Posted with some major caveats. First, like you guys I've only started playing with the 'Easy Cloud' presets and still in that 'what the heck does this thingie do?' stage. Clearly there is a lot going on behind the curtain with this node, with hopefully some more 'tweaks' coming from Matt. Second, not everyone is going to be comfortable with the some of the settings that I've used, so play around. The voxel count here is 300 million (yikes!), you can certainly use less, but I tend push my hardware for reasons that I can only share with my therapist. Could it be as effective with less, probably, but that's up to y'all. The posted image was rendered at .8/8 GI 4/4 and took about 1 hour and 35 minutes on my dual zeon 64 gig machine (intel 5690's). The set up is dumb simple. The base Easy Cloud uses darker coloration, then is modified by a PF connected to the 'Direct Light Modulator', then a Distribution shader connected to the mask input of the PF. The Distribution Shader 'Coverage' setting then drives the white levels of the cloud. You can just plug the Distribution Shader into the Direct Light Modulator and the base volumetric topography of the Easy Cloud is illuminated. The PF, however allows some finer tuning of the 'lit' area of the cloud. Good settings to play with to see some minor variances. I like fairly low settings for 'Edge Sharpness' and 'Density', so I'll be curious how that works for others. Third, my lighting practices are generally frowned upon by Management: I usually use three sunlights; Surfaces, Atmo, and Glow. The 'Atmo' light usually in the 2-3.5 range and the 'Glow' light between .023-.054, while I generally set the Surfaces light to 5-7 (the Atmosphere 'Haze' settings are usually 5-7 as well). Even more disturbing is that the 3 suns don't always have the same origin co-ordinates, I basically go on what looks good to my eye in the scene. :)
I've attached a couple of screen grabs showing the progression of the nodes' influence. Cheers!
Thanks................I tend to do things that are frowned upon by management also. O well............. ;D
Very interesting, thanks.
Excellent. Thank You for all of this.
Well that's tween you and your therapist, heh heh,but many of us are likewise afflicted; I just have a shetland pony not a clydesdale so I'm a tad more conservative. Thanks for the share....
Thanks for the share !
Paul
I remember this picture of clouds on forum. Thanks to share !