This scene is LOADED with Clouds of various types and on various levels. The top sky is of course standard Horizontally Mapped clouds.

In FRONT of those is a Band of Clouds on a single
Vertically Mapped Plane. These were created with the
Flight Sim Cloud Set.

And in the Fore Ground are Procedural Clouds mapped
onto Vertical Camera Facing Billboards. I could have
added MORE Clouds to make it look even better- but this
is just an experimental render to further test my Cloud-Crazed theories.

This scene uses the SAME Band of Clouds on a single Vertically Mapped Plane as the above scene. In the Fore Ground are GROUPED Clouds from the Flight Sim set, including some more small Vapor-Like Clouds near the Top Left. I plan to create a lot more of these as they add a LOT to Cloud Realism! The Puff-Ball Clouds above the boat could actually use even MORE of these Vapor Cloud types...

Note how BEAUTIFUL the water reflections are when reflecting
more realistic Cumulus Clouds- than just the normal THIN &
WHISPY Clouds often seen in Vue (or Bryce). There is NOTHING
better than some wonderful Cumulus Clouds to make a 3D Picture more ALIVE!

We start with the Camera Facing Billboard "Band of Clouds" This forms the primary backdrop and saves having to construct HUGE AMOUNTS of Cloud GROUPS in the scene.

BTW- Everything you see in this little Cloud Tutorial can be
done with VUE 4 and VUE 5- as well as V5 Infinite. I'm not
using the ECO-CLOUDS at all here. So this should work for
everybody out there. The nice thing of course for V5 and V5I
users are the Camera Facing Billboards. That's a big time saving tool when you are moving your camera around and knowing that your clouds are following you around like baby ducks!

So here's the Band of Clouds Back Plane in the scene. Nows a good time to check out what type of Atmosphere and sun angle is going to best work for you. You can also make any GLOBAL adjustments in the ATMOSPHERE EDITOR. I would recommend NOT using HAZE or FOG as it blurs the details of your Back Plane and washes it out.

Here's a nice TRICK that I found REALLY helps a lot. 2-D Cloud Planes are often a bit THIN and light easily passes through them. In some cases this is great for special lighting effects. However, many times you want a more SOLID looking Cloud and the way to get this is to make a COPY of the Plane- and then go over to the POSITION Doo-Dad Widget Thing and touch the spinner dial just ONCE! This nudges the SECOND plane a very tiny distance APART from the first Plane- and your clouds will look more DENSE and THICK. DON'T do this "manually"- as it causes a MIS-REGISTRATION of the two planes. The "Y" Position Click keeps your second Plane in Perfect Alignment with the Camera!

One of the next things you will want to check (actually do these things BEFORE making the COPIES) is that the Clouds you imported have nice whitish-grey COLORS and HIGHLIGHT COLORS. Many times Clouds will appear in the Planes with DARK and even BLACK colors. And- this will of course make them look very DARK and MOODY...

Another thing to immediately correct is to move the Highlighting Slider over to 100% Anisotropic! (The DEFAULT is 0%). Clouds look much better with Anisotropic lighting- sort of like switching on a light bulb...

And be SURE to immediately UN-CHECK the DEFAULT Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows boxes. GROUPS of Clouds look fairly bad when shadows are being cast on each other in very close proximity. The ONLY time to have the Cast Shadows ON is when there are small, independent clouds floating around and you want to see CLOUD SHADOWS on the ground (which can be quite realistic).

Also NOTE the LIGHTING Sliders for DIFFUSE and AMBIENT. These are usually your BEST ADJUSTMENTS when Clouds look Too Bright or Too Dark (other than what has already been mentioned). These are LOCAL Controls on each Cloud Surface. Your GLOBAL Controls are, of course, in the ATMOSPHERE EDITOR.

What I do is create Cloud Groups and SAVE THEM as VOBS. Then When I'm BUILDING a scene I load in the Cloud Vobs and move them around to fill in spots where they might look good. I'm still in the very EARLY STAGES of creating a nice collection of Cloud Vobs and this is why my Cloud Scenes still LACK the kind of details and REALISM that I really want.

As you can see, I have generally placed four Cloud SPLATS ("Splats" is the term the "Cloud Pro's" use) into each GROUP- which is saved as a VOB. Later on I may go into much more COMPLEX Cloud Groups- probably adding more Vapor Clouds that will be ROTATED at 45 degree angles- this creates much greater Cloud REALISM...

One final adjustment that I have found necessary (in my very long TWO WEEK career of fidding around with this stuff) is to adjust the HORIZONTAL Cloud Plane ALTITUDE. Many times a Horizontal Cloud Layer at 3000 feet is too LOW and it will CONFLICT with your VERTICAL Cloud Planes. You will most often see this as BURN MARKS or other COLOR NOISE on the Tops of the Vertical Cloud Planes.

So- MOVE your lowest Horizontal Cloud Plane up to around 9000 feet or so and the Conflict should go away and the Clouds will all Happily Co-Exist with each other!

Delicious images! Valuable info! You should publish an eBook and/or CD on "Clouds in Vue". IM me if you want to know how - i'm finishing my first eBook for digital artists now.

I've saved all your tutorials on clouds and want to thank you for taking the time to share with us. Great work and its easy to follow your tutorials. You should put a package of clouds together and place in market place or even a few in free stuff. :)

I have some even BETTER STUFF coming up to show. (I always think the next thing I'm doing is even GREATER than ever!) I have no plans to sell anything. If anyone else wants to ----be my guest! That's why I'm "publishing" everything I discover- so that other people out there can make some use of it- for fun or profit- I don't care...

Absolutely awesome cloud tuts! Im bookmarking this one too :D