Thunderhead

[FrankB]

Here it comes, my first image after a long time. As you may notice, I've put most focus onto creating that thunderhead. I consider it a work in progress, however I'm close to where I wanted this to get, and I kinda like how it turned out, so I thought I might as well post it here . Took 3 hours to render at 0.8 quality (two parallel crops) - not too bad.

Cheers,
Frank[attachimg=#]

[rcallicotte]

Grant you, Frank, I'm not complaining and I want to know how you did that lower part, but I think the very top looks like a little too liquidy for clouds.  That sai, I LOVE the actual thunderhead at the bottom.  It's perfect!

[RArcher]

All I can say is wow.  Thank you for again showing us what is possible.

[dhavalmistry]

holy cow!!!.....did u use my clip file??

[lonewolf]

The foreground has a very winxp feel about it. Love the background and the thunderhead too.
Agree with calico somewhat about the top, I'd like to see it more ballooning out the top (is that how you describe it?).

Iain

[FrankB]

holy cow!!!.....did u use my clip file??

Glad you like it :-)

... but what clip file? No, this is one simple cloud layer with just about the right settings. We had clouds like this all over Germany recently. They were so beautiful, I couldn't resist trying them in TG2. It turned our to be pretty easy to do. The right lighting does the rest.
However, I've had to learn a lot about the clouds shader and the cloud fractal, before it became clear how to make such clouds (especially with reasonable render times).

As I said, it's a WIP, I think I will make a few changes. I'm fine with the simplicity of the ground, though.

Cheers,
Frank

[FrankB]

... I'd like to see it more ballooning out the top (is that how you describe it?).

Although a cloud like this was the "model" for this image and really looked closely like it, yeah, I know what you mean. Difficult to do, as the cloud profiles are somewhat hard coded. I may have an idea that I could try, though.

Regards;
Frank

[monks]

Wow, I love these huge cloudfronts.

monks

[sjefen]

Very cool. The top is a little to noise for my taste, but the bottom is as calico said.

I consider it a work in progress, however I'm close to where I wanted this to get, and I kinda like how it turned out, so I thought I might as well post it here.

Be sure to post us the updates

[FrankB]

I gave it another try. Unfortunately I currently don't have any decent image manipulation program  at hand - just the crappy picasa. I would have chosen to postwork it a little here and there. As an experiment, I've chosen another aspect ration, too.
I'm interested in hearing which version you think is better.

Thanks,
Frank

[nvseal]

This one is fantastic!

[rcallicotte]

Frank, I like how you've experimented with lighting and this is pretty well done.  Love the darkness under the thunderhead - phenomenol.

[Saurav]

HI Frank,

I actually prefer the first version, especially the lower (blurred) parts of the clouds. To my eyes the colouring also looks more natural on the first version.

Cheers,
Saurav

[monks]

The first one looks more natural but the 2nd has a fantastical quality about it that I like as well.

monks

[FrankB]

Thank you guys!

I find it especially hard to make the shadowed parts look real. In all images I've seen yet, the billowry shapes look very odd when in shadow - unnatural, too sharp, too distinct, simply wrong. I believe it has to do with the fake internal scattering in combination with edge sharpness. I'm currently rendering a third version (that still has fake internal scattering), but once that's complete, I'll give it another try with fake scattering turned off (or significantly reduced), and less edge sharpness. I'm curious to see how this will compare.

Cheers,
Frank