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I have seen all kinds of great atmospheres done in Carrara, but for the life of me, I cannot get the sky color selector to work right.  I select a sky color and when I click OK, it changes itself to some other weird combination...  I am forced to use other 3D software for a sky backdrop image, or make one in PSP X2.

Thanks for the help.  I haven't had time to get on here as often as I would like lately.  I'll give it a try using that method.  Daz really should fix this one though.

There is also the issue of the light. As you move the position of the light, it will also change the color of the sky by attempting to generate a sky color that is relational to the time of day.

My view is that the sky colors are just not right, too dull and also as the sun goes down the amount of sunlight is way too dim. I always use a gradient backdrop along with the Realistic Sky. To me it just works better and is much less hassle to get a nice sky with some brightness & depth. You can use the built-in gradient backdrop or create your own in Photoshop.

One thing I really wish they would put in is an easier way to see where the Sun and/or Moon are when you are positioning them.  Something like an auto center so you can center on the Sun or Moon in the atmosphere menu.

Starting with C7, there is a sun icon that shows up in the Assembly room when you select the sunlight. You can reposition it without having to open the environment editor. 

As an FYI, the left grid wall is West to help with using the sky editor. Hope that helps. 

Mark

Hey Patrick, you beat me to it on responding to the gradient in the background (thanks for the catch).

I think it all sort of boils down to a few things.

1.)  The realistic sky in the atmosphere scene settings is actually pretty cool and can actually simulate a pretty big host of conditions.

2.)  While that's nice and all, what we as the artist community also would like is to control a lot of stuff even though it may not be realistic.  We want more controls for haze and fog and sky colors to be more under our control even though it might look or behave in a way which is not realistic.  We just want what we want.

That's why we call it art.  Art is an expression of what we are thinking about in our heads and we try to make things which we think look good even though it might not happen realistically.

So with all of that, it's important to remember that you can "cheat" stuff in C if you make your own skies and drop them into the background.  Another thing I've used are the primitives in the primivol collection from inagoni (or the advanced pack).

The haze/fog primitive produces some pretty spiffy volumetric stuff and the user options are also pretty nice.  If you combine "painting" your own skies and using the primivols, you can increase the dimensions of what's possible.

Just some ideas to think about.

Oh yeah and to backup what Mark was saying, if you look carefully at the sun position in the sky editor, they finally added some nice guides as to where the sun will be positioned when you move it around (+ / - X and + / - Y).

Thanks for that info.  I haven't used the realistic sky for wuite a while so I didn't see that.

To get back to the original post:

The scenes in the previw are amazing. Are you planning to make them into a product?

BTW, is there a way to get the really smooth-looking cumulonimbus clouds using Carrara's clouds or some plg-ins? I mean clouds like in this image, for example: http://nmazca.com/yeoju/corea_cumulonimbus.jpg

Hi Antaran,

Only software that has a fluid solver built in or a plug-in can do cumulus like that. :-/

Mark

Hi Antaran you do believe in C potential like Mark doesn't sometimes, I think it is quite possible using the right cloud and a little creativity. I'll try later. Regarding my atmospheres I'm planning to sell them but I'm setting a good lighting atmos for indoor scenes and then I'll see how and where to do it (maybe on google one pass ?) ciao

p.s. all the atmos you see in the image are 100% carrara, including the clouds

rexus, thank you! :) I very much look forward to both your product and your experiments.

Mark, there is probably a way to cheat using models (I'm thinking that metaballs could probably be useful for this) even if the cliud system can't do it.

But as rexus said, I really do believe in Carrara when it is used by capable imaginative people like rexus, yourself or DT over at DAZ, to name just a few of my favorite C-innovators.

Actually, it has nothing to do with 'believing' in Carrara - it's that I simply know the toolset.

Man, for me, cumulus clouds have been the holy grail in Carrara.

I was working on them during the creation of this thread last year. That technic works ok for dark types of clouds/smoke but I wasn't satisfied with it for white cloud results. The files are available on my site in the Dark Arts section for download if you want to pick up where I left off.

Instead, I'll typically use billboards with photos in a scene because it's faster. If I really need a cloud scene where clouds are the 'hero', I pop over to Vue. Vue 9 especially has really made cloud creation fast and rendering easy - and even Vue doesn't do great Cumulus. You can get outstanding results in Carrara but it usually takes about 4 times as long. Professionally, I don't have that kind of time on assignments so I go with what I know works.

Fluid/particle solvers are perfect for this because it's a 'reaction' to movement and volume and not a geometry or quasi volumetric construction. Scroll to the smoke samples here (Fluid sovlers are also used for fire) or check out this VFX artist's samples here. In the materials, it's easy to turn the black smoke to white. 

I'm not saying it can't be done in Carrara; I just haven't had the time to try all of the tricks I have in mind to pull it off! :D

Mark

I have also had similar issues trying my dangdest to get C to do smoke and clouds.  Bottom line, C has limits.

In terms of generating clouds in the sky, Terragen 2 can body slam that problem pretty dang heavy duty.  I've not tried Vue yet.  Lots of reasons, mostly I just don't want to learn another package (maybe when I'm old enough).

The volumetric clouds in C are actually pretty spiffy but they take time to setup and they also have limits (I haven't found a way to do small ones for localized smoke yet).  If you work with the C clouds, they can actually generate some really nice results.  You just have to pay for it in render time and setup time.

Simulated Cumulus clouds are one big leap for C at the moment.  What I don't get is that there are clearly algorithms out there for super nice clouds that I wish we could have in C.  The other packages are keeping that stuff secret since it's a pretty big competitive advantage.

And in the end, localized smoke effects are probably best done with flip boards like Mark says.  I've been fussing with all kinds of weird ideas for smoke for the last six months and I can't get the code to crunch out anything that looks decent yet.

And last but not least, I'll side with Mark again saying that good smoke and clouds can probably can be done.  We just need somebody to come up with a cool way to do it that we haven't thought of yet.  Even now as I write this thread, I'm thinking of a couple of ideas to try.

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kixum, I really like your style

rexus, you continue to impress and amaze me! :) I'd love to see the idea elaborated when you have time. Would the shape would be limited to the cube?

Very impressive indoor lighting too. Is that another planned product?

hi antaran, thank you for your kind words,  I think you can create any shape and make it invisible and play around with clouds to fit your needs; I  suggest not to exceed with replicated number of objects due to rendering issues, so place simple shaped giant clouds under them;  talking about my lighting presets actually I'm thinking what to do because I have no time to test them on other scenes and other contexts, so I do not know whether and when put on sale, it would be nice to create a schedule where you sell them individually online, i.e. just for one dollar, but at the present it's too tricky for me to make further tests, make a site and manage sales. any suggestion is welcome. ciao

rexus, I can test for you if my setting arr different from yours and if it will help. I have WinXP 64 bit, and Carrara 8 Pro 8.1.97 at the moment. And I have a lot of unfinished scenes, which I need to go back to and improve with better lighting and other interesting elements.

About the store, there is http://poserdirect.com/ designed and created by MrSparky. I know MrSparky likes and uses Carrara, so there might be a chance that he will welcome your Carrara submissions at his store. His store is run with the idea of offering affordable solutions, so I think your idea is very much similar and there might be a good collaboration opportunity there.

Hope this helps.

Thank you antaran but I guess I should have time to see your outcomes and come out right to my wills, anyway I will think about. everything  has resulted from the consideration that IMO Daz neglects some C presets and so I worked hard to achieve some of mine. anyway maybe I will try to sell one or two via daz and see how it goes. about the store I'd like to sell them on carrara lounge but I can not find anymore the store - but maybe I'm wrong.  ciao and thanks one more time