Eonite - I'm not trying to convince anyone not to use the FE, specially not you:)
Your enthusiasm for it is very contageous, and I'm always drawn to try out what you present. I'm just commenting why I (and maybe others) arnt yet completely hooked on it.
The only thing I would refute is that it will be impossible to achieve the same realism if the same cloud textures were available when starting from an object. You start from an object too, yours is a giant layer. It has finite lower  and  upper limits (maybe infinite in x and y). You manipulate it in the FE to define a smaller shape, like the tornado or a lenticular cloud or those 'pipe' clouds. I would have liked to create those shapes in another way, by modeling or by mathematical equations. After that I would do (if I was as skillful) exactly as you do, modify and enhance using the function editor + parameters defined for the clouds.
I agre trying to do an animation with a pre-modelled object would be harder, but I dont do animations.
I have no doubt you can make simple shapes in the FE, but making them requires skill and experience, as you said. Making a rectungular shape is something a complete novice can make, even in VUE, even for you it was a (mini?) challenge to do it in the FE. That is my point, making a shape should be trivial.
I'm not sure what shape you can make by a math gaussian tooth node + vectors that cant be made in a modelling program.

"I paint that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
Man Ray, modernist painter
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