Question about Clouds and Atmosphere in Terragen 4 or near future!

[Cyber-Angel]

What I need in the immediate future (No concrete date yet) is a way of rendering out just the Clouds and  Atmosphere as a .HDR sky dome that I can work with in an industry standard Rendering System the ones that spring to mind are Arnold, PR Renderman and Vray. I am planning a character animation and need realistic clouds and sky (Ideally these will be usable  inside other industry standard software such as 3ds Max and Houdini) that is the will affect the lighting of the scene, show up in reflections and the like. 

If the above is not feasible, what professional advise do Planetside offer to its large motion picture clients for such a circumstance? What I need is interconnection via export in Terragen to other software used in the motion picture industry! Short of terragen getting full Alembic  import support  in the future, with cameras, rigs and so forth my options are rather limited the first of these is to get a Houdini license (a little too rich at the moment in terms  of expenditure) the other is to go down the route used In the Third and the Seventh (Alex Roman) and use (Or commission) live plate photography of real clouds.

I would have to use a Farm for the rendering  as I need at least 4K at minimum to hold up to the production standard in realism terms I'm seeking and would have to be higher if I look into Imax projection.

Thank you, in advance for your help in these matters.

Regards to you

Cyber-Angel

[ajcgi]

In short, are you looking to render out an IBL? If yes, use a camera with a spherical projection and be sure to attach a render layer node to your render node to be able to separate out clouds, atmo etc. You may find you need separate render nodes to get different layers of cloud out depending on what you need.

The desire to get cloud data out for render elsewhere was mentioned recently. The answer to how to get decent renders of Terragen clouds out of Terragen is to render in Terragen surely? Seems to be working for many others in the motion picture industry.

[Oshyan]

Alembic support isn't going to help you. Alex is correct, a simple spherical environment map ought to meet your needs *unless* you need to actually move through the clouds, in which case you need to render out a sequence in TG and use it as a background/environment/projection map in your other app(s) of choice.

- Oshyan

[Cyber-Angel]

IBL would be great, is there a tutorial somewhere on using the nodes in question as I have never used them before?  Rendering in terragen would be problematic since I have a look in mind for the final picture, that is simply no possible in terragen  since the assets i have in mind are heavy in their mesh density (Must stand up to being either close to camera as foreground hero models and/or be able to take extreme closeup shots). With that in mind terragen would chock under  load at an animation speed of 24FPS and I'd want this project done in a reasonable time-frame, not a lifetime for a single sequence.

I am trying to set up a pipeline right now; the last thing  I want form a production point of view are  bottlenecks, I have used terragen enough in still images to realize its current lighting model has limitations (No Participating Media and  like all current rendering systems out there no 10,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast ratio) I'm set on using another render system capable of dealing with animation involving dense meshes (I am not mad it has been done on Godzillia and Gravity).

From a film history point of view where things stand at the moment (If we where talking live action with real actors)  Staring with a film like Pool Sharks (1915, Dir. Edwin Middleton) and ending with City  Lights (1931, Dir. Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin) I am thinking that there is more to animation then what is offered today  where is the animation equivalent of the Grapes of Wrath (1941, Dir. John Ford), On The Waterfront  (1954, Dir. Elia Kazan) or say motion pictures such as The Seven Samurai (1954, Dir.Akira Kurosawa), Rebecca  (1940, Dir. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock) or two final ones Citizen Kane (1941, Dir. George Orson Welles) and The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette) (1950, Dir.Vittorio De Sica) and one bonus Picture Battleship Potemkin (1925, Dir. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein).

In other words motion picture that pull no punches and deliver strong emotional impact on their audience (And no before anyone asks, Bambi has never made me cry)  it is time to movie animation away form the comedy and start making serious motion pictures with it, animation has in some circles a bad rap with a perception that it is "kids only" an resounding no and the hell no to that, anyone who has seen any of the animation that was produced in the Soviet Union between 1942 to 1988, in other words animation dose not have to be funny.

Young people are in need of strong role  models, not merchandise and an excuse to sell toys; adults who grow up watching movies want strong characters whom have a deep connection to on another. I am not shore what has happened to motion pictures but something is off what with millennial's with their toxicity of forums, the whole hoping a movie will fail culture years before release; these same sheltered people who are demanding college campuses provide Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces and pressure administrates into mandating policies on Micro Aggression's and other sorts of mollycoddling. At the end of the day siting in that darken theater I want to be both entertained and many come away with  some issues to consider.



Thank you fore your consideration in these matters

Cyber-Angel     

[Cyber-Angel]

Hi Oshyan, I didn't see you reply until i hit post but you are correct that i would indeed be moving through the clouds for the opening, what is the best workflow to produce such maps out of terragen? 

Cyber-Angel

[Oshyan]

Rendering out an image with a Spherical Camera is very straightforward in Terragen. Just switch to Spherical camera, use a 2:1 aspect ratio for your render output, and save as EXR. If you need to isolate clouds, just disable the terrain rendering. If you need more control, such as alpha, etc. then add a Render Layer node, and then check/enable the elements you need in the node settings.

Figuring out the best way to use all that in your other apps(s) isn't something I can speak to though.

To move through the clouds you would need to render the animation of through-clouds in TG, then have an animated IBL/environment/background setup in your app. Again the latter is something I can't help with. The former is quite simple to setup and render, it just takes lots of render time (as does all realistic volumetric cloud rendering).

- Oshyan