Realistic clouds

[kirk12]

I am trying to make  a sky background with realistic cumulus clouds in Terragen2  but can't succeed.  I added cumulus 3d  with default settings  and they looks  a way below all those seen in T2 galleries.  My clouds looks someway too  grayish  and uniform, without all those well formed bright lit cumulus clouds  seen in real life and in some T2 renders.
Sure it probably had been discussed before but I didn't  find anything useful yet.. Could somebody give me a direction to start digging please.

[cyphyr]

Take a look in the file sharing section, many have been uploaded, you just need to find one that suites your needs. Alternatively you could try the NWDA site. Experts have toiled long and hard to come up with working sets of many presets and they don't cost much either (I don't work for them nor do I get a kickback lol)
Richard

[PG]

Good place to start too

[FrankB]

Take a look in the file sharing section, many have been uploaded, you just need to find one that suites your needs. Alternatively you could try the NWDA site. Experts have toiled long and hard to come up with working sets of many presets and they don't cost much either (I don't work for them nor do I get a kickback lol)
Richard

Thanks for the recommendation anyway, Cyphyr

Frank

[kirk12]

Thanks  a lot.  I am definitely interested with some clouds presets offered  by NWDA.   But at first I  would like to get  a bit better understanding of settings.  I remember a  tutorial site where there were pictures which illustrated results of many common nodes and settings. I lost the link . If somebody can tell it I would be  appreciative. 

Meanwhile I got another problem. I need  a clean and detailed  render result . Especially in a zone of the sky next to the horizon line.  When I try to render the picture in high resolution (3000x3000) and  GI settings (5) so I would be able to get noise free image  I always get an error message and the render window disappears. What thing should I consider to decrease  at first to get more stable render and still not so noisy result?  Is there any solution to render the sky by parts?  Looks like it's possible only with GI of.

[cyphyr]

Cloud settings you'll have to experiment with but firstly a GI of 5 is extreme, don't think I've ever gone above 2, but that's probably not the source of your "noise". Check your atmosphere quality and try sample settings of 16, 32 and 64.
Richard

[kirk12]

Thanks Richard

[Cemoa]

As for tutorials, you can try the Planetside wiki, which is VERY helpful.
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Tutorials

Also you can check out this tutorial on how to get great cumulus clouds in 3 steps, written by FrankB from NWDA.
http://www.nwdanet.com/tech-articles/28-cumulustutorial

[Henry Blewer]

FrankB's NWDA tutorial helped me make better clouds. The best part with Frank's is it easy to remember how it's done, and his explanation is clear.

[littlecannon]

I second that... Cloud Master Frank's 3 easy steps tutorial is cloudtastic.... I learnt loads from it, check it out.

[kirk12]

Thanks a lot to everybody.  I finally started to understand the cloud creation here.

[Njen]

But at first I  would like to get  a bit better understanding of settings.  I remember a  tutorial site where there were pictures which illustrated results of many common nodes and settings. I lost the link . If somebody can tell it I would be  appreciative.

I believe that may have been my site:
http://www.motionmagnetic.com/a_terragen2/atmosphere_examples/atmosphere_examples.html

These were created more than a year ago, so there are a couple of features that have not been included since, but it should still help you out some.

[kirk12]

Really cool site njen. Thanks a lot. Would be great  to have the same picture examples for every node where applicable. Believe it should be in Planetside's node reference.

[Henry Blewer]

njen, do you know what the two values above the sizing inputs of the height field do? I've played with them, but just when I think I know what they do, it reacts differently.

[archonforest]

Does anybody knows where this link went?

"Also you can check out this tutorial on how to get great cumulus clouds in 3 steps, written by FrankB from NWDA.
http://www.nwdanet.com/tech-articles/28-cumulustutorial"

Does someone saved the data by any chance?