Just before I went to bed I had to do some clouds for an overnight render...
Nothing really special, but still kinda liked the warped edges and detail.
I have included the .tgd for the interested.
Cheers,
Martin
Looks Nice . Thank You!
Thanks, and you're welcome :)
For everyone who's using this:
The AA is set @ 4 and ray traced atmosphere is enabled.
This means that the quality of cloud rendering is not dependent on the combination render detail + cloud quality anymore, but rather AA# and cloud quality.
You still might consider using higher render detail levels, since the GI settings are being multiplied with that setting.
However, raytraced atmosphere often is quicker and gives better results.
Since I had all the time to render I chose to render it with 100 samples = quality 1.
The speed/quality ratio is low with these settings.
A similar but much quicker result can be obtained with about half the samples, if not even less.
If you decide to use these (or other) clouds with AA6 or AA8 then reduce samples even further.
For AA6 I had nice results with 16 samples = 0.16 quality.
For AA8 you might even consider ~8 samples = 0.05 quality. Yes, 0.08 quality!
For instance, if you have models in your scene you'll need AA>4 for nice rendering of your models.
Then lower cloud/atmo samples accordingly to keep things fast.
I'll prepare an example and post it soon here.
Cheers,
Martin
That is interesting. I have been using 24 samples for the atmosphere RT, and 0.65 for the cloud/s detail. Being able to reduce the atmosphere samples with higher AA would save lots of time.
Quote from: njeneb on May 16, 2011, 07:47:49 AM
That is interesting. I have been using 24 samples for the atmosphere RT, and 0.65 for the cloud/s detail. Being able to reduce the atmosphere samples with higher AA would save lots of time.
24 samples for the atmosphere RT.
I "know" that this is OK since it is very unlikely you'll render with AA1. If you did, it wouldn't be sufficient, likely.
It's similar to saying "my clouds look noisy, although I use 200 samples" without knowing the detail equivalence when not using RTA.
In the future documentation these relationships should be worked out very well, since there's been a lot of confusion about it and more confusion will be created with RTA introduced.
It's pretty complicated already and I/others haven't even mentioned that you can also play with the pixel sampler settings to affect RTA rendertimes.
That makes it potentially even more complicated.
Here's a small comparison chart.
The rendersettings were like in the TGD posted above, except that AA was increased from 4 to 6.
As you can see it is possible to render smooth clouds with insane low cloud detail/samples.
Quality 0.16-0.24 is already sufficient in this particular case and increasing further doesn't have very significant improvement.
Only significant increase in rendertime.`
! EDIT: the last picture to the right has 48 samples = 0.48 cloud quality as settings. Sorry!
cheers martin, this will be useful...
:)
Those are great clouds. Better than usual TG2 clouds.
A picture is worth a thousand words. I saved the image. It will be quite useful for quick reference.
Those AA settings are very interesting Martin. I guess the last image is 32 samples?
I didn't realise there was that much connection with AA over Cloud Quality with RTA. That said there is a difference with the last two in your sequence of 4, but as you say it's minimal.
I've not downloaded your TGD, but I'm guessing there's a warp in there. Funny, I was looking up when I should have been looking forward on the M25, noticing the same effect you're trying to simulate. I wonder if you could use your clouds as a mask on a dense ridges/warped noise?
Interesting. The clouds kind of look like someone painted them. They do look realistic though.
Quote from: Hetzen on May 16, 2011, 05:59:34 PM
Those AA settings are very interesting Martin. I guess the last image is 32 samples?
I didn't realise there was that much connection with AA over Cloud Quality with RTA. That said there is a difference with the last two in your sequence of 4, but as you say it's minimal.
I've not downloaded your TGD, but I'm guessing there's a warp in there. Funny, I was looking up when I should have been looking forward on the M25, noticing the same effect you're trying to simulate. I wonder if you could use your clouds as a mask on a dense ridges/warped noise?
Hi Jon, no the last picture has 48 samples. 32 would have been logical, but I wanted to show 48 samples without having to render 2 more 8-sample-increments as well.
I'm planning to show a test with AA2 vs 4 vs 6, but I have to think about it how to make that as clear as possible.
Sure you can also use the main cloud as a blend for ridged warped noise and mix these in.
A small drawback is that it will be mixed in the whole cloud and not the edges only.
With a warp shader and a small scale powerfractal as warper you can get these effects at the edges only.
Very interesting tests. This gives me some ideas to experiment with!
Had another one with the .tgd posted above:
You've got less paint streaks in that one Martin. More refined than your last.
I don't know if you're familiar with The Orb's - Little fluffy clouds track, I heard a great re-version of it to the typical english weather...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2qSvqrCNEk ;D
And another one...did some tests for creating nice cirrus clouds...what do you think?
Those are some pretty nice cirrus! Something not quite right in the shading of your cumulus though. Maybe not enough contrast? Very hard to say.
- Oshyan
Ops ! I forget to thank you and to comment here , Martin !
The edges and some other places look a little like brush strokes , but i still have to made something like this good yet :)
They look really nice!
Off topic : Hetzen some friends didn't liked "The Orb's - Little fluffy clouds" song but i liked it and it was in my head for some days ::)
Quote from: Oshyan on May 31, 2011, 02:35:28 PM
Those are some pretty nice cirrus! Something not quite right in the shading of your cumulus though. Maybe not enough contrast? Very hard to say.
- Oshyan
Yeah the cumulus sucks this time.
I actually performed the exact same post-work (duplicate layer -> auto levels -> opacity 20%) as the previous two versions.
I also didn't change the shading from the last one.
Bad luck, but probably related to relative positioning.
Quote from: Kadri on May 31, 2011, 02:48:30 PM
Ops ! I forget to thank you and to comment here , Martin !
The edges and some other places look a little like brush strokes , but i still have to made something like this good yet :)
They look really nice!
Off topic : Hetzen some friends didn't liked "The Orb's - Little fluffy clouds" song but i liked it and it was in my head for some days ::)
Thanks :)
In some parts the warping is a bit overdone. It would be nice if you could control that a bit more. There's an option "less warp at feature scale" but it offers no real control *I think*.
However, it's easy to adjust the "brush strokes" length. Just reduce the displacement factor of the warper fractal.