Cloud Change

[rcallicotte]

I have changed this TGC enough (third time) and think it's now ready for anyone who wants to play with it.  It's all yours.

Here's the link to the TGC --> http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3691.msg44881#msg44881  (I forgot earlier...oops)

An example...

[Zylot]

...now those are grade A.

[MacGyver]

Both thumbs up! 

I really like the lighting of the picture, almost looks like a painting to me...
Thank you for sharing your work, I'll try to understand what you did from your file. As I always use the standard settings of the "free-for-all" TG2-Version, my clouds oftentimes look more like crap than clouds. What detail settings did you use for this image? Are raytraced shadows important / number of samples used? I once did a cloud render on my 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (only 1 core used because of free version) and it took me 58 hours in 800x500 px. Still looked more like bathing foam than a cloud 

[rcallicotte]

Thanks Zylot and MacGyver.  The settings I used were fairly low - .5 detail, GI 2/2  I did a couple of level changes in Paint.NET.  Raytraced shadows are turned off.  I think the number of quality samples for the atmosphere and clouds can be critical.  Clouds are funny creatures.  Play around with some of the offering from others in the the Cloud Library.  Many possibilities could come out of there.  This one used a multi-cloud approach, which leaves it open for the artist to play with less or more clouds and less or more of one element than another.  You can also change the number of clouds that use the Distance Shader and / or change the settings in the Distance Shader.

What I've found to make changes, especially with clouds, is to make only once change at a time to see where it's going before making another.  This takes time, but can be worth it.  Heck, this image could have been better with a little different angle of light or even a different shade of color of light or maybe more lights. 

Have fun!