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Journey - a Cloud Test

28

Created with 'Cloud Generator' and rendered with Blender Internal.

Reynante Martinez writes:

Hi, Blender Community! I've recently been playing around with Blender's interface, functionality, and addons lately and stumbled across this nice Addon called 'Cloud Generator' by Nick Keeline (nrk). It's been around as far as I can remember and has impressed me since. I simply couldn't resist the temptation to try to create something with it (while stuck with visions of 'Partly Cloudy' by Pixar and 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' by Sony Pictures Animation).

Probably next time, I'd have to try to rig characters with this Addon and just let them soar. :) I'm also hoping for your feedback on what else could be possible and what are the limitations of this addon.

Thanks, everyone! I hope you like it.

28 Comments

  1. Absolutely beautiful...I could sit in a room with this on a screen in front of me and just watch it for hours on end...with the music too...

  2. Nice clip ! I notice some flickering at the beginning, was it made intentionally some moving shadows around?
    I haven't used the Cloud Generator yet, does it give you too complex meshes to render out? I mean how long does it take to render a decent cloud generated with this Add on?

    • Yeah, I noticed the flickering when I was doing the sequencing.  Sadly I couldn't go back and rerender those parts, so let's just presume that is some sort of 'mini-lighting' or what not. ;)

      It doesn't give you complex meshes, but it gives you vertices (to derive the volume from) or particles, depending on the option you chose.  You define what mesh and shape to use.

      Regarding the render time, it took me almost 5 minutes per frame or less on an 8 core machine.

      Thanks. :)

      -Reyn

  3. Very  nice Reynante:)  I'm glad you like my script, the real credit goes to Farsthary and Matt Ebb for they volume work.  I wish I had finished documenting, but I added the ability to do explosions, tornadoes and to 'Freeze' particle systems into clouds, but never got around to tutorials on these features... see here for what I do have:
     
     http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?166174-Volume-Render-in-2.5...

  4. Anyone knows if there is any plan to update it so it would work with current version of Blender? Or is it working with 2.6x already?

  5. amine moussaoui on

    I remember adding some of those in one of my old project, guess what i took forever to render.. so the question is how many decade this took to render !!!!

  6. Really enjoyed watching this beautiful short. 
    A few of questions: Computer Specs? Rendered resolution? Render time? also, i assume this was BI opposed to cycles? 
    Like the coloring you did too. cool work!

  7. Thanks Reynante for your explanation. Your composition is beautiful. I just do not digest very well long render times :). Usually the problem is not the full render ( You can use a Farm or simpler go to bed in the meantime ) the problem is  the testing time, your press F12....wait and wait....if you test it 12 times then you have spent 1 hour !  In your case 8 cores/5min/frames is kind of too much  for clouds :) I guess, especially for Animation. I tried it long ago and said: This is not for me....I will add a cloud texture to my World and go to bed early...:) I know volumetric Clouds is something better !........well well every head is a different world.

    Thanks for your Reply Reynante

    • That is also why in the interest of testing one uses a lower resolution image and de-actives things that are unnecessary, whether it be raytraced shadows, AO, or other memory hogs. 5 mins a frame is hardly anything to scratch at. Imagine the testing time per frame for something like Advent Children if they had everything to full spec for each test. Low-quality testing, high-quality rendering.

      • What you said is correct, 5 minutes is just scratching the surface in a project of that magnitude like Advent Children. However you are relating things with no connection at all. Everything must be relative and proportional, within a project all variables should be adjusted to your final profit ! Advent Children had a revenue of $ 14 million by the fifth week ! Imagine the millions invested in production, now for that project even 1 hour per frame might be still nothing !

        Now back into our reality, what would be the render time for a $ 5000-10.000 Project which needs to be deliver in 6 weeks? ( Otherwise the customer wont be happy with you? )

        I agree, disabling features will speed up for testing, however many particles system and volumetric rendering need to be test in full at least a few frames. This is the case of smoke simulator, I guess for clouds is pretty much the same since it uses volumetric rendering.

  8. It is a very nice render. The only way I can think of to improve it (although I'm not sure if this can be done in Blender atm) would be if the voxels could be easily shifted around, as cloud vapors rarely sit still.

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