Storm front sky

[Darknight]

Hey guys,
I have been trying to find a way to render something that looks like this on one side of a 360 degree sky render. Sorta like there's a looming storm front on one side of the sky. I am not sure how to tackle this. Looking forward to your suggestions on how to approach this.
Thanks,
Mukul.

Reference image:

[Dune]

Holy grail work, kind of. One thing that you could try is mask the cloud front by a warped simple shape, or a warped distance shader. That's what I did with the sandstorm cloud.

[AP]

Agreed and a few cloud layers, four or five at least. It looks like one cloud layer of medium-sized cumulus on the lowest area. Layer two, a very tall and dense cumulonimbus with an anvil top. The anvil cloud top may need to be on it's own layer, layer three. Cloud layer four, the highest looks to be warped and wispy cirrus strands. Cloud layer five being just below the cirrus looks to be breaking off of the thunderhead composed of Altocumulus and Altostratus. The cumulonimbus looks to be 15,000 meters tall or more at least. It is however hard to tell how tall that super-cell is but tall enough.

Other then that, there is a lot of room to experiment. A lot of trial and error when it comes to more complex cloudscapes like these.

[Darknight]

Holy grail work, kind of. One thing that you could try is mask the cloud front by a warped simple shape, or a warped distance shader. That's what I did with the sandstorm cloud.

That sounds like an idea. So that way I can localize the cloud front to a region right? From what I understand, the distance shader basically will show the cloud front upto a certain distance from the camera, and mask out the rest according to the far distance value. Did that make sense?

[Darknight]

Agreed and a few cloud layers, four or five at least. It looks like one cloud layer of medium-sized cumulus on the lowest area. Layer two, a very tall and dense cumulonimbus with an anvil top. The anvil cloud top may need to be on it's own layer, layer three. Cloud layer four, the highest looks to be warped and wispy cirrus strands. Cloud layer five being just below the cirrus looks to be breaking off of the thunderhead composed of Altocumulus and Altostratus. The cumulonimbus looks to be 15,000 meters tall or more at least. It is however hard to tell how tall that super-cell is but tall enough.

Other then that, there is a lot of room to experiment. A lot of trial and error when it comes to more complex cloudscapes like these.

Thanks for the detail breakdown of that! I will keep those in mind as I tackle this beast

[AP]

Indeed, keep us up to date with your progress. Very curious to see where this goes.

[Darknight]

I was also wondering if there is a way to mask "Easy" clouds in TG 4.

[Matt]

I was also wondering if there is a way to mask "Easy" clouds in TG 4.

In development

Matt

[Darknight]

Looking forward to that Matt! I really like the new version, kickass work all of you have been doing pushing this out.

[Darknight]

So I did a test 360 degree spherical render with one side of the sky a bit more stormy and ominous than the other side and here it is. I tried the other approach you guys mentioned about, but didnt get much success with getting shapes that looked really good.
[attachimg=1]

[Kadri]

Looks good.

[Oshyan]

I know I'm biased, but damn, that looks photoreal if you ask me.

- Oshyan

[Kadri]

I know I'm biased, but damn, that looks photoreal if you ask me.
...

If this was together with other photos in a site i doubt it that anyone could see the difference.

[Darknight]

I know I'm biased, but damn, that looks photoreal if you ask me.
...

If this was together with other photos in a site i doubt it that anyone could see the difference.

Thanks guys. It came out pretty decent for most part but when seen in full size it has some issues. Normally thats the point where I start blending in photographic elements to cover up those minor inconsistencies.

[Kadri]

The "small size looks good, bigger not so much" problem is something i have mostly.

Sounds strange when written in that way although