Hey guys,
I'm revisiting and revising the Cumulonimbus Pack V2, specifically the cumulonimbus and anvil scene.
The ground is just a placeholder, the focus is on the sky. Open the thumbnail preview and let me know how do you like it (or not)! ;-)
Cheers,
Frank
This short Facebook conversation sums it up pretty much for me :D
Quote from: Tangled-Universe
Yeah! This looks really nice Frank :) How much pw did you perform, has it much changed compared to the raw render?
Quote from: FrankB
I haven't done much PW at all. Just loaded the exr, converted to 16bit, added a bit contrast, that's it.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe
Fantastic. I love it as is, but knowing it's almost like this straight from the renderer is a real TG hard on ;) lol
;D
hehe, yah! ;D
Lolz :)
Great image Franck
;)
Richard
Ps, that's a big image, how long to render a 1280x720 version, for animation you understand?
Looking real fine!
Quote from: cyphyr on February 12, 2013, 04:15:21 PM
Ps, that's a big image, how long to render a 1280x720 version, for animation you understand?
26 minutes at the format you mentioned, with slightly tuned settings.
I like the lighting way better here. Raked low angle side lighting always looks better in my opinion for anything landscape oriented. Pulling down the gamma also works wonders for the image as well. Really makes the darks rich and pops the highlights, giving the image a lot of depth and more of a photographic sensibility.
I was trying to make clouds like you've got here this past weekend, and I thoroughly succeeded in making something that resembled an overly wiped lemon meringue pie. Back to the drawing board on that one...
Good job!
Quote from: gregtee on February 12, 2013, 05:20:34 PM
I like the lighting way better here. Raked low angle side lighting always looks better in my opinion for anything landscape oriented. Pulling down the gamma also works wonders for the image as well. Really makes the darks rich and pops the highlights, giving the image a lot of depth and more of a photographic sensibility.
Thank you for the comment, Greg. I agree that a low elevation sun, coming from the side, really brings out the nicest possible looks for clouds. Pulling down the gamma is an artistic choice, but in my opinion almost imperative for the amount of contrast we need in images like these.
Quote
I was trying to make clouds like you've got here this past weekend, and I thoroughly succeeded in making something that resembled an overly wiped lemon meringue pie. Back to the drawing board on that one...
Good job!
LOL for the funny analogy :D
Don't give up trying, success lies in the little details and often tiny tweaks in the parameters. Or, you take the shortcut and get the Cumulus Pack V2. I will soon update the pack with the latest scene. It will be for a cost, but anyone who buys between now and then will get the updated pack for free.
A little critique on my own image: I am not content with the billowry shapes. I can do better. I should say this is not a final render. I think the lighting and the overall shapes are final, though.
Cheers,
Frank
I will probably in the end pick up your cloud pack, just so I can see how it was done. I spent all of Sunday messing with settings and while I enjoy the challenge, sometimes it's just better to see what someone else who has already spent 100s of hours working on it did and then take it from there. God knows where I work none of us typically go it alone. We all feed off each other's work and learn a lot in the process.
I'd say with regards to post processing that it's essential for a good image. Rarely does one produce something that's of the quality they want right out of a render. It almost always needs some sort of color correction one way or another.
Quote from: gregtee on February 12, 2013, 05:49:10 PM
I'd say with regards to post processing that it's essential for a good image. Rarely does one produce something that's of the quality they want right out of a render. It almost always needs some sort of color correction one way or another.
That is very true. Except here, I didn't have to do much. The 32 bit output of the exr format provides for a lot of dynamic range, it was mostly a matter of curves adjustment. I have already rendered with a reduced gamma, though.
Well it's damn good work. That's all I can say, lol :)
Beautiful cloudscape Frank!
Reminds me a bit of Independence day.
Cheers
Looks great Frank. A little noisy, but I know this isn't final render quality. And an impressive render time at that resolution, it must be a nicely tuned scene already. Perhaps an animation is indeed possible... :D
- Oshyan
After making more lemon meringue cloud pie this evening I cried uncle and just bought Frank's cloud pack.
Quote from: gregtee on February 13, 2013, 12:53:31 AM
After making more lemon meringue cloud pie this evening I cried uncle and just bought Frank's cloud pack.
You'll love it, especially if you get the distance shader where you want it.
Yeah, I was messing with that this evening and found finding the right values frustrating to say the least. Here's an idea maybe worth considering for the dev team.
There's a feature in Nuke's Z-defocus node that allows the user to see where the near and far focal planes are by way of a three color rack. Parts of the image that are in front of the focal plane are say green, and parts of the image that in the focal plane are red, and parts that are beyond the focal plane are blue.
This allows the compositor to quickly see what's where depth of field wise without having to guess or do a bunch of renders. Could something like this work in TG? Say everything beyond the far distance cutoff is one color, and everything in from of it is another right in the interface, visible without having to actually do a test render.
The distance shader is a "remnant" of the TG-versions which didn't have "localized cloud" layers back then.
So I'd now check the radius of the distance shader, say 10000m, delete it and enable "localize cloud" in the cloud node and give it a similar radius (which by default happens to be 10000m)
You'll now see a circular boundary box with 2 dashed circles which represent cloud bottom and top.
You can see that change when you adjust cloud altitude and/or cloud depth.
This boundary box you can select and move in the 3D preview. Very useful :)
Another advantage of using localized cloud layers is that you'll restrict the renderer from testing the entire density fractals texture space of where the distance shader is blending it.
By using a localized cloud layer the renderer knows in advance that it only has to calculate the density shader in the localized layer itself, thus potentially speeding up rendering.
Another small tip/trick I'd like to share:
Inmediately enable "move textures with cloud" in the cloud node as soon as you start working with a cloud.
If you have a nice cloud setup, but would like to move it and choose to enable "move textures with clouds" then, then the density fractal will move to it's relative position of the localized cloud layer and thus your nice cloud setup won't look the same anymore. Totally different actually.
So starting with "move textures with cloud" from the beginning will guarantee you that you can move your cloud anywhere at a later stage and also allows you to save the cloud as a clipfile and import it 1:1 into other projects :)
Sorry for the little hijack Frank :)
Cheers,
Martin
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 13, 2013, 03:09:37 AM
Sorry for the little hijack Frank :)
No problem, Martin.
In fact, I have reworked the scene to use localized clouds. Good tip about "move textures with cloud", though!
Quote from: Oshyan on February 12, 2013, 10:37:52 PM
Looks great Frank. A little noisy, but I know this isn't final render quality. And an impressive render time at that resolution, it must be a nicely tuned scene already. Perhaps an animation is indeed possible... :D
- Oshyan
Thanks Osyhan! I'll do a final render once I have worked on the foreground a bit more.
About the animation: It would be possible... if you would offer to pay the render farm, that is ;-)
But in general, I think a still is best for that scene. There is nothing much to animate in this scene, other than time lapsing the cloud build-up.
Cheers,
Frank
beautiful
Thank you, Michael! :)
and here is the final
stonking result Frank!
:)
Awesome!
Frikkin awesome Frank :)
Wow!!!!
Fantastic 8)
Very big and beautifull !!!
The King Kong of the sky ...beeeautiful!
Looks fantastic Frank,
Love both cloudscapes.
Thanks to T-U for the tip about "move texture". Good advice.
Cheers
If you can create a convincing cloud billow animation setup, I will get the animation rendered. :D
- Oshyan
Thanks guys, this was a fun detour. Now back to the planet!
Frank
Oshyan's offer is one you can not refuse ;)
I know a couple of nice ways to animate boiling cumulus clouds, depending on fractal setup though.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 14, 2013, 03:38:54 AM
Oshyan's offer is one you can not refuse ;)
I know a couple of nice ways to animate boiling cumulus clouds, depending on fractal setup though.
Nah, thanks. I have no interest working on an animation in the first place. Not even sure if this image is a good candidate for animation. :-)
Very nice! Great clouds you've got there, looks impressive! First render is best IMO :)
Are you sure no animation Frank? I think a slight rustling of leaves in the foreground with a very small lateral camera move and the slightest bit of movement to the clouds, nothing dramatic, would look REALLY nice. Add a some sounds for leaves and wind and it would make a very nice clip. IMO. :)
~Micheal
Quote from: mhall on February 15, 2013, 01:27:35 AM
Are you sure no animation Frank? I think a slight rustling of leaves in the foreground with a very small lateral camera move and the slightest bit of movement to the clouds, nothing dramatic, would look REALLY nice. Add a some sounds for leaves and wind and it would make a very nice clip. IMO. :)
~Micheal
Yes, I am sure: no animation of this one, I'm sorry. But if you want to, you can grab the pack and do it yourself :-)
Cheers,
Frank
Superb, bravo!
Awesome clouds Frank! They really look menacing.