VUE has as one of its presentation videos a "fly through" of the clouds with a sunset in the background.  Can this be done in Esprit and if so how? Can someone point me to tut on this?
tks

The scene is available for purchase at cornucopia. As for doing it yourself, must be quite easy to set up. Create your camera path with some of the path inside the cloud layer, then above it, the cloud layer is represented  by the grey layer inside your viewports, above your scene objects. Be sure to have the atmosphere animate from the atmosphere editor ( simply give the clouds a direction for movement, and a rate of change.

Should you then put the cloud layer close to the ground and do you use the standard or spectral model in the atmosphere?  do you have to use MetaClouds?  tks!!

You need of course a spectral atmophere for this. Metaclouds are not needed, but can be used just as the regular spectral cloud layer, but they ae less easy to animate, you will need to animate the material in the advanced material editor, and even move the spheres about for realistic results. The layer doeen't need to be close to the ground, it's really up to you, if you want to fly through fog near the ground, or clouds higher in the sky.

Ok. I noticed that DUH I have a sample animation from EXtras CD that shows this. But BOY does this TAKE FOREVER TO RENDER.  Is this normal for spectral atmospheres??  tks

Depends on the quality settings for the atmosphere, and the render settings. This scene was used for the Vue6 showreel, so I guess Phoul wanted it to look the best he could.

On what settings should I focus on within the Atmopshere Editor that might cause long renders?