Has anyone ever attempted puffy clouds with hard edged patterns and high shadow details or is such an effect even possible in Vue 6 Infinite/xStream?

Here is an example of what i mean.

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

THis is possible in Vue6 I think, check out the metacloud objects and play with density/opacity/detail amount.

Would be a good theme for a challenge. But should be possible indeed.

Hopefully, i have been investigating the meta-clouds and i would want the tall billowy cumulo-nimbus types to be achievable. I will have to invest in this further.

Hmm, interesting subject to think on. I hope that the next version of vue that e-on really concentrates on better clouds and atmospherics. True this is the first time such a nice system was introduced but it should only get better from here on out. It seems to me that vue needs a voxel-based volumetric system like what pyrocluster has. Pyrocluster had some very nice high details on it's smoke, cloud and fire effects.

Sethren, increase the scattering anisotrophy parameter to get harder edges & highlights near the sun.
If you want finer details in the volumetric layer, size down the details scaling parameter in the advanced material editor of the cloud layer. You can do the same for metaclouds. For metaclouds, you can adjust the "cover " parameter to get thicker clouds. Don,'t over do it, though, or the original sphere object will show.

am i doing something wrong? when i resize a metacloud to just acouple feet it doesn't look the same as it is when its bigger. i've increased the cover and density all the way up too

If you increase cover too much, the spheres will show.

no theres like nothing at all or very little. low and high cover its the same result

I had not thought to increase the scattering anisotrophy. I will see how that looks.    :)

As for the rest of the suggestions, i will have a go at these but still i have yet to see anyone doing clouds remotely like what Derrin1 was thinking, linked to and also something like the photo i posted. I tend to think that vue is just not capable of such high detail yet. The developers only went so far with clouds.

I was reading this thread before I got my copy of V6I, so the first thing I did when I got it was play with the MetaClouds.  From looking at other peoples pictures, I decided just one cloud probably couldn't get the right look.  I used eleven, one full sized cloud with ten reduced size clouds around it.  I think I'm getting closer to the right look this way.

Scott

Here is the same cloud with a different atmosphere.

And here is the same cloud, same atmosphere but with the sun moved.

Scott

Attached Link: Clouds inspiration

Not bad but Vue still has that well known soft edges look and lack of small scale detail. The idea is a complex billowy look but everything i had done so far it still looks like fuffy blurred marshmellowy look just like what is above. No offense.    :)  I get the same results.

It's to bad displacement materials can not be added to the clouds, this may be the solution but displacement in Vue is lame. To slow and it needs a ton of memory which is why Vue should use virtual hard drive memory.    :(

Here the small scale bumping of a real cloud has that well known billowy effect.

Well, here's a little attempt by me.  I just did a test image previously last January, and like the clouds all the same.  Hardly like the photographs, plus I'm just playing around with sky atmosphere.  That's what probably got me hooked to get version 6 for the spectral atmospheres alone.  But prior to what the poster mentioned, it does look too soft or too grainy particularly the dark edges and contrast.  I used Vue 6 Easel for that test image.

Now, I have Esprit version 6 and playing around with metaclouds and the spectral atmosphere.  I love the kind of realism (make believe for now) you can use for instance -- Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination, and Global Radiosity -- so glad I made it to the next level.

I guess out of suggestion, in order to get that whispy, puffy feel, don't forget that you can turn up Quality Boost for both the Sky and Haze (including up-ing the Scattering Anisotropy) and Light in the Atmosphere panel.  I figured that out when I tried Terragen 2.  I just adjust the camera in millimeters (35mm) to get the realistic feel.  It can take a lot of doing, but taken into consideration, it would be a while until we can see cumulus clouds like in the photos - if such an achievement is made.

Just thought I give my 2 cents here.

JB

I did turn up turn up the Quality Boost and Scattering Anisotropy as well. To be honest it's all how the code was written and there is nothing that can make those clouds look any more real then what Vue can do already. The atmosphere and volumetric cloud code just has to be re-written if better results are needed so it looks like this is what we get for now. I would show off my results but they are not worth it as we all should already know Vue's limits by now. All i have to say is a voxel-based particle system is the way to go but i fear the render times will be insane knowing that i can not even use displacement in Vue without killing the program. Ah well, can't say i never tried.       :)

Yeah, it's gonna take particles to get that billowy look, but the metaclouds are still a big improvement over past versions of Vue.

Scott

And Vue6 has only been here for 2 months, give time to users to experiment and we may see what you are looking for a little while. As for the code, I wouldn't know about that, But we have fractals, and we have advanced volumetric layers. Before saying it's not good enough, experiment with the function editor.

Yup, i have even dived deep into experimenting with the function editor. No worries though.    :)

So have I, and I'm starting to get interesting results, but needs more work.