Particle cloud
dot_bat
Posts: 373
Does anyone remember, in this forum there was a question about clouds and someone brought up and had shown a cloud that was made up of particles [ithink]. for some it rendered fine and for others it didnt render at all. sorry im so vague with description thats all ive got. but would like to get a copy of it and see how it is made. Anybody?
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Were you thinking of the vertex cloud model that uses SSS in the shader? Some people were having problems rendering it in C8.5. The SSS looked like it may have been calculated differently or it was a bug. I don't recall if it was a beta bug or a final release bug.
There have also been some issues with some of the particle presets, such as smoke not working in newer versions of Carrara. Could that be it?
For calculation time, it may actually be quicker to use a volumetric cloud as opposed to a particle cloud. Then again, there are things you can do with particles that you can't with volumetric clouds, such as scene forces.
Can you give an idea of what you want to do?
This is a pic of the cloud....it was originally made with the metaball modeler, but could be a vertex object also.
This is the cloud that evilproducer speaks of & he is right....there were issues with it in 8.5....works fine in 8.1.
I don't recall where I got it now, but will look into it.
I spent a little time trying to get the jagged edges smoothed out (displacement) with so-so results.
wow, I never saw that before...
Making Steam - by Cripeman is a free video tutorial ingeniously using effects of a light bulb in a particles emitter to create steam, without the lights actually illuminating anything... unless, of course, you want them to.
If you either like the tutorial but don't wish to use lights (you'd rather have smoke or clouds) or you want to just mess around with particles yourself, try something like this:
Set up the particle emitter to use "Facing Camera" as the particle
In the shader for the particles, use the image below, or something similar in the alpha channel
You could then also use the same image as it is or even rotated to use for several other parts of the shader
For example, you could:
- Use a color gradient whose hues are controlled by the image
- Rotate the image and use it in the color channel to add some blackness to the effect, rather than making it alpha only
- For changing smoke, you could use a mixer controlled by the life of the particles, and in the two mixed channels, use the image with different rotations in each of the two sources (below the image loading icon is a curved arrow for rotation by 90 each click)
- Use any of the above ideas in the glow channel
- etc., etc.,
Part of the amazing beauty of owning Carrara is the power we have in shaders, combined with the simplicity of experimentation and different options available in those shaders ;)
EDIT: I painted the image myself, and offer it freely for anyone for any purpose, even commercially - just so you know you're not breaking legalities by using it. ;)
Here's a link to the cloud at sharecg.
http://www.sharecg.com/b/5/3D-Models/?s=dd&member;_type[All]=on&attribute;[2005][2489]=1&pn=7
Edit: you will need to go to page 7 to get to it.
thanx everybody, the vertex cloud that was it. nothing resolved for it in 8.5? thanx for link, im going to try it and see whats up. thanx again. thanx dartanbeck trying that too
I haven't tried very long, but no... it didn't seem to like 8.5, or the other way around. Bummer... 'cause it looks great. I only use the particles method for smoke and such. They might take a while to render, but the volumetric clouds are really great to work with and can perform many tasks ;)
If you get that cloud working in 8.5, could you report how you did it?
Holly, with your knowledge of shaders, you may like to take a peak at it. It's a really ingenious use of SSS, glow and displacement.
wont b e back to my other computer for a few days. I'll report back if i make any progress with it just downloaded the file. thanx again everybody
I must be one of the people it won't work for.... The file as downloaded just blows out like the SSS is too "hot". There is no soft appearance at all like in the sample render...
I'll try to test it on my older comp that still has 8.1 on it... Too bad, it looks so cool.
Evil is right though, I wonder if it could be done without SSS and render faster....
But the sss makes it look so frakkin' cool!!!
but so shazzbott slow! LOL
I found the reason it is not working in 8.5
In the subsurface scattering dialog there is a box that says "use local coordinates"
In 8.1 this box is checked....when I uncheck this it renders very, very, very slow, and turns out exactly like hollys example.
Maybe this is not working in 8.5....maybe it came in to 8.5 unchecked.....maybe it needs unchecked in 8.5 (Daz got it backwards?)
Alternate theory might be that the Local space is no longer the same scale as it once was... I have no idea how that might work, but it would be nice to narrow this issue down... If I can just scale the cloud down in my main scene I could still render in miniature.
I didn't open the cloud in the model room, just the shader room.... Is there maybe new scaling in the model room or maybe I can resize it there?
just tried to render. same result with local coord checked and unchecked. im using 8.5. render like hollys. tried change from local to global for elevations in shader same result
Bummer. It renders in C7 beautifully, but very slow as expected due to the SSS.
must be something broken or approached differently in 8.5 for it not to work. should i send it to daz and have them look at it. i would think there is a serious flaw somewhere
Certainly couldn't hurt. I can't test it as I have C7.2
hate to put more on their plate but i'll send it along. i've exhausted anything i could think to change in it. one thing tho, when you render it out have you changed anything? Before i send it off could you show screen shots of the shader settings and render settings and displacement settings. maybe something is switching on or off in 8.5. thanx evil
I'll see if I can find the scene file. I saved the cloud as-is to the browser and use it occasionally in scenes with and without GI.
I tend to agree, although I can only speculate, it seems SSS is not working properly in 8.5
It does definitely work in 7.2 and 8.1
Here's another experiment with the settings changed a bit...a little less blocky & added some fire as a cloudburst.
Hey, adding fire for a cloudburst is a really neat idea! Looks pretty damned good! I now have another idea to stea- I mean to pay homage to. ;-)
Steal away ! no homage needed :cheese:
it works in 7.2 and 8.1 but not 8.5 and the problem is probably SSS. dont weorry bout screenshots evil i'll just send it in thanx for everyones help
The cloud model appears to have stopped rendering properly between Carrara 8.5 beta 850107 and beta 850132 (it renders properly in version 107 but fails in 132 and up.)
When rendering you no longer see the message “Calculating subsurface scattering”.
Rendering in Carrara 7, 8.1, and up to 8.5 beta 850107 works properly and takes only about eight seconds.
Rendering in Carrara 8.5 850132 and up does not seem to show the subsurface scattering, and takes about 6.5 minutes to render.
My testing was done on the Mac 64 bit version.
wow, that narrows it down! thanx for info. submitted #166664 Vertex Cloud render
So..., is ALL of SSS broken? Or something in particular about this cloud model? (local space?)