Any tutorials or tips on how to do an animated storm scene with rain and lightning?

Let me clarify a bit, I know about the cylinder method but I need rain from an angle looking more downwards so it would really have to be acutally populated in the 3d space not just an illusion from a rotating cylinder

You need particle effect for this.

Maya, Max, Cinema4d ..etc application that have particle support.

In Vue you can try with Ecosystem, if you have nice PC.

Did you consider this product set?

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=5275

There are a bunch of various rain types in here which are all 3d models - that is rain particles in a volume of space. The sets can be moved frame-by-frame to create an animation in Vue. Or, I can make you some custom rain objects for your purpose.

However, in another post elsewhere, you asked for splashing rain effects. And this truely is not possible in Vue. As volter says, you would need a combination of the latest version of Realflow (Realflow 5 is pretty expensive) and Max, Maya, XSI or Cinema4d for this. And even then, speaking as a long-time Realflow modeler, it would be difficult to create.

As to lightning, could you clarify/specify a bit more what you are looking for? It may be that I could work up something for you.

Forester,

Yeah I did see that pack and maybe I should give it a try. The scene is a quick shot (5 sec?) looking down at a small building at night with trees blowing, not a direct overhead shot but at a slight angle. I wanted the rain to match that POV and then just quick flashes of light that light the scene up. I don't need the splashing. I was thinking of trying it in post with After Effects and trapcode but I don't know. Any ideas or objects would be welcome

Not trying to sell you anything. But, the rain blocks in that pack would do what you wish, I believe. For a 5-second video at 28-32 frames per second, you would have to duplicate whichever rain block seems appropriate. Then stack them together into a very long (tall) object. Then just group them or wield them together into a single object. And then just animate that single object in a simple linear trajectory in the direction of your POV. (That is, drop the long rain block away and downward from your camera and down toward the ground.)

The rain blocks include lots of individual droplets, but also tiny little streaks to help convey the direction of the rain. Should work just fine - be pretty easy, I would think. Rendering times willbe a bit high because of the multitude of reflective objects, of course. But should not be too bad.

The lightening flashes should not be a problem either. Essentially, you are asking to turn on and turn off one or more strong "directional" lights. If it were me, I'd write a simple Python script to do this, or ask someone else on the C3D Python Forum to write one for me. Not a huge programming chore - just mostly a matter of getting the frequency and the duration of "on lights" worked out to your satisfaction. One advantage of "lightening flashes" is that you don't need any or very much gradual build-up of light and gradual decline. I think "on" and "off" should work pretty well.

I honestly cannot remember if lights can be animated in Vue as well, but that might be possible too, and then you would not need a Python script. Or, if they cannot be animated in the on and off sense and your version of Vue doesn't support Phython, they certainly can be animated to rotate in a circle. What you do then is to position a dead black cube in such a way that it is near the axis of the directional light and on the backside of the light when it points toward your scene. Rotate the light in a circle, so that it passes inside the cube for "off" and then continues rotating outside the cube and onto your scene for "on." I'm away from my computer for awhile, so I am just thinking this up, and don't know if actually would work. But you certainly can give it a "go," and when I can, I'll try it.

I was thinking that one way to do it is that I render out image sequences, so I just make a copy of the scene but with harsh lighting and render out two or three frames every once in a while in the timeline and then replace the original images with those.

Right now I'm rendering a 15 day render and am on my 11th day so I won't have a chance to test out your solution but I'll give that a shot when I can.

OK, I got a chance to try the rotating directional lighting trick. It works fine. It is quite easy to animate the light so that it rotates. No Phython script required. The directional light is not very strong, although it is quite distinct - at least shining on an object I posed in the scene. You'll have to kill the sunlightm and then dink with the Atmosphere Editor to cause the light to be almost purely sunlight, that is non-existant. (The alternative is to have the balance set to half or all ambient light, but you don't want very much ambient light in your scene. Just enough to show what you need.

You may be able to animate the attributes of other lights as well, so that they turn on in a couple of frames, and then turn off in most of your other frames. But, the point is that lights can be animated, and done so very simply.

Good luck with your project.

Thanks forester