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

I am a photo retoucher and I often have to add a different sky to a image and I am limited to the skies that I have on hand and it would be nice if I could just create clouds from scratch. Usually I work on files that are around 6000px x 4000px. Years ago I had a cg artist create some cumulus clouds for me using Maya, and they just didn't have enough detail. Even thought clouds look like they are all soft and fuzzy, they actually can have quite a bit of detail. I checked out Vue's site and I did see any trial versions? Do the different versions of Vue handle clouds differently?

You should try the Vue 6 PLE(The trial version), link is below :-

http://www.vue6.com/ple

Cheers
Jon

Here are some clouds  made with metaclouds in Vue 6. 

Says it all, I guess!

WOW JackieD that looks great(; I cant get those bloody metaclouds to do much of anything...

jackie what settings do you use for those metaclouds??

thanks

SPeters - yes, JackieD said it all - I just wanted to say your retouching work is fantastic!
-Lew ;-)

Not much to it really...the secret's probably in the size and position of the metaclouds.  Here's my method: 

Load the default spectral atmosphere (ie the one without clouds - or remove the default clouds if necessary). 
Rotate the ground down until it disapears. Add  in one or two metaclouds - of course ;-). 
 
Increase the size of the clouds until they are huge,** **then bring them really close  to the camera. Placing the camera inside a cloud a bit and to one side can work for dramatic stormy looking skies, with another metacloud overlapping but outside of the camera. 

I usually have to play around with them a bit - changing rotation, size and camera placement before I get the effect I want.  It's also possible to move, rotate and resize the individual sphere's which make up each metacloud!  

If anyone wants to get an idea of how big I make the clouds I can post a screenshot.

  I'd love to see your results. Happy rendering :-)

am i the only one who is shocked that vue has so realistic clouds but they are so simple to make when you understand the settings?

what settings do you use for clouds. they look very grainy in my renders.

I used the Superior setting for the render.  I had problems with grainy renders until I upgraded my video card.  I did have trouble getting the grainness out of the spectral clouds in my pic Snake Gully - which was chosen as pic of the day yesterday on E-ons site.   I'm still in shock LOL.

bravo jackie

Yeah,I to had grain problems till i upped the texture antialiasing setting in the edit field,but then it t4ends to make trees look a bit painted:D This image is weith it set to "soft" the rest is default,only 15 sec.

In a word, yes.  The cloud generation on the meta clouds is just amazing.  I suggest devoting a whole day to just experimenting with this feature.