There's an interesting thread going on over at the e-on forum, and I posted more observations regarding creating your own cloudscapes. I thought I'd repost it here for anyone interested:

Quote - We're then stuck fighting that original fractal and I think that's partly why it's a pain in the neck for something that really "could" be so much simpler and straight forward.

Well, Not really. Just set the Detail slider to ZERO and you're not fighting the original fractal.

Here are a few cloud pics I just rendered...all with detail, feathers and sharpness set to ZERO. Most other settings are the basic ones found in the CloudPeeps Vue file. This first one uses only a Fast Perlin Fractal for density:

This second one uses a Simple Fractal with Perlin Noise:

You can see each of these are a bit different, but they both look very much like clouds.

So, then the question is "Why have a detail slider at all?" AFAICT, there are two good reasons.

1. Some cloudscapes aren't generated with fractals and because of this, they render MUCH faster. That said, adding fractal details helps these faster cloudscapes look more real.

2. Some cloudscapes, like the one below use a fractal (Round Samples) which create billowing clouds but with smooth unnatural edges. In this case, adding a bit of detail will help.

This next render (sorry these last few are only done in Preview mode as it was taking too long) shows a blobby cumulus type cloud, but the edges are too smooth to be real.

Now, if we add a tiny bit of Detail (4%), Feathers (4%) and Sharpness (4%) we can use the same exact fractal as before and it renders a much better cloud scene:

So, you can see why it helps to have features like Details, Feathers and Sharpness, each adding a tiny amount of randomness to cloud shapes-- which can be of great help to fine tune a cloudscape.

Lastly, I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention one other factor in cloud rendering. Consider the last render. It uses a Simple Fractal with Round Samples. Now take a look at this render:

This uses just the Round Samples Noise (no fractal, just noise). This last image renders 5 to 10 times faster than the one with fractals. So, keep this in mind when creating your cloudscapes!

I hope some find this helpful.