This is a follow on from the "Ultimate" cirrus clouds (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5219.0). I ran a quick (4 sec) animation using a variation of the file I posted there using 3d clouds, changing the warping shader to the normals of a PF and then animating both PFs in opposite directions. It's a little rough but shows a lot of promise.
http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_0/warped_cloud_0.mov (http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_0/warped_cloud_0.mov)
Nice effect, but not realistic by itself, since the big shapes should be moving as well, though that should be a quick fix with a transform shader between the warp shader and the cloud layer.
Nice test though!
I left out any horizontal movement deliberately to see exactly what the result of the animated warp shader was. It might also be interesting to see what happens when you substitute the normals of the terrain (without animation, obviously) and then move the clouds across it.
Increased the quality a little, added a real terrain and changed the animation. Cloud density fractal translated equal distances horizontally and vertically (upwards), warping shader animated vertically downwards (no horizontal movement). Here's the first 88 frames.... heading in a very pleasing direction given the relative simplicity of the node network
http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_1/warped_cloud_1.mov (http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_1/warped_cloud_1.mov)
looking good!
Hey, Ben, this is looking fine. Cool.
Sweet!
I've played around with this kind of thing before, although I didn't make an animation so to say, just a bunch of stills that I then animated myself (had to do it that way for a project), so it was more jumpy than this which is very nice and smooth. I find the effect works best with a low sun which, in turn, puts a lot of emphasis on the clouds (especially if you can give them a very golden-red appearance). The only problem with a low sun is I seem to find myself getting weird "lightning" like things and other apparitions now and then, but that's fixed with post work. Great stuff as usual though, ben.
Thanks guys. The last sequence is now complete (only an extra 11 frames)
Increasing the quality a little again, dropping the sun a little and increasing the roughness of the clouds. I'll run a longer sequence this time. The surfacing on the terrain may look a little odd.. It's just a geo referenced topo map. (got my hands on 1:25000 geo-referenced PNGs for all of Victoria)
Still working on this ;)
Increasing the render size and quality showed up the need to adjust the warping shader (mainly just scale and contrast adjustments) Stopped tweaking, now it's just a waiting game.
Ben, are these links to *real* .mov's you're posting, or just pointers? I can't get them to download. I'm hoping they're not some darned iTunes-specific thing. ;)
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan,
They're just QT movies, they work fine for me in Firefox on Windows and Safari on the Mac.
Regards,
Jo
Hi Ben,
These are looking really good! I like the way the clouds "swell".
I wonder how this would look with more cumulus congestus type of clouds.
Seems I'll have to save some money for the animation module :)
Do you have any update on this in the meantime?
Martin
Quote from: jo on December 15, 2008, 03:21:08 AM
Hi Oshyan,
They're just QT movies, they work fine for me in Firefox on Windows and Safari on the Mac.
Regards,
Jo
No, they appear to be QT link files which point to other files based on a detected bandwidth or platform type. This is the contents of one of them, for example:
Quote
moov rmra Hrmda 0rdrf url warped_cloud_0-Desktop.m4v rmdr
ð frmda 4rdrf url warped_cloud_0-iPhone-cell.3gp rmdr +À rmvc mobi armda /rdrf url warped_cloud_0-iPhone.m4v S rmdr † rmvc mobi
and you can see if you look at the directory it sits in that the files its pointing to are there and can be accessed directly:
http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_1/
It's http://podcast.bigben.id.au/files/warped_cloud_1/warped_cloud_1-Desktop.m4v (for example) that is the movie file.
The reason any of this matters to me is I don't use Apple's official Quicktime app as I much prefer alternative players. But they only work on the actual media file, not the pointer/container file. Now that I found the m4v's all is well. ;)
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan,
They're still Quicktime movies, they can contain all sorts of stuff, too bad other players don't play them properly ;-).
Regards,
Jo
The files linked to were not "movies" at all. They were simply containers for *pointers* to actual movie files. If you save them, they turn out to be about 200bytes or so. No surprise that other meda players don't really see that as a "movie". ;)
- Oshyan
Hi Oshyan,
Quote from: Oshyan on December 15, 2008, 08:56:01 PM
The files linked to were not "movies" at all. They were simply containers for *pointers* to actual movie files. If you save them, they turn out to be about 200bytes or so. No surprise that other meda players don't really see that as a "movie". ;)
They're still QT movies. A QT movie is more of a generic container than a movie file with just frame data. They can contain all sorts of stuff. You can make QT movies which reference data and content in a different location, as in this case. A QTVR movie is still a QT movie, you can even make interactive QT movies with sprites and stuff. Anyway, if a player fully supported QT movies it would be able to play it, probably because it used QT itself ( the libraries, not the Player application ) to read the file. Some players understand just enough of the QT format to be a play a movie if it's in a codec they recognise and uses the "usual" QT atoms to describe it. Quite a few players can play ... erm ... MPEG-4 movies because the QT format was adopted as the container for those movies. Something like that.
Anyway, semantics :-).
Regards,
Jo
I understand all that, I was referring to "movie" in the literal sense, whereas you were adopting Apple's corrupted and clearly less accurate version. They should just call it a container format, as it is, and be done with it. Then we can be clear, these are not "movies", they are "files", which point to "movies". ;)
- Oshyan
Guys... no fighting!! ;D
You sound like a married couple!