Navigating Clouds in Preview Window ?

[jeffcarlb]

Is there a way to navigate clouds in the preview window. Or at least see the container that the cloud fills in a wireframe. For example in 3ds max i create a 3d rectangle and then fill that object with a particle, or use that object as my emitter. Then I can easily orbit the object even though I cant see whats in it until rendered or simulated. This is helpful when building and placing items in my scene.  Ps I am a complete noob to TG.

[Oshyan]

The 3D preview (optionally) shows the entire scene, roughly as it will look when rendered (you can turn off various aspects such as atmosphere and lighting, to speed things up when not needed). Clouds are not based on 3D objects, they are a volumetric shading of input noise (or other data) functions. So there is no wireframe to preview. The best thing to do if you want to get a preview of the clouds is enable the Atmosphere component of the 3D preview using the buttons on the top of the preview window (or switch to the Atmosphere layout using the top layout buttons, where atmosphere preview is enabled by default). Atmosphere may take some time to preview if you have a complex setup, of course.

- Oshyan

[Hetzen]

To speed up preview it's usefull to turn off everything you don't need to see at that moment, ie atmosphere and planet if working on a cloud layer for example. Turning quailty down in the cloud layer as well as using the 'localise' feature will also help.