Thanks Will!
Yeah, fractal noise functions are great. They work equally well for surfaces as for clouds (and nebulae). I`m often using fractal and ridged fractal noise functions for cloud texturing and for the shapes of the clouds.
In many cases I create the shapes with primitives like dots or lines, which I then distort with fractal and other displace functions.
Then I add a texture, which is sometimes a combination of several fractal (and other) noises.
It`s funny, bigben wrote that dunes could be used as clouds. My sand ripples and my banded clouds are in fact very similar.
(Both are shaped by the wind)
- eonite