The modelīe it a horizontal bank of clouds looming above, or puffy clouds along the horizon, you’ll need to start with an array of flat planes. And to top it all off, the alpha channels make it a great solution for matte paintings, 2.5D environments, and compositing. Depending on the number of geometry layers and the complexity of the setup, they can also render faster and cleaner than hypervoxels. By using procedural shaders (which are naturally volumetric), gradients, and even images to control density, we can create believable clouds fairly easily, and often with far more control over shape and feel. The layered setup also means it should only be viewed from one side, and never perpendicularly to the planes of geometry.ĭespite the limitations, this technique can excel in many situations. Such a fix is not as easy for placing solid objects inside the object area. Because it uses layered geometry, flying through the effect requires a little extra texturing to fade out the areas immediately surrounding the camera, so as to avoid suddenly moving through a non-transparent layer.
The effect works best with back lighting or other setups that cater to translucency.
The nodal texture editor makes this effect all the more convenient, and can give surprisingly good results, so long as a few qualifiers are met. Even if you get something that looks ok, render times can be prohibitively long, and often suffer from severe quality issues and noise.Īn easier, simpler, and much older technique for simulating volumetric bodies (in this case, clouds) is to use multiple transparent layers of geometry. Lightwave’s Hypervoxel system can, and has been, used for some pretty cool effects. Faking Volumetric Clouds iaian7 » tutorials » lightwave John Einselen, 7.02.09 (updated 10.04.11)
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