Here we go at attempt #1 (rendered at only 0.8 )
cheers,
Frank
Beautiful. Like the dark blue and the clouds are awesome. How did you make these?
Oh man that looks really amazing! Just like Calico said: such nice colours!
I'm also wondering how you made these ;D
Martin
p.s. looking forward to attempt #2 ;)
Ah, very nice, Frank.
Very good and realistic.
Very realistic result.
thanks guys!
this is attempt number 2. I have reduced the quality a wee bit so the file size become smaller.
Regards,
Frank
Hi Frank!
Thanks for posting a high-res picture of this. Seems you've only adjusted the colours a little?
It looks very good, adds a little bit more definition. Also nice is that the clouds in the background keep looking good as well.
Sometimes clouds look well at close-up but are ugly when viewing from a distance, or vice versa ;)
I think when it's about making these kind of clouds it's of great importance to find the right balance between the depths, densities and edge sharpnesses of the fractals(?)
Would you like to give a few directions on how these clouds were made?
It's really outstanding work! Are there more attempts coming?
Martin
Good work.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on August 12, 2007, 05:30:05 AM
Hi Frank!
Thanks for posting a high-res picture of this. Seems you've only adjusted the colours a little?
It looks very good, adds a little bit more definition. Also nice is that the clouds in the background keep looking good as well.
Sometimes clouds look well at close-up but are ugly when viewing from a distance, or vice versa ;)
I think when it's about making these kind of clouds it's of great importance to find the right balance between the depths, densities and edge sharpnesses of the fractals(?)
Would you like to give a few directions on how these clouds were made?
It's really outstanding work! Are there more attempts coming?
Martin
Hi Martin,
well the first attempt was only a crop render at low quality, the high-res version in turn is only slightly different, but was done in full quality, more GI samples etc.
However, a third attmept of the same scene is currently rendering with less warping. I also felt the internal scattering was a bit too dark, hence the next version is more conservative in this regard.
For these type of clouds, I prefer an edge sharpness less than 1, and a density between 0.01 and 0.03. I usually also up the cloud colour towards more white, lower the default light propagation and enviro light. However, to me, two things are key:
- I use a specific density fractal to serve as a blend shader for the "real" density fractal. The blend shader is almost a black and white mask, and ensures that the clouds are not all over the place and there's more distance between clouds, and some predefined dimensions without comprimising on their size. Simply reducing coverage unfortunately also reduces the size of the clouds, and I don't want that to happen.
- the second most important thing is to save in openexr format, otherwise it becomes impossible to work out all these nice shades of cloud-white. If you had seen the final render image, it didn't look as exciting, only the ability to fine-tune a wider range of exposures brought up all these details.
Cheers,
Frank
Great. I like this a lot. The second one looks like rain clouds forming.
Would you mind explaining a tad bit more about the use of a "...density fractal to serve as a blend shader for the "real" density fractal."? This sounds really like a good idea, but what is this doing really? What does the second density fractal do that makes separation and controlling sizes of the clouds more in our control?
Here's the final version:
thanks for the comments, guys.
Cheers,
Frank
Quote from: calico on August 12, 2007, 01:54:39 PM
Great. I like this a lot. The second one looks like rain clouds forming.
Would you mind explaining a tad bit more about the use of a "...density fractal to serve as a blend shader for the "real" density fractal."? This sounds really like a good idea, but what is this doing really? What does the second density fractal do that makes separation and controlling sizes of the clouds more in our control?
It's probably easier to show you the blend shader tgc.
Regards,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on August 12, 2007, 07:34:19 AM
...The blend shader is almost a black and white mask, and ensures that the clouds are not all over the place and there's more distance between clouds, and some predefined dimensions without comprimising on their size. Simply reducing coverage unfortunately also reduces the size of the clouds, and I don't want that to happen.
- the second most
Hi Frank
Very nice clouds.
You could try a colour adjust shader to adjust the contrast of this shader. That should provide you with a tweak for coverage. Contrast controlled by the difference between black and white point, raise or lower both by the same amount to increase/decrease coverage.
:-[ Vunderbar. Easier to explain this way sometimes. This is great.
Thanks, Frank.
Thanks a lot for sharing Frank! I was just about to go to sleep, almost 2:30 am here :o seems it's going to be half an hour later ;D
Martin
These clouds remind me of the overall pattern that Vue 6's spectral clouds produce but Vue being less realistic and simple looking volumetrics.
wonderful clouds ;D ;D, what did you change from the first image? with the clouds being lighter is it a result of leveling?.... also curious about render time at that high res ;D ;D ~desktop ;D
I actually came very close to what u have here....I created these clouds in around May and I didnt use any blending shader....and of course...they are not as good as your clouds Frank!
These are also very nice clouds! Mind to share a tgc / settings? ;D
Did you ever work out that scene? It's good looking! With a little bit of work on texturing of the terrain and rendering at higher quality it will definitely look very good!
Another thing which might also be interesting for this image is to decrease the gamma to 1.7 and increase contrast to about 0.35 in the rendersettings. Then increase camera-exposure to about 1.3-1.5. This will produce a much clearer render.
Well, let's get further on-topic ;)
Martin
hopefully sometime this decade my new clouds will be finished.... given ideas from this thread...
Quote from: king_tiger_666 on August 12, 2007, 09:41:02 PM
wonderful clouds ;D ;D, what did you change from the first image? with the clouds being lighter is it a result of leveling?.... also curious about render time at that high res ;D ;D ~desktop ;D
I had increased the fake internal scattering which made the inside of the clouds lighter, but also slightly increased the GI lighting on clouds.
The render time was 18 hours in total, but effectively 9 hours per CPU core (two instances of TG2 rendering on AMD X2).
Regards,
Frank
I've just learned a bunch through this, Frank. Taking your clip file, I check-marked the Density Fractal's Density Tab's Clamp High and Clamp Low. This was my result, after postwork with the tif (I only have access to Paint.Net).
Thanks Frank.
nice calico....by the way....what exactly does clamp high and low checkboxes do??
Clamp high and low essentially sets any value below zero to zero and any value above one to one. Correct me if I'm wrong on this....
Quote from: old_blaggard on August 14, 2007, 01:14:41 AM
Clamp high and low essentially sets any value below zero to zero and any value above one to one. Correct me if I'm wrong on this....
That is correct.
Quote from: dhavalmistry on August 12, 2007, 09:48:07 PM
I actually came very close to what u have here....I created these clouds in around May and I didnt use any blending shader....and of course...they are not as good as your clouds Frank!
As a side note...
I live on the US Gulf Coast. The clouds in this render look VERY much like ones I have seen in the days preceeding some of the tropical systems that have come through this area, most notably Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Katrina. The clouds look almost "sticky" and seem to appear up to week before the systems come through. Whether it's coincidence, superstition or fact, I keep my eyes on the skies this time of year. ;)
Colors in the original (first) image are much, much better IMO, but all are very nice renders. Thanks for sharing the clip Frank. :)
- Oshyan
a "final" final, with less color on the clouds.
very nice....just a concern....what are you cloud samples set to???....I think you should increase them just a little bit to get rid of the graininess near the edges of the clouds.....
I also wanna know how did you get the sky to be so dark blue (sorry for being a noob)
Agreed. And thanks again, Frank. This has opened up clouds for me. And I like your final...these all look so much like works of art as compared to just a glimpse into the world we already see, which is nice.
Quote from: Oshyan on August 15, 2007, 01:59:24 AM
Colors in the original (first) image are much, much better IMO, but all are very nice renders. Thanks for sharing the clip Frank. :)
- Oshyan
I ditched down the atmo height, but most importantly lowered the gamma significantly.
As for the grain: that's no grain, I thought so in the first place, too. I've done a crop render of that area at 128 atmo samples, and it still looked the same. These are simply little fractions from the cloud, most probably due to the warping.
Cheers,
Frank
what do you mean by atmosphere height??.....u mean bluesky exp height???
Quote from: dhavalmistry on August 15, 2007, 11:10:32 AM
what do you mean by atmosphere height??.....u mean bluesky exp height???
yes, that's it. I brought it down to 5000m. It becomes more visible when you also decrease the camera exposure, but if that's an option depends on your sceen. In the default project, the exposure is at 1, but then the sun elevation is only at 25 degrees. I found when I increase the sun elevation, I usually have to decrease camera exposure - naturally.
regards,
Frank
thanx Frank
Ahhh, Frank! The camera exposure...hah! And all this time I didn't treat this TG2 like a camera. What have I been thinking? ;D
Looks very nice Frank, even the surfaces on the grassy hill.
I could not resist to touch this again. Oshyan was right when he said the clouds look slightly stained. I had to change a handful of settings to get the right look, and render again.
For the sake of completeness, here is the real final ;-)
Thanks for your previous comments and support, guys.
Frank
Quote from: Saurav on August 15, 2007, 06:06:35 PM
Looks very nice Frank, even the surfaces on the grassy hill.
Thanks, Saurav. It's just the default base colors shader. Initially, I had given it some colors just to not have the default grey, and was planning on enhancing the surface later when I was done with the clouds. But then it turned out quite nicely just so, and I let it as it is.
Regards,
Frank
This "final final" looks nice, more pleasing to my eye. I would have gone for higher exposure and whiter clouds, but the color is good here certainly. Great work. :)
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on August 16, 2007, 03:20:34 AM
This "final final" looks nice, more pleasing to my eye. I would have gone for higher exposure and whiter clouds, but the color is good here certainly. Great work. :)
- Oshyan
I'm not quite awake yet, it seems. I have a postworked version with higher exposure, but had selected the wrong file from the list.
I have changed my previous post now to show the higher exposed one. Probably not as much exposure as you would have gone for, Oshyan, but more than previously ;-)
Cheers,
Frank
I love the last pic- reminds of the default desktop for XP- soothing and a little dreamlike.
monks