Ridge Clouds- Procedurally rendered 3D Clouds mapped on to 2-D Camera Facing Bill Boards and rendered in V5I.

Based on cloud models by Joshua Schpok, former Purdue student who wrote his Master's Thesis on REAL-TIME Cloud Rendering and Animation.

While working on Eco-Cloud Formations I went back and played around with the neat little FREE program called "SWELL".

Since the software is nearly completely undocumented (written by Graduate Student Joshua Schpok as part of his Thesis work) -it took me a little bit of tweaking to figure out what it can do...

The program runs as a DOS SHELL under Windows and requires a fairly recent ATI or nVidia driver graphics card for the effects to work right (including real-time cloud animation).

The best way to SAVE the cloud effects I wanted was to do
SCREEN GRABS. The HIGHER the REZ you run your graphics card,
the HIGHER the REZ of your Screen Grabs.

I also realized that by changing the default light blue to a BLACK background that this would save me more time in PhotoShop as I only had to CROP the clouds and VUE could immediately read them in as Camera Facing Bill Boards with a PERFECT Alpha Mask!

A link please :) Great discoveries as always :)

I also realized that by saving the entire screens I was also DOCUMENTING my settings! So I saved a whole catalog of screen grabs with the ability to go back and repeat them when needed.

Attached Link: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~schpokj/research/purpl/clouds/index.html

Here's the link...

I also realized that SWELL could make a "swell" Model for a
VUE CLOUD EDITOR- similiar to how the Vue Terrain Editor works now. The F U T U R E VUE CLOUD EDITOR would not only allow you to make and view more complex ECO-CLOUD formations (like RIDGE CLOUDS)- it would make SPECIAL EFX Clouds- like EXPLOSIONS, FIREWORKS, etc.

A VUE CLOUD EDITOR could even have a CLOUD LATHE (like this SWELL example) and allow you to Lathe out a 3D Cloud into shapes that could be saved like TERRAINS- so that you could make Bowls, Pots, Furniture Posts and other exotic shapes...

Attached Link: http://www.markmark.net/clouds/index.html

Link to Researcher Mark Harris's "SKYWORKS" page. The demo is quite old by Flight Sim software standards- like MS Flight Simulator 2004 which uses a more advanced modeling technique (but based upon Harris's ideas-among others.)

But it shows how Procedural Clouds can be mapped REAL-TIME onto Camera Facing Bill Boards at rates up to 60 Frames Per Second...

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Exploding STAR EFX from "SWELL" software...

Thanks! I like the fireworks. Very cool :)

SWELL makes "On The Fly" Proceedural Clouds and maps them to 2-D. This is what the Gaming Engines do and allows for incredibly FAST frame rendering.

You have to think- if GAMING Software uses Real-Time Mapping of Procedural Clouds onto Vertical Planes for great Visual Effect AND HIGH SPEED RENDERING- then it makes perfect sense for E-ON to use the same techniques for ECO-CLOUDS.

Attached Link: http://www.dreamworks.com/dreamworks_home.html

...know some people think my Clouds are too TOON-LIKE and there could they are certainly of LITTLE USE... except for a few oddball companies like... (Ahem...)

(They have unfortunately only made $100's of Millions and a large collection of Oscars and Effects Awards for their "toons"...)

Attached Link: http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/

...And what about Joshua Schpok? Poor guy-- never even got his PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper)...

Instead some little OddBall company asked him to go work for them because they liked his "Toon" clouds. Heh! Too bad Joshua didn't FINISH his education!

I guess he has very little future THERE!...(heh)

Very interesting and thanks always looking for new ideas and methods.

I don't think they are toon like....my word...these are just straight renders with no "tweaking". IMHO, I think they are great! Compared to what have we now...jeez ~eye roll~ Great work - keep it up! Between all these apps available, we should be able to accomplish something! Other than clouds that look like small blobs of smoke or many spheres occupying space with memory hogging volumetric atmos.

Of Course! If it makes SENSE to use "instances" of trees so that thousands can be used and render times DRAMATICALLY REDUCED- then the same applies to CLOUDS- whether they are Flight Sim 3D Box Clouds using Texture Maps- or 3D Procedural Clouds. Using "Instances" of Clouds is the LOGICAL FUTURE for E-ON. Volumetrics is best used for other Atmospheric and Lighting effects. Crowding a scene with lots of 3D semi-transparent and Fuzzy Clouds is a recipe for MASSIVELY Long Render Times. The "Pros" have already figured this out! With a Future Vue Cloud Editor, it should be possible to create lots of different special EFX Clouds, as well as set up FORMATIONS of Texture Mapped or Procedural Mapped Clouds and have VAST ECO-CLOUD SCAPES with GREATLY REDUCED render times for clouds Instances that "appear" as Volumetric in the final render.

Veritas if anybody is going to crack this cloud problem, it's going to be you... Great work and definitely interesting programs that you're turning us on to... Thanks for your work on this... :)

Excellent explorations here Veritas!! If you don't mind, I'm gonna throw in a little shortcut or tip if you will.... If you aren't painting your clouds on black or are not using a tool like that mentioned above and want to get your clouds for billboards from images then here's a quick shortcut to the necessary alpha..... Take your cloud image into PS or PSP and adjust the threshold...here it's set at 155. Then add a gaussian blur of a 2.0 radius to the black and white image and save. In Vue, load the image, the alpha and clik the little inverse dot. Presto! This is a quick one from one of Mayang's cloud images. Of course, you need to adjust diffuse, ambient and luminous for whatever atmosphere you have. Anyway, just my 1.5 cents worth....again, great pioneering here!!

Attached Link: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/valiant/

The More Skies The Better! Here's a link to a Disney movie project called "Valiant" that was the stepping stone for Joshua Schpok landing a postion at Dreamworks... Here's the article behind the movie and how CLOUDS became an important feature of the movie- "Schpok developed the software that was used to create three-dimensional clouds in the film "Valiant," which tells the story of a small pigeon trying to do something big in Great Britain's Royal Homing Pigeon Service during World War II." "Our CG supervisor Gray Horsfield had read about early tests Joshua was doing with real-time cloud rendering. We realized that his software, with some work, could be tuned to help us provide a faster means of creating film-quality clouds within our pipeline." "The software is many times faster than conventional techniques used in the film industry to create cloud animations, Ebert said. Movie animators typically use separate software packages to first preview low-resolution images and then more complex, time-consuming software to create the final high-quality product. The software developed by Schpok, however, can be used both to create the preview images and the final high-quality images, saving time and money in the process." "The "Valiant" application is an outgrowth of work by Ebert and Schpok to combine simple, intuitive controls with complex mathematical algorithms or software tools that carry out specific step-by-step tasks. Film animators and artists can use the software to make realistic depictions of cloud formations, explosions, smoke, steam, fog and other gaseous phenomena for movies and video games." http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html3month/2005/050413.Ebert.Valiant.html

"Ebert said he hoped that a license for Schpok's software might eventually be sold to additional film companies for use in other movies." Too bad they arent making a commercial version of this plugin that any user can buy. Many apps are taking forever to incorporate GPU based effects in their apps and this is another example of steering promising developments in that category AWAY from the general public and more towards proprietary or custom apps solely for studios. I wish he could upgrade swell and make it a commercial plugin.

It is under consideration I think. They have already developed a Maya Plug-In version- which was free- but then it was withdrawn because they wanted to re-write it. I think CLOUDS are one of the most POORLY represented features in most 3D Program- especially Bryce, Vue etc. (But even Lightwave, Max, etc.- even many of those Cloud Plug-in's barely come close to what Schpok's cloud software can do as far as realism.) Finally TG2 is going RAISE THE BAR on what Real Clouds should look like in affordable 3D software- so I'm looking forward to that. But E-ON has a major opportunity here- if they just GET ON IT, as they already have the software tools- Instancing, Camera Facing Billboards, Scatter-Replicate, etc. to give Vue 5 Infinite owners some extremely realistic clouds. It doesn't require a MAJOR new software version to do this...