Alan's Cloud Generator - RC1

[RipSting]

Update March 20th:
Release Candidate 1 is released! Updates include:
A better real-time preview system
A second texture channel to create additional types of clouds
More procedural texture types, including Blend, Clouds, Marble, Musgrave and Voronoi
Six built-in presets of common cloud types
The ability to specify which layers to put the billboards and control empties on
A cloud-shading colorband control with colorpickers
A whole lot of code cleanup. The Cloud Generator is now around 50KB instead of 140KB.

Update March 8th:
There was an error in translating the clouds if you edited the vertices of the bounding box. This has been corrected.

Hi Blenderheads,
I've been doing a lot of atmospheric modeling lately and wrote a script that generates some cool interactive volumetric clouds! Not only can you see the shape of your clouds in the interactive 3D window, but you can animate their properties with IPO curves.



When you're done automatically generating points, you can edit them and delete the clouds that you don't want. Then, it turns the clouds you DO want into faked volumetrics. I say fake, because it will only render correctly from the camera's perspective, so it won't work that well yet with extreme reflections.




Example renderings:




Watch the Animated "lifecycle" video (link)
Watch its Interaction with solids (link)

Download Alan's Cloud Generator

[free_ality]

Wow, those are some impressive stills, especially the top one.

Great work!

[Ace Dragon]

Wow, a cloud generator, looks like a good script to be included in 2.46.

Will there be a more advanced algorithm that allows many variations in pattern over large areas?

[Friday13]

It's RipSting! I was wondering where you'd gone off to.

The script is looking great. I'll have to give it a try.

(that was your 1000th post!)

[Felix_Kütt]

now all we really need is the DSM.
and wed be in heaven, in a sense..

edit: just saying.

[Vassilios]

Wow!!!
Great Script!
Thanks man..!
It works Great....making nice Clouds Yeah!

[afecelis]

Great script! Thanks for sharing. Mods please move this thread into "python & plugins"

[Felix_Kütt]

Originally Posted by afecelis Mods please move this thread into "python & plugins"

why? i find this to be news announcement.

[meschoyez]

amazing. Thanks a lot!

[blendman]

waho
thank you very much .
The vidéos are very interesting !

[egan]

These are really, really nice. Good job!

[RipSting]

Thanks for all your kind words. It is good to be back, Friday13! Over the next few months I'm thinking of developing an ocean/lake surface generator and a volumetric underwater shader. I already have the techniques for these, but haven't written the code yet.

Anyway, when I mentioned before that these clouds were animatable I meant it!

1) When the billboards are created, there are also two empties that appear - CloudName_Translate and CloudName_Darkening. If you've already generated billboards, and would like to move your clouds to another place, make sure to move these empties along with the planes to preserve their appearance! However, you can animate their location, rotation, and even size to animate the clouds.

o By moving Translate empty you can simulate wind.
o By moving and sizing the Darkening empty you can make the clouds look darker like rainclouds or brighter like they're in the sun. It's Z-Axis is basically a colorband from dark to light that multiplies the cloud's intensity.

2) Another way to change the appearance of the clouds post-generation is to alter the main texture on the planes. This texture occupies the first slot in the materials' textures. By altering the brightness you can increase or decrease the thickness of the clouds. The contrast controls how hard or soft the edges are and gives them a greater sense of depth. The maximum value for contrast, unfortunately, is 5.0 but you can actually increase contrast by adjusting the colorband values so that they are closer together. Both brightness and contrast are keyframable, but only by going into the IPO window [Shift-F6], selecting Texture in the drop-down list and adding the curve by hand.

Using only these techniques I created the videos in my first post.

These images should speak for themselves, and have to do with viewing the clouds interactively and preparing them for rendering.





By the way: You will get better performance from less points and larger planes! So slide that "Points/Blender Unit" value down.

[Kai Kostack]

congratulations to this script. it's easy to use, gives very nice results even with only a few billboards, so it's also very fast.

one little suggestion, you could add all cloud related objects to a group. so it would be easier to select everything if you want to change the whole thing.

[tedi]

"Interaction with solids" looks quite fine as well. "Fairy-tale" vibe-ish.

[cekuhnen]

terrific work

this looks amazing. will it work fine with the new sunsky option?

claas

[MrHurst]

I am trying to run this script, and all I get is an Invalid Syntax Error. I saved the txt filed, opened it into the text editor, and pressed ALT+P, then I get the error. Any ideas what Im doing wrong?

[Kai Kostack]

@MrHurst:
if you'd post the full error message somebody could probably help you.

[MrHurst]

Originally Posted by Kai Kostack @MrHurst: if you'd post the full error message somebody could probably help you.

Sorry fella, here goes I get Python Script Error, Check Console.

So in the console it says:
File "cloudgen_py.mht", line 10
__author__=3D 'Alan Dennis'
Syntax Error: Invalid Syntax

Is it something to do with the text file be name a *mht?

[Kai Kostack]

where does "3D" in this line come from?

correct would it be like this:
__author__= 'Alan Dennis'

maybe you should redownload it in case you made other unintentional changes.

and since this is a python script you should save it as *.py.

[MrHurst]

Originally Posted by Kai Kostack where does "3D" in this line come from? correct would it be like this: __author__= 'Alan Dennis' maybe you should redownload it in case you made other unintentional changes. and since this is a python script you should save it as *.py.

Redownloaded it, renamed it *.py and it works, thanks for your help!