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Stonemasons new cloud product

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Comments

  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241

    Interesting looking product!

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    Stonemason said:

    yea I'm familiar with turning off occlusion but in doing that things just begin to look a bit flat.

    mjc1016 said:
    Stonemason said:

    well,they looked bad to me(too much shadowing),others may think they look fine,but given the amount of layered transparency being used I didn't really bother looking into it,

    Which shader where you using?

    If you used the omnifreaker Ubersurface you would be able to override the occlusion and clear up some of the interactions between the billboards.   Setting that override pretty high helps a lot with layered transparencies.

     

    It was just a thought...

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,559
    pete.c44 said:

    Stonemason's cloud.....the advantage of apparent volume without the intensive Volumetric processing...recommended.

    Yeh. I was worried about the render time if they were volumetric. And it's interesting and exciting to see him branch out from architecture.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Looks great... except some of the promo pics do look a bit too grainy making them look unrealistic to me. Perhaps they don't render as some of of the promo pics? Still I did add it to wishlist.

  • JimbowJimbow Posts: 557
    timmins.william said:

    It's one of the observations I made a while ago that the best way to have 'complex' clouds and fog, lacking the ability to procedurally generate thick and thin bits like 3DL, is with the actual shape of clouds. Unfortunately, given how funky displacement works in Iray, that's a route denied.

    If I had to guess, I'd say it's a lumpy shape with a corresponding glossy (or refraction) color map to help accentuate peaks and valleys.

     

    I've been experimenting with exporting Softimage particles (tiny, tiny, pyramids - hundreds of thousands of them) as objs and importing into Daz Studio for things like mist. They render really quickly in iray once they're in memory.

  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    how about animateable clouds ?

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,890

    Jimbow: Interesting... I've enjoyed using particles/blobs in Iray, like Magic of Serpio and Liquid pack. Making them into foggy or liquid shapes is fun.

    Does it help to use Instances? It seems to me that manipulating large numbers of instances might help, but I don't know what limitations the instancing system has.

     

  • JimbowJimbow Posts: 557

    @Will: All I'm doing is exporting a reference object from DS to get the space in Softimage right, then creating my particles in the latter using the ICE system, then exporting the particles as a single mesh of tiny little pyramids. If the particles are generalised enough (dust in a room, for instance) then there's no reason why they can't be instanced and rotated, etc. I'm using them for my next render of Saga, which has dust motes, a bit of ground mist, and smoke coming off a candle. Certainly in Mental Ray it became a kind of standard practise, for some at least, to just light particles for atmospheric effects rather than struggle with raymarching and procedural volumetrics, etc. All I'm doing is taking the particles from one 3D prog to another via the obj format and doing the same with Mental Ray's sister renderer.

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504

    For my experience, these actually work surprisingly well. I think we might be a ways off volumetric clouds (at least, realistic looking ones), so this is a really cool compromise. And they look really great even when the camera is fairly close. I'm working on a piece which uses them, but it killed my PC last time I tried to render it, so I'm changing a few things first.

  • ZelrothZelroth Posts: 910

    When they came out and I saw these in the store and I texted my hubby ::squee!!!::  Now I am waiting to be able to purchase them, hopefully this weekend, so I can go ::SQUEE!!!!!!!!!!::  (and of course, find the time to play with them)

  • Gr00vusGr00vus Posts: 366
    edited January 2016

    I was driving into work earlier in the week looking at the clouds in the sky, triggering the thought that outdoor scenes in IRAY would really benefit from being able to place clouds in them (rather than relying on a full blown HDRI or something similar). Then these show up a couple of days later. Instant purchase. Well, not instant, but I picked them up today (and got 75% off Olympia 7 HD as a result). Looking forward to trying these out. Any plans for cirrus type clouds?

    Post edited by Gr00vus on
  • DaikatanaDaikatana Posts: 828

    This was an immediate buy!  This will be an eminently useful product.  Thanks Stonemason!!!!

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,890

    I'm wondering if I can generate new cloud images with Carrara or Bryce or something and add variety, but I have to buy the thing and see how it's laid out first.

    (I did something similar with Iray Worlds and skydomes)

     

  • StrixowlStrixowl Posts: 301
    edited January 2016

    Just playing 2 QUICKIES. I like the brightness and trans contols to. Great product.

    Iray Clouds.jpg
    650 x 500 - 377K
    Iray Clouds 01.jpg
    800 x 1400 - 932K
    Post edited by Strixowl on
  • thd777thd777 Posts: 932

    Must admit, I was somewhat sceptical and hesitant to pick this up. I have Vue Infinite and I am pretty experienced with it, so I do have acces to volumetric clouds. However, curiosity won and I am am now offically impressed. A very good and highly recommended asset for anyone using Iray (or Octane, they work in there too!). Easy to use and adjust. Renders pretty fast. Here is a quick example result from my initial experiments: "Mech in the Mist"

    Ciao

    TD

     

    Mech in the Mist.jpg
    1600 x 730 - 136K
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,890

    Nice!

    Yeah, more and more I'm seeing the best way to do clouds is in post.

     

  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241
    Jimbow said:

    I've been experimenting with exporting Softimage particles (tiny, tiny, pyramids - hundreds of thousands of them) as objs and importing into Daz Studio for things like mist. They render really quickly in iray once they're in memory.

    Jimbow, I would be curious to see your experiments with this if you felt up to starting a new thread in the commons about it and adding some renders.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    No...the best way to do clouds...

    http://www.openvdb.org/about/

    And yes, 3Delight has it.  Just getting access to it through Studio is not going to be easy...

  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    i would like to have a morphable object for clouds - impossible ?

  • srieschsriesch Posts: 4,241

    I'm not sure exactly how this product is laid out, but could you possibly use deformers on it?

  • TesseractSpaceTesseractSpace Posts: 1,153
    edited February 2016

    Why do things like this show up right when I get laid off? Ah well, wishlisted for better days. Best looking clouds I've seen.

    Post edited by TesseractSpace on
  • argel1200argel1200 Posts: 757
    edited February 2016

    These are really great except when used very close to the camera, since the perspective means the angle at the edges will reveal they are billboards. You do have to orient them towards the camera though. The one disapoint for me is that "Point To..." e.,g. Camera 1 does not appear to work, which would be extremely handy for billboards. Still, a lot can be done with these.  As a side note, Dreamlight has a tutorial covering billboards/2.5D. Also, pretty much every computer/video game out there with 3D graphics makes use of 2.5D elements.

    Edit1: If you parent the clouds to a Null, you can set the Null to -90 XRotate and then  Group it, then point the group to the camera. Then you just have to adjust the YRotation. There's probably a away to avoid that too (maybe place the Null in the center of the clouds?) but having to adjust just one axis is pretty handy.

    Edit2:  I have not tried it yet, but for closeups it may not be too hard to Photoshop the  obvious billboard edges in closeups.

    Post edited by argel1200 on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,890

    What I usually do when orienting stuff is switch to XYZ translate tool, and then use rotation in the parameters. That way, when you see the one arrow becomes just a dot, it's pointed right at you.

     

  • Widdershins StudioWiddershins Studio Posts: 539

    How can I bring the cloud to zero or the ground please ?

    I want a mist effect but they are way up in the sky.

    Thanks !

  • thd777thd777 Posts: 932
    Widdershins Studio said:

    How can I bring the cloud to zero or the ground please ?

    I want a mist effect but they are way up in the sky.

    Thanks !

    Select the cloud, use the move tool? At least that's what I did for the image I posted above.

    TD

  • Widdershins StudioWiddershins Studio Posts: 539

    I tried that, but it's so far up that I can no longer tell or see where the ground plain is.

  • SassyWenchSassyWench Posts: 602
    Maybe use drop to floor?
  • Widdershins StudioWiddershins Studio Posts: 539

    Tired that but the cloud went up.

    I think it might just be the cloud I was using. scCumulus14 is miles away.

    But the earlier clouds are much closer and I was able to move them into my scene with ease as they are quite nearby.

  • SassyWenchSassyWench Posts: 602

    Select the cloud and in parameters set Y translation to 0?

  • Widdershins StudioWiddershins Studio Posts: 539

    Y is already 0 - that's the problem. This is why I was wondering how to move it to the world origin or the centre of the grid.

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