Found out a cool way to make fluffy or billowy metaclouds driven completly by distribution,  the trick was to use 0% roughness, 5 metaclouds. The result looks more like a duststorm texture to me but so be it.
Cool thing also if E-on guys managed to make animatable metaclouds or "smoke-clouds"

don't worry the shape, the function is important.

comments

...I HATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU...NO, MAYBE JUST YOU...I ...ANYWAY..IT IS IRRELEVANT HONESTY..

GUESS I SHOULDNT HAVE CALLED YOU A D0U( /- BAG...

-Paul

Quote - ...I HATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU...NO, MAYBE JUST YOU...I ...ANYWAY..IT IS IRRELEVANT HONESTY..

GUESS I SHOULDNT HAVE CALLED YOU A D0U( /- BAG...

-Paul

thanks in your own, special way :)

Oh!  Pretty clouds!  Can you show a screen capture of the function? 

You can animate metaclouds by moving the spheres around. To get more fluffy clouds, add more variation in the material editor, and less uniformity. It won't make for a dramatic change, but will look a bit different.

Please do share those look fabulous!

Quote - Please do share those look fabulous!

Of course :) ... here you go

there you go

http://rapidshare.com/files/142901533/Billowy_Metaclouds.mat.html

Quote - You can animate metaclouds by moving the spheres around.

No that's not what i meant.

By animating I understand real cloud movements, meaning that the "spheres" gradually expand outwards and new spheres from inside blow out, so you have these "exploding-type" of cumuli clouds. The same thing then could be used for an atomic explosion and such.

Oh, alright. Nope, can't be done indeed.

Thanks Xpleet :)

Thanks for that :)

Dang...can someone tell me what teh trick is to get those clouds lit up from inside by a point light?  It just doesn't want to work, even tho I have volumetric light turned on. :(

You need to activate the option to influence clouds. With your light selected, right under the object properties panel, there is tiny  cloud icon. Clic it to activate it.

Xpleet,
hey thanks for that! :)

but you should rename your cloud and give it a title, to show your name etc! ;)

Quote - Xpleet,
hey thanks for that! :)

but you should rename your cloud and give it a title, to show your name etc! ;)

hehe, thank you, aslong as noone "sells" my file I'm fine. I'm just happy if i can contribute to something.

I will make them downloadable on my deviantart-page under my name then :P.

Thanks! 

Quote - You need to activate the option to influence clouds. With your light selected, right under the object properties panel, there is tiny  cloud icon. Clic it to activate it.

well that's where I thought it was, however it's no longer there (only the exclude from radiosity icon) and theres no sign of it in the vue manual aswell...>(

volumetric lighting doesn't help aswell.

perhaps a screenshot would help

Quote - Here, circled in red.

Ok this is dead strange, I don't have this icon..neither in flat nor vue5 style layout.

I tried selecting the light, metacloud and both, but it's not showing up! this is frustrating.

Oh no, I see they added this feature in 6.6 but that update keeps my Vue crashing every 30 seconds..bah that really sucks so much. After long times i found really no solution for this crap so I'm stuck with 6.5 permanently which only crashes about 1-2 times per hour.

That is so very impressive.  Thx for the tip.

6.6 crashes? Did you try with the latest update? It's pretty stable here.

Ok folks time to give you that update.

I've improved the function slightly so it looks a lil better now, but it's still not my endgoal.

my endgoal would be something like this:

which would probably originate of 3Dsmax or Terragen² matter.

Maybe I could do this with a lot of spheres?

Xpleet are you shooting for (sick gallows humor example) for nuke mushrooms? If so, I can post several links to picture and movies sites.

Bye!!!

(...remember to duck and cover, because a schoolroom desk is a significant shelter....)

Quote - Xpleet are you shooting for (sick gallows humor example) for nuke mushrooms? If so, I can post several links to picture and movies sites.

Bye!!!

(...remember to duck and cover, because a schoolroom desk is a significant shelter....)

I want thick, fat thunderhead clouds.

Unfortunately, metacloud materials render just too softly!

Mazak

Mazak

 Xpleet,

How many metacloud spheres did you use for this? Is most of that texture created from the function editor or is it being created by a bunch of metacloud spheres?

Quote -  Xpleet,

How many metacloud spheres did you use for this? Is most of that texture created from the function editor or is it being created by a bunch of metacloud spheres?

5 Metaclouds, 100-300 spheres in each accordin to Vue.

Mazak, I think this is not quite where I wanna go.

Xpleet,

 I tried loading the material that you had a link for earlier in this thread, but when I do a fairly high res render, I can see a bunch of small circles? The final image I am going to be rendering out is for print and is roughly 11"x17" @ 300dpi. Is there anyway to get that thunderhead look that will still whole up when rendered at a higher resolution?