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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Mr_Lamppost on February 27, 2016, 07:25:19 PM

Title: Broken bands.
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on February 27, 2016, 07:25:19 PM
It's been a while since I've posted anything, I don't get as much time as I used to and am now spending most of the time I do get working with Blender.  Not that I've completely forgotten TG, I now mostly use it for creating environment maps.   Anyhow the other day I was out and about and noticed some interesting banded clouds and got inspired.

The trees are from Xfrog.
The steeple is by Teimo1999, downloaded from BlendSwap:  http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/82846 (http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/82846)  I added basic uvs and materials and exported from Blender as  an .obj.
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Oshyan on February 27, 2016, 10:13:27 PM
Wow! "It's been a while" is an understatement: 2.5 year! :D Really glad to see you again though, you always did interesting things.

I think your cloud bands are pretty darn effective here. I imagine the high regularity is close to what you saw, it does often happen in nature. Whenever we create such regularity in the computer we tend to be more critical of it and it can look fake, and something about those clouds further in the background on the lower-left just looks a bit too squareish/rectangular and regular to me. But as I said it may well have looked very much like this. :D Other than that the clouds look quite good.

I'd personally like to see a bit better balance between sky and ground as that tiny sliver is almost just a big distracting as it is. You could tilt the camera down just slightly, a few degrees, or widen the field of view. But it's a relatively minor quibble.

Overall a great image and cool cloud technique! I hope you post more often. :)

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: zaxxon on February 27, 2016, 10:38:07 PM
Absolutely beautiful!
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Clay on February 27, 2016, 11:14:01 PM
Interesting! very nice render
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: AP on February 27, 2016, 11:18:22 PM
Altocumulus. Very effective indeed.
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Dune on February 28, 2016, 02:18:34 AM
Very nice sky. You can always warp the sinus a bit more if there's too much regularity  ;)
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: masonspappy on February 28, 2016, 04:14:39 AM
Nicely done. Don't think I've ever seen banded clouds in Terragen
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on February 28, 2016, 07:27:18 PM
Thanks for the comments. 

I agree that the composition is a little unbalanced and had already rendered an alternate version, attached this time. but chose the first as it showed more of the banded clouds which were the point of the exercise.  I quite often see small areas of cloud that exhibit some kind of banded or striped pattern although it is seldom that the banded area covers more than a small part of the sky, the clouds that inspired this covered about two thirds of the sky.  As it happened I didn't have a camera with me and I would have needed multiple shots to get the whole banded area.  This time I think I came close to the banding although we have to modulate cloud density to produce bands or for that matter confine clouds to a single area, rather than being able to modulate the size of the clouds and or the chance of there being a cloud at all.  Also as Oshyan says we tend to be more critical of any kind of pattern in our artificial nature. 

There are some bands here that look almost as fake as plugging a sine wave into a cloud layer in place of the density fractal:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14248915 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14248915)


Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: bobbystahr on February 29, 2016, 01:40:30 AM
Nice one, and good to see you here...I regularly use your handy grid set ups still...best sizer ever.
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: mhaze on February 29, 2016, 03:50:40 AM
Superb render.
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: inkydigit on February 29, 2016, 04:17:32 PM
 8)
great to see ya!
sweet render indeed!
:)
J
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: TheBadger on February 29, 2016, 06:54:42 PM
really nice light and sky!
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: bobbystahr on February 29, 2016, 07:03:46 PM
Kinda mackerel clouds, but not quite
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: otakar on March 01, 2016, 01:23:00 PM
Welcome back! Still using your super pack models and grid on a regular basis.

Great clouds, btw :)
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: DocCharly65 on March 02, 2016, 02:47:26 AM
Great sky!  :)
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on April 11, 2016, 10:35:00 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on February 29, 2016, 07:03:46 PM
Kinda mackerel clouds, but not quite

I've never been happy with any of my Mackerel attempts so far, while the bands are something completely different they a half way there as a possible way to do Mackerel.

Quote from: bobbystahr on February 29, 2016, 01:40:30 AM
Nice one, and good to see you here...I regularly use your handy grid set ups still...best sizer ever.
Quote from: otakar on March 01, 2016, 01:23:00 PM
Welcome back! Still using your super pack models and grid on a regular basis.

Thanks, there are always going to be models at strange scales. Now the VR thing is finished II'll have a few more objects. 
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on July 04, 2016, 07:11:09 PM
While I was posting about mackerel sky in another thread I remembered that I'd snapped this a few weeks ago:
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: bobbystahr on July 04, 2016, 08:58:04 PM
Quote from: Mr_Lamppost on July 04, 2016, 07:11:09 PM
While I was posting about mackerel sky in another thread I remembered that I'd snapped this a few weeks ago:


That's a strange and lovely formation..
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on July 05, 2016, 05:14:32 PM
I quite often see small banded areas but its rare to se the banded pattern covering a large part of the sky.  I posted this one as it was similar to the formation that inspired this Broken Bands project. 
Title: Re: Broken bands.
Post by: AP on July 05, 2016, 05:58:46 PM
I might have an idea of how that could be done. If I have some time soon, I may try and see what can be done. No promises though.