Hi.  I have Carrara 5 rpro and am wondering if it can create cloud effects like these pictures from the Bryce forum?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2652618

Thanks.

David

Work with the VolumetricClouds tools and/or the particles maybe for that first grey cloud (see the particles smoke preset)

Cool.  Thanks.  I'm still really new when it comes to Cararra.

David

Howie, I am having a problem with setting my lights to match your great pic. Any chance, please, of having a copy of your .car file to study?

Attached Link: cloudglow.car

Thanks Howie!  looks alot like U.S. Midwest tornado type weather! Something wicked this way comes. I'd done something similar for a Bryce lightning animation, and this gives me an idea of how to replicate and improve that scene in Carrara.

Thanks mate!  I really learn a lot in efforts to solve other peoples problems and the reciprocality of , can I say, "Eovians", is great.

Would this be a good time to have a "Bad Weather" challenge??

Howie, thanks for your file again. BUT I am having real problems in trying to duplicate the ideas into a scene--or when importing your grouped clouds/lighting into a scene--to get a similar look to my images.(I saved your clouds into my Objects file)

I think there is some "but you need to do this first allways" info missing in my knowledge file.  Help please        Brian

Quote - Howie, thanks for your file again. BUT I am having real problems in trying to duplicate the ideas into a scene--or when importing your grouped clouds/lighting into a scene--to get a similar look to my images.(I saved your clouds into my Objects file)

I think there is some "but you need to do this first allways" info missing in my knowledge file.  Help please        Brian

Can you post a render of your scene so I can get a feel what is or is not happening?

Image A is the Tapui scene from the Wizard with your clouds/lights group brought in and scaled over the mountains.

Image B is with the Tapui main light set to off and the sun placed at the horizon.

Image C is as B with all your bulbs reduced down to 25%.(I note that all your bulbs are now reading a range 0f 400"?)

I gather, in starting from scratch, that scene lighting generally, bulb light strengths, and bulb light ranges may all play a part. Maybe some "rules" for these relationships are missing in my understanding,

The problems above are similar to my own, start from scratch experiments.

Thanks           Brian

Reduce the range

In that C image set up I started  again with a re-entry of Howies original clouds/lights. and placed it in the background with out any reduction in size.. I note that all the light in my original save had set themselves back to 100 and 400".

Ok. I reset the lights to Howies settings.But the render of this has nothing resembling Howies original.  Beatsme.

Here is my .car file with the save of Howies clouds/lights loaded into it full size. As I said, the bulb settings have all been reset to basis settings.

Maybe, if you actually work on this ,my stupidity may show itself?

Thanks Brian

Here is my .car file with the save of Howies clouds/lights loaded into it full size. As I said, the bulb settings have all been reset to basis settings.

Maybe, if you actually work on this ,my stupidity may show itself?

Thanks Brian

Here is my .car file with the save of Howies clouds/lights loaded into it full size. As I said, the bulb settings have all been reset to basis settings.

Maybe, if you actually work on this ,my stupidity may show itself?

Thanks Brian

Again, as in other places at renderosity, neither my .car or .zip files are beind accepted for download.  No problem with any other site and my WindowsXP is 100% up to date. I give up-even my programmer son can not work out the problem.

I think the main thing is that the light's range must be much less than the size of the cloud. So with a cloud 20" wide you would maybe place bulb lights with a range of 3" to 5" or so. Also, when I was building my little test scene I fiddled with the clouds until I had them looking how I wanted before I even started palying around with adding the bulb lights.

Howie. That range being less than the size of the cloud was an important clue-thanks.

jrabit. Your lightning idea!--think I have done before-can you explain the method in more detail please?I usully go to Photoshop but would like to do in Carrara)

bwtr ,

 Ahh its easy make a lightning bolt or fire  , whatever effect you want in your photo software. Transparent background. I actually in this one made the layer huge 1200X1200 with the small sprite in the center. Than just use a plane in carrara load the png as texture map. Plug it into glow channel too. I like to use a subtract mixer and in channel 2 a value. you can adjust the glow it seems better than with multiply or add mixers. I scale the plane huge to so its out of the production window this prevents edge artifacts. face it to camera and adjust its depth to meet your scene. That is,  the plane is actually in the cloud not in front of it . This just really blends into the render so well you dont need postwork and the glow adds into the render. And of course you could use animated sprites something that you would need like after effects to do otherwise. you can also make lightnig shaped polygons like in the leaf tuts on the net :)  just trace the png with the poly tool.

Why pre work over postwork? To me its more predictable repeatable and reliable.

Any chance of a an image of your shader tree or even your lightning .car to study please. I tried my ideas and can not get the glow to work--NOT one of my good days!

Brian

Heres the shade tree. The glow value is 32% on low light setups I bump it to like 18% on bright scenes. I would send car file but its to big. rendo just bounces it. I tried your png it works fine but suggestion paint solid lines than gros blur them like 10 pixes you will get much better results.

The same idea is on the candle car that comes with Carrara. Also on eovia tut section.

Mike

Much appreciated. Thanks for your trouble.

Brian

Your lightning effects look excellent jrabbit!

thanks everyone for the excellent info in this thread :)

On the subject of the volumetric clouds -- I asked once before but never got a reply -- does anyone know how to make the clouds animate?  I've tried putting numbers in the 'animate' window (it seems you can't set keyframes, it just changes the setting from frame one no matter where on the timeline you type).  No matter what I do, I don't seem to get any animation.  If someone knows how, I'd appreciate hearing about it!  Thanks!

Hi I use shuffle in the cloud settings to set variation on keys.

Thanks for the repy, but that doesn't work for me -- no matter where I am on the timeline, any change I make to the volumetric cloud changes the setting at frame 0 -- with no key frame added at the frame I'm at on either the master or the instance.  Am I nuts?  Are you really producing animated volumetric clouds?  Thanks!  (I've got 5.1 Pro installed, on Mac OSX 10.3, just in case.)

Hi ,

 I just tried it again. I never really paid attention to it in detail. But Shuffle does not set from one key frame to the next. Opps. it only changes the entire set of frames. But The clouds do animate and change , If the clouds are static ,  that is the cloud does have a keyed motion  from one frame to the next  the cloud wont change . This is a 2 second animation at 6 frames a second just enough to see the cloud does change as it moves. I just set animation setting in cloud settings to 2 and moved the cloud to the right from keyframe 1 to the end and keyed again. Not drastic changes in the cloud but watch the ends carefully you will see them certainly change.

I Suppose there could be some improvements like being able to keyfram shuffle and changing the intensity of variation. Maybe we can ask daz to beef it up.

Sorry for the high compression its like 16megs uncompressed

Attached Link: cloud avi

I have seen a few people ask about animating volumetric clouds in C5. I am not sure if it is common knowledge so I will go ahead and explain the method I use.

You can access the properties for the volumetric clouds in the sequencer. From there you can create keyframes for the master object. You have access to most everything from the cloud modeling interface. Size in miles in X, Y, & Z. Opacity, phase (which I discovered is the silver lining), brightness, etc.

You can create some amazingly interesting animations doing this. For instance I created one where a cloud was seemingly blowing towards the camera. As it approached it got bigger and thicker. As it was doing this all kinds of small details popped up and little tendrils formed and then turned into detailed sections of the cloud.

It is very interesting to just take a cloud and watch it grow in size (miles setting, not just scaling it. Or have its opacity increase. It just appears as a whispy cloud then suddenly gets more intense and detailed.

Again, not sure if everyone already knew this. But since I have seen it asked so many times I thought I would point it out.

Donnie

I agree! Great ideas here for lightning, volumetric clouds, and translucent objects being lit from within!

Brian-
If you want to upload a file to R'Osity, change it's extension to something R'Osity accepts. Like .txt, or .jpg. Just let people know you've changed the name, and tell them what name to change it back to and it works fine.  When HowieFarkes uploaded his file earlier, he actually posted a link to his own server where he didn't have the same constraints as the R'Osity servers have.

Hope this helps and thanx for the tips! :D