Meta-Cloud

[Hetzen]

I remember DandelO playing around with small planet atmospheres to form meta clouds, so I decided to have a go, but with the added restraint of trying to keep everything in one cloud layer and on one planet.

This is what I've come up with. It's four spheres defined by blues and modulated with some functions. There's no warping from a warp shader, and everything plugs into one cloud layer. I really like the lighting effect, although there's a little stepping of some of the shapes.

I was thinking if there's a way of automating the placement of spheres in 3d space, almost like a particle generator. I've got some ideas, but have no idea, for now, how feasible they are.

[Hetzen]

And here's a floating baby.

[inkydigit]

this looks really great...any chance of view of the node network/set up?

[Hetzen]

This is how it plugs together.

[freelancah]

Nice! Looks like an interesting setup!

[inkydigit]

cheers Hetzen!

[j meyer]

Nice experiments! Have you tried your blue node set up as a mask for a fractal
or on the final density input already?

[Hetzen]

Yes I have. The problem I've found, is that you tend to cut off shapes unnaturally, and often end up with angular edges.

Thanks guys.

Jon

[TheBlackHole]

That first one could make a good volcano/geyser.

[airflamesred]

There should be prizes for that node network!

[j meyer]

Too bad.We encountered similar problems earlier when playing with geometrical
shapes,but that was way before the final density thing.
Would be nice if we could control the localize feature by PFs or function nodes.
Keep it up,J.

[Hetzen]

Pretty sure you can. It'll need some lateral thinking though.

Still kernals of an idea atm. 

[dandelO]

Globular!

That's a pretty impressive looking structure you have going on there in the first post, Hetzen. My main gripe with using spheres as the bulk capsule of a cloud would be that the outer shell will always cut off the fractal patterns in unnatural ways. By pre-modulating a sphere, before it reaches the density fractal, though, I think you may have hit on something very interesting here. Keep going!

[Hetzen]

Thanks Martin.

I think I may have cracked the other bit already. I need to do some more tests with these meta cloudlets.

[inkydigit]

popcorn yay!
looks cool!