Volumetric Cloud Animation?
msolomon
Posts: 209
Hello everyone,
Can someone point me toward a tutorial about animating Volumetric Clouds? Not just directional but real world deformation.
Volumetric Cloud .jpeg
2560 x 1440 - 494K
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I haven't seen one, or I'd post it - or pass on what I know. I (nor one of my friends, evilproducer) still haven't quite figured out how that "Animation" field works. It obviously takes an entry of sorts, but what it actually does or how to use it is still a mystery to me (us).
I've got a bit on my plate right now or I'd spend the time to figure it out - which will take some practice renders.
I've had success rendering directional motions with them, as long as I don't do it to more than one. Perhaps we can... but all of my experiments with more than one left a jittery animation of the volumetric clouds - but that may have just been how other things were set up. One thing for sure - when I deleted the keyframes for all other clouds but one, the jittery business stopped occurring.
The referance file mentions nothing about the animation button. i tryed key frameing various aspects to the clouds using a noise tweener but the results were not very convincing.
What were the results like?
Did you try a different sort of tweener, by chance?
Noise might be a bit radical.
I did. The others didn't give me the beilevable shape morphing I'm looking for.
What about going to extremes in that Animation field. Could you give examples of what you put in that entry field?
Dartanbeck, yes I believe you are right. I just tried a quick 4 second test. I entered 2000 in the 'Animation' field at the 4 second mark and the cloud slowly shifted and morphed.
You could try using one gigantic cloud and play with the density controls and then animate it's position. I remember years ago a user showcased an animation of an airplane flying through the clouds. It was revealed that the 'clouds' was really one gigantic cloud. I thiought it was pretty clever and it looked cool.
Awesome. Thanks for that!
Yeah, what I was attemting was opposing rotations. The clouds weren't touching, nor were their bounding boxes. But they were duplicates of one another. The lower one was turning clockwise and the upper was counter clockwise. With both rendering at the same time they caused a strange flickering thing going on. No big deal... I was really just messing around.
I really like your idea. I do stuff like that too. Sometimes my favorite effect will come from a cloud much larger than what I need, and only use a small part of it, with its settings set just right.
Oh... and another thing about the flickering effect issue, I was also animating a particle emitter that was spewing out some great big puffs with transparency (in the form of Alpha) applied - I didn't test without that because that was an essential part of the scene.
Another trick that some might find helpful - what I did in the flickering case above - is to animate just the one cloud into the appropriate background scene and render that and run the in the backdrop, or just as a compositional layer for AfterEffetcs or whatever. That way we can also have another animated cloud in the next layer and so on, and so on....
Another option may be particles.
Hopefully my videos will load !
In this proof of concept, the particles are emitted from a heart shaped object. The particles are "Facing Camera" and emit at 100 particles / sec.
One video is using "Wood" as the driving force of the shader, and the other is using "Fire".
The basic shape (in my case a heart) could be morphed, or have a skeleton to alter the shape over time.
an Octane render using those trippy -1K to 2K animation parameters ( repeated 3x in Windows movie maker)
In Daz studio I use flat panes cloud props with transparency maps and then I morph the cloud prop by keyframes to get realistic looking clouds with great results I would assume the same trick would work for Carrara seeming they are just flat panes.
Example of clouds done in using flat panes daz studio
Fantastic as always!
May I ask what you mean by the above quote? Where would that go in the shader, and do you animate that then, or just let the particles do the work?
Dart,
The particles in my examples have (0) gravity and a very small velocity of .05
The particle size is an arc from small to large over the particle life, the rotational speed is 40 plus or minus 20 deg./sec.
The shader pretty much does the rest.
EDIT
I did some rising smoke, and a smoke ring this way....nice because you can use scene forces.
actually no Carrara has volumetric clouds the name says it all, they are 3D semi opaque meshes and in Octane render as I use they are voxels
Ah Ok . Ive been playing with carrara but i just got it a couple of weeks ago so I still feeling my way around it
McGuiver, I remember a posting of yours in the past showcasing these effects?... Brilliant work and thanks for the explanations. My mind is already percolating.
Brilliant! Thank you so much!
I've just recently come upon an epiphony to try creating an arc for the particle size over life... it was a perfect thing! Mine was opposite, I think. Mine started life really (Really) small, so that I could set the particle size parameter very large. Then, as it is nearing its death, the particle reaches full size as it is disappearing. But instead of using forces, I used the gravity settings. I'm looking forward to getting rid of that madness and trying this instead!
I'm also very eager to try different shaders based on your example. Positively brilliant!
Thank you!
It's immense. Try to just relax and let it soak in, but don't hesitate to come into this forum, start a new topic, and ask any questions you might have.
I say to start a new topic because questions will get seen by more folks than those following a particular thread.
But yeah... Carrara's volumetric clouds are really quite wonderful - as are many other features. The technique you (so beautifully) used in DS will also work in Carrara. In fact, Carrara doesn't need a special plugin or awkward process to put avi or other sequenced animation in as a texture. So we can actually use stock footage (movies of video effects) as well. Sweet!
Just to add, I think you did an amazing job with your clouds in DS. Very well done!
more crazy cloud animation