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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: dandelO on February 15, 2012, 05:22:20 PM

Title: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 15, 2012, 05:22:20 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLBelniBuso

Cheers! :)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Hetzen on February 15, 2012, 05:32:28 PM
That's a really nice subtle effect Martin. Thanks for sharing. It will be good to see the difference with the less warp at feature.

I'd also like to have a play with this effect on a planetry scale to see if you can get a gas giant timelapse effect??

Cheers
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Kadri on February 15, 2012, 05:53:35 PM

Nice test Martin. Makes me want to try this kind of effect  :)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: TheBadger on February 15, 2012, 07:58:20 PM
Very cool. This interests me a lot martin, good job as usual! Perhaps you will get so good with animating clouds that it will become very easy for you to explain things to simpletons like me. I read your tut on animating clouds, but it was over my head at the time, perhaps I should revisit it.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 15, 2012, 08:15:02 PM
Thanks, folks.

Badger, I don't think I've ever made a cloud tutorial, or really any tutorial, I made a grass surface and I think an old crappy fake caustics one a few years ago, which I wouldn't even advise anyone to look at these days, and I think that's the only actual 'tutorials' I wrote.
I usually just find a cool thing/s, post some files and explain how I've done it for the benefit of anyone who cares to read it or, I'll just share what I 'think' I know about things in places like this.
Maybe you're confusing Martins? We are many in these parts! ;) Has TU maybe made a cloud animation tutorial, I know he did a cloud function one a while back.
If I have, I've forgotten about it now so, it probably wasn't up to much in the first place! I don't think I have, though.

The above doesn't get much easier to explain, though. Point your camera to the sky, add a cloud layer, keyframe the 'warp amount' on the first and last frames, hit render sequence. :)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: TheBadger on February 15, 2012, 11:40:59 PM
"cloud function one "

thats the one. Apologies.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 16, 2012, 08:41:33 AM
I've got v2 done now, with 'less warp...' disabled.
Just the same warp settings otherwise.

Next I'm going to significantly raise the warping to show the broiling effects you can get with the density warping, the link in the first post shows an early tester where I used much more warp, that should look good at higher quality and resolution. Think I'll just do 10 seconds this time, instead of 30, update later...

*Removed dead links*

Cheers! :)

* And here's one that I did before any of the other ones on this page. I didn't post it first because it's much more subtle and you can't really see what's going on as well as you can in the newer ones. Might as well stick it up here now that the other two are done, though.

*Removed dead links*
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 16, 2012, 11:05:47 AM
I hope it's just because of the slight drop in cloud samples and smaller resolution that the lighting is broken on this one, none of the other tests have had this flickering, it's the same cloud. #video deleted link removed#

I've reverted back to the original detail and render settings and I'll run it again to see if that flickering goes away.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 16, 2012, 03:09:37 PM
I think it's actually just the acceleration cache, it's set to optimal. The flickering is still there but not as bad as the last tester. A full scene render might be on the cards with nice render settings soon...

Bit of a fail as I buggered up the keying on this one when I shortened the length, doh!. The warp is also way too much but it shows a nice rolling kind of motion near the start can be made, if it was controlled a bit better. ::)

*Removed dead links*
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: inkydigit on February 16, 2012, 04:31:36 PM
really promising and convincing effect...
ingenious!
:)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 20, 2012, 09:54:55 PM
There are 5 different 30 second warps in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLBelniBuso

Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Kadri on February 20, 2012, 10:28:19 PM

Nice ones Martin. I liked especially the 2nd and 3rd clip.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: yossam on February 20, 2012, 10:33:33 PM
These are great.......I like the last one.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Dune on February 21, 2012, 03:37:16 AM
Awfully nice and realistic, Martin! Did you use any other input in the cloud node or just the warped cloud fractal? Reason; if you feed the other inputs with animated warp you might get some dramatic results. Yeah!
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 21, 2012, 10:13:09 AM
Hi, Ulco. I did do some messing around with the same thing into the other inputs, the depth and final density inputs make nice results(especially the depth) but the fastest to render is just plugging straight into the density shader port.

Thanks, all! :)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Dune on February 22, 2012, 02:49:43 AM
I figured it would take more render time.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: TheBadger on February 23, 2012, 01:39:47 PM
Great share, Martin.
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: choronr on February 24, 2012, 12:56:17 AM
So impressive Martin!
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: freelancah on February 24, 2012, 06:41:05 AM
Very cool work
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: dandelO on February 24, 2012, 10:02:29 AM
Thanks, everyone! :)

I tried the same thing with a big billowy cumulus but the render time was just intolerable for me here. I may leave a small one running as I know it looks very nice from my tiny tests but it might take some time to render it out. If you're planning on doing a large billowy warp movement, values of '0.01' increments work very well for this.
I warped a large cloud from '0.25' to '0.275' over 250 frames and that was still a bit too much because you'll want the large features to have minimal movement while the smaller parts gently 'boil', too large values move the whole cloud too much so keep it really subtle for best effect. Using a secondary warp on the density fractal might give you more control of the warp amount but I prefer to use the density fractal's own warp settings, as it warps according to the actual shape of the fractal and not any secondary warp function.

I'll post back here if I manage to render out a decent cumulus warp sequence worth sharing. :)
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Matt on February 24, 2012, 07:00:14 PM
Quote from: dandelO on February 24, 2012, 10:02:29 AM
I warped a large cloud from '0.25' to '0.275' over 250 frames and that was still a bit too much because you'll want the large features to have minimal movement while the smaller parts gently 'boil', too large values move the whole cloud too much so keep it really subtle for best effect.

Because of this, you might want to turn off "less warp at feature scale" so that the smaller features can move more. Then the whole fractal will warp, not just the largest octaves. But you might lose some of the interesting effects of different octaves moving at different speeds.

Matt
Title: Re: Moving Clouds - Density Fractal Warp
Post by: Dune on February 25, 2012, 02:20:25 AM
What if you blend a smaller sized fractal by a big sized (to define the total cloud), and only animate/warp the smaller sized, or animate/warp them separately?