They are spheres, but instead of hard polygonal outer edges, the material gives them, well, cloudy fluff.
You’ll also notice that the closer you get, the more transparent you are so you don’t know when you pass through them.
Actually, there was another motive for creating this particular material. It’s going to turn into … clouds! The reason for the color? Well, the rest of the environment so far looks like:
So I think they’ll fit in.
The node setup includes:
Box mapping
View-angle-based-transparency
Distance-based-transparency
I would post a screenshot of it here, but because it is all grouped, I can’t get it all in.
So you’ll just have to download the blend and have a play: Cloud Test 3.blend (698 KB)
Thanks to someone who’s name I have forgotten who posted a box-mapping node setup on the BGE facebook group last month. I didn’t end up using that method, but it was some good inspiration.
looks amazing! Though I prefer related nodes to be framed instead of grouped since there’s not much node spagetti.
This sort of effect looks like subsurface scattering, so why not improve it by using an SSS method that actually uses a thickness map? here’s SSS that I’ve had for some time, it uses vertex colors as a thickness map, though you’d have to use a thickness texture for your type of clouds.