, here are the links to some twitter accounts showing off Houdini sim'ed cloud VDBs rendered in Blender with Cycles:

https://twitter.com/samuel_krug
https://twitter.com/byccollective
https://twitter.com/brendan_gully
brendan_gully = RogueNZ btw 😉

Nice clouds!

Oooooh OK! Now that's a revelation :D

So... can we maybe start a topic about simming clouds in Houdini/Embergen? I'd love to see some reliable content and discussion on techniques here, and given that TG and TG Sky need the ability to import VDBs at some point to be competitive I guess it would good for the community here, too.

RogueNZ

Quote from: pokoy on August 14, 2023, 06:09:51 AMDo you see increasing file size for the VDBs exported in higher resolutions? If yes, and you don't see any detail added in Blender, do you have a parameter called 'step size' somewhere in Blender's VDB object/shader or render settings? Maybe it's set too high, in that case any detail lower than that value will not be visible.

The cloud detail in TG is derived form the noise function, while the exported VDB is the voxel cache used for lighting/GI.
Divide the cloud extents in meters by the voxel cache count in any axis, that's what the real voxel resolution is. For massive clouds it can still be 10, 20 meters per voxel, and that's much less detail than TG uses internally for rendering.

As for rendering clouds - same here, I saw some recent renders from Blender with cloud VDBs simulated in Houdini - both the render and clouds were beautiful, the best I've ever seen to date, absolutely stunning results. TG struggles with some non-physical behavior while all the path tracers have a clear advantage here. TG's results might be 'artistic' and good looking most of the time but it takes quite some time to get good realistic results... and they still lack the shading quality and detail of other renderers' results.

I wonder what the strategy is now that clouds simulated in Embergen or Houdini are much more advanced and realistic than anything you could get in TG after days of tweaking. Also, the inability to import VDBs in TG and the noise-based random clouds heavily limit artistic freedom. TG's advantage is a relatively care-free realistic atmosphere but cloud shading is quite lacking to be honest if realism is the goal. TG's restrictive EULA when it comes to selling VDB cloud assets generated in it might not be helpful, too.

BTW, that cloud looks great!
Thanks! Yeah I do see increasing size with higher resolutions. I've played with most of the settings in Blender, including the step size, and I think it is coming from something within Terragen.

Yeah, very excited about the possibilities with Blender. I feel we will see a growth in physical simulation of atmospheres, defining a terrain and simulating an atmosphere flowing over it. Have seen a recent paper that showed really nice results. Something I'll be looking into within or outside of Houdini for sure.

It's a shame we don't have VDB import in Terragen yet. I know its fairly niche, but when it comes to realism I can't help feel that the benefit of Blender's clouds outweighs Terragen (which excels in almost everything else landscape related).

And yep, that was me on Twitter :) If you are interested in the cloud simming side of things, definitely join Sam Kruger's Discord channel (https://discord.gg/hS5w73gN), and look for the Cloud Megathread under the WIP channel.

pokoy

If you're really not seeing any detail increase... well, maybe there's really a bug lurking somewhere. Maybe it's increasing the voxel resolution but just storing the same value for additional neighboring voxels.

Thank you x 1000 for the link to the discord server - awesome. I briefly went through the thread and clearly need more time but it's a really useful resource.

Last question - do you need a full Houdini license to do the sims and export to VDB or is the Apprentice version able to do this, too?
I have an Embergen license but haven't tried so far and don't really know if it's able to produce similar output.

RogueNZ

Apprentice seems fully capable of simulating and exporting high res explosion's of clouds :) It is very challenging to get started in it though, there is a guy on the Discord channel planning a cloud sim tutorial which I am looking forward to.

pokoy

Sounds great, if you see something I'd be really grateful for a link here.
I was looking for some more in-depth technical info on that channel but, to be honest, the information-to-noise-ratio is pretty disappointing. Not sure what the primary scope of it is but it feels like 99% of it is people being silly, with a great render thrown in sometimes, and people seem to care more about their post's views statistics than anything else. Wild.