A quick rundown on use and components:
The TG explosion object begun as a TG2 planet object. I made the co-ords 0,0,0 and changed it's radius from several million, to 3 meters. Now you have a tiny planet of 6m diameter in front of that you can populate upon, add it's own atmospheres/cloud-layers, surface shaders (like I did in my
dandinO render posted a while back).There's no surface shaders for this one though because the planet surface is invisible, more on that in a minute...
Once you have got this far, you'll want to add a cloud layer to this new planet: Set it's 'level' to '0' and it's height to '6'.
Doing this means that the cloud is also inside the planet it surrounds, 3 metres right to its core and also, it projects 3 metres outward from the surface.
Now,
unchecking 'render surface' in the small-planet node settings omits the planet leaving you a nice 12 metres diameter puffball of cloud to edit with it's density fractal and internal lightsource. My scales here for the density fractal are based on this 6m radius of the cloud layer so, if you edit the scale of the explosion object you'll want to edit the fractal explosion scales to suit. There is also a light source inside the explosion object. If you move the parent explosion object from x0,y0,z0 you must do the same for it's lightsource, it must be inside the cloud to illuminate it with the force of 'the explosion'. Likewise, if you change the scale of the TG explosion object, you must also adjust the brightness of the light source inside to complement the bigger/smaller levels you give the parent object and its fractal.
There is a fourth, disabled but necessary, node inside the explosion model too. This is a disabled default shader and is in the internal network plugged into the 'surface shader' input of the explosion model. I've done this to remove the input node from the parent object. Now it's hidden inside being cuffed by a disabled shader. There is no surface to render anymore as the object only consists of clouds and a light so, no matter what you plugged in there, it'd have no effect whatsoever. Better to hide it I think, rather than leaving it out there to confuse someone who might be expecting results from it.
In effect, the explosion model is textured completely with TG atmospherics!
Do I hear some Vue Meta-cloud competition hotting up in here? Lots of varying scale cloud models like this one could be used to create metaclouds, no doubt in my mind.
The lightsource here is used for fireglow but without it, these cloudpuff balls illuminate accordingly to atmospheric and lighting settings aswell, with the grouping and clipfile functions in TG I lay claim to being the inventor of TG2 Meta-clouds! . (strike me down if I'm wrong, I'm no pliagiarist, I've just never seen them.).
Stacks of these, strategically placed and scaled, could be saved as clips and imported as entire cloud formations in one click.
This is one more addition to my TG2 Public Library folder. I'll have a section of my webpage up and running soon where my Public Library will be open on a sharing basis. Everything there will be free, damn, it's not like it costs me anything to have fun doing this!
This
doesn't mean that if you download anything from the public library that you must share something of your own, not at all but, unlike a real library, where your books must be returned, instead, all you would return(this isn't mandatory either, just an option) would be the link to any renders you made with the downloaded file. I would then supply the hosting space for these images which would then be transfered to my 'Public Gallery' section where I'd host any of your uploaded renders, along with, or without links, of your choice, to your websites etc. Any publicity is good publicity and, the more eyes that see your works, the better in my opinion.
Anyhow... TG calls... I'm lost in it's clouds completely now, they are just so fantastically diverse!