Clouds Test

[Darknight]

Hey guys,
So I have been spending a lot of time figuring out how to render decent looking clouds in TG3. I accomplished somewhat decent ones here. Thought of sharing with you and getting some feedback.
Any tips on speeding up render times for clouds will be much much appreciated!

[Hannes]

That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?

[Nacer Eddine]

look nice,
need just more détails and resolution, and my be some lights and it will be perfect

i know it not easy to work with clouds.
its depend for a lot of settings and also have a good computer

[archonforest]

wow darknight! They look great and very real

[cyphyr]

Nicely done, what was the render time?

[kaedorg]

Photorealistic. Great job

David

[oldm4n]

beautiful sea of clouds

[zaxxon]

Nice Clouds! And nicely lit as well.

[Darknight]

Thanks guys for all the encouragement!

Here is a 2 K larger version.

Nicely done, what was the render time?

The render took 2 hours to render on a twin Xeon(hexacore) machine.

That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?

Thanks. I used 2 layers of Altocumulous clouds.
For the first one these are the settings


For the second one, I just made a copy of the first one and changed the density fractal values a little bit.


PS: Any clues to reduce render times will be deeply appreciated!

[Tangled-Universe]

Pretty clouds, seems you're getting the hang of TG pretty quickly

For advice on render times we would like to know your render settings of course

Generally it is quite simple:

Start with 24 atmosphere samples and set cloud quality to 0.5.

Is there grain in the clouds? -> increase cloud quality with ~0.1-0.2 increments.
Is there grain in the shadows of the atmosphere? -> increase atmosphere samples with increments of ~8-16.
Clouds cast shadows into the atmosphere, when these are noisy you thus need to increase atmosphere samples.
Also, when the shadows on your terrain are noisy (often in the distance) then you will need to increase atmosphere samples.

Render with render detail 0.6-0.85.
Anything >0.85 is very likely to render subpixel detail, which can give a slight sharper image, but from that setting and up the rendertimes become very long very quickly while you'll get very little to no improvement anymore.
For test renders I use anything from 0.3 to 0.7...depends on whether I would like to check rough look (0.3) or finer details (0.7).

AA is not very important here, so AA4-6 should suffice.
(for populations you will get nice results with AA6, good results with AA8 and best results with AA12, anything higher means longer rendering for little improvement)

At this stage of your TG experience please, please...please! don't bother with the Ray Traced Atmosphere (RTA) setting.

If you're keen on knowing more of this then use the search function and use my nickname as filter, then search for "ray traced atmosphere" or "adaptive sampling" to know more about some advanced render settings like RTA and adaptive AA sampling.

Also, be aware that the atmosphere/cloud render settings also affect the 3D preview rendering speed quite severely.

Cheers,
Martin

[Darknight]

Pretty clouds, seems you're getting the hang of TG pretty quickly

For advice on render times we would like to know your render settings of course

Generally it is quite simple:

Start with 24 atmosphere samples and set cloud quality to 0.5.

Is there grain in the clouds? -> increase cloud quality with ~0.1-0.2 increments.
Is there grain in the shadows of the atmosphere? -> increase atmosphere samples with increments of ~8-16.
Clouds cast shadows into the atmosphere, when these are noisy you thus need to increase atmosphere samples.
Also, when the shadows on your terrain are noisy (often in the distance) then you will need to increase atmosphere samples.

Render with render detail 0.6-0.85.
Anything >0.85 is very likely to render subpixel detail, which can give a slight sharper image, but from that setting and up the rendertimes become very long very quickly while you'll get very little to no improvement anymore.
For test renders I use anything from 0.3 to 0.7...depends on whether I would like to check rough look (0.3) or finer details (0.7).

AA is not very important here, so AA4-6 should suffice.
(for populations you will get nice results with AA6, good results with AA8 and best results with AA12, anything higher means longer rendering for little improvement)

At this stage of your TG experience please, please...please! don't bother with the Ray Traced Atmosphere (RTA) setting.

If you're keen on knowing more of this then use the search function and use my nickname as filter, then search for "ray traced atmosphere" or "adaptive sampling" to know more about some advanced render settings like RTA and adaptive AA sampling.

Also, be aware that the atmosphere/cloud render settings also affect the 3D preview rendering speed quite severely.

Cheers,
Martin

Thanks a lot Martin! That is a very good start for me to understand things regarding rendering. I really appreciate your post!

[TheBadger]

WOW!

[zzu]

Thanks for your sharing, this cloud looks magnificent, but I'm unable to recreate this in Terragen 4

Thanks guys for all the encouragement!

Here is a 2 K larger version.

Nicely done, what was the render time?

The render took 2 hours to render on a twin Xeon(hexacore) machine.

That looks fantastic! Would you share your settings?

Thanks. I used 2 layers of Altocumulous clouds.
For the first one these are the settings


For the second one, I just made a copy of the first one and changed the density fractal values a little bit.


PS: Any clues to reduce render times will be deeply appreciated!

[yossam]

I tried to render this with the beta and all I'm getting is a black screen. Anyone else care to try................

[Kadri]

I tried to render this with the beta and all I'm getting is a black screen...

Did you waited until the end?
When i tried the scene with the same settings it took more then 6 minutes or so even just to see the GI working.
It might take only much longer to render then you think maybe.

A 100x56 image took 4:35 to render with very low cloud GI settings (Still/low) in the render settings (the image wasn't black).
I will just try another one with your highest GI cloud settings (Still/Very high).