Last night was weird… I couldn’t get to sleep but instead kept having brilliant ideas and was rather enjoying my thoughts. One of the things I spontaneously thought of was how to make clouds in blender. When I got to the computer I figured it out pretty darn easily, and whipped up a tutorial. This is just the first edition, I may expand it, add more pictures, and fix up typos/make certain parts easier to understand. Anyone should be able to do this, even the most noobish beginner. I even tell you the hotkeys and everything just in case you don’t know them. Please critique, and improve the tutorial so that it’ll be more useful for others. Enjoy!
Nate
Definitely a brilliant idea. It’s so simple but effective. Using it in a WIP right now because it fits the style, Thank you very much.
Do you have any critiques/fixes? I know I tend to write un-understandable stuff… so especially for beginners it may be hard. I want anyone to be able to use this.
Ok, pretty good cartoon clouds. The tutorial needs some work.
(Numpad 7 on a mac, not sure for PC) It’s the same for a PC.
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Add a 2D square to the scene and center it on the grid for evenness These are called Planes. How to “center on the grid for evenness”? Awkward phrase. You might want to tell people to center the 3d cursor to the grid. If the blue line can’t be seen, don’t mention it.
Add a 2D square to the scene and center it on the grid for evenness. The center is where the red, green and blue lines all intersect but the blue line won’t be visible if you’re in top view. These are also called xyz. (Add->Mesh->Plane)
In edit mode, select all four vertices by pressing A. If they are all selected, the plane will be purple with a yellow outline. The vertices are the yellow dots on the corners. With the complete object still selected in edit mode, press “x”. In the menu that pops up, select “only faces”. This will delete the center.
Delete all but one vertex, and move that one vertex to the center of the grid. (Select each vertex or select them all at once, and press “x”. Select vertices from the menu.)
Geeze, all that to get a single vertex? How about: Add a cube if you haven’t already got one by default. Go to edit mode, and select all the vertices (type a.) Then merge the vertices to center (Alt+m>>Merge At Center.)
- A pulldown menu labeled “Texture Type” will appear and in the box it will say “None”. Click on it, and select “Clouds” from the list. A box will appear, with some options for your cloud texture. Things like NoiseSize, NoiseDepth, and Noise Basis.
Set NoiseSize to 0.750 and NoiseDepth to 0. Then go back to the sphere.
Sphere? what sphere? You mean the materials buttons?
On the far right in the red sphere tab, there is a tab called “Map To”.
I have my buttons window set up vertically: this assumes the buttons are horizontal. The tab Map To is actually a panel. Panels can move, it may not always be on the right, even in a horizontal buttons window.
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OK, I’m not going to rewrite this. Here’s my suggestion: find out the standard terminology Blender.org uses for panels, sliders, windows, etc, and use those terms. Don’t get all cute with visual descriptions of leopard skin and radiation symbols, they aren’t as universal as you might think. Take screen shots and show instead of tell.
Spend some time telling people what they are doing, rather than just guide their hand to the right keys to press.
This has some potential. You might also want to point out the possibility of combining two sets of halos with different halo sizes, to get away from the pile of spheres look.
See? I do this all the time lol. I will definitely work on terminology and all that. Thanks for the post!
Nate
Who would have thought that’s possible? hehe! Great work. 
The simplest way to get the beginning set up, which seems to be a line of vertices, is this:
Start with any object in edit mode (the cube, the icosphere, Suzanne… doesn’t matter which one.) Select all vertices (type a) and delete them (x>>Vertices.) Then hold down the control key, LMB click to create a vertex, move the mouse to the right or left, and repeat until you have a line of eight vertices.
version two is up. Also the address is new because I was fixing my website to accommodate the new information and pages I’ve put up. I added more pictures, used correct terminology, circled important stuff in the pictures, explained things, added some stuff to the end, hopefully all this made it better. The new link is here.
http://web.me.com/lipton_lover/Eversoft/Misc/Misc.html
Don’t ask why it says travels through the east, just a fluke of iweb lol.
Please feel free to share this, I don’t and am not going to copyright it in any way. Post the link, host it on your website, take the credit for writing it, edit it, whatever you want. But if you do edit it just make sure you take the credit for the changes not me. I’m still open to suggestions, and typos that may exist.
Nate
Link seems to be dead, anyone have a copy of this tut?
EDIT
Link is http://web.me.com/lipton_lover/Eversoft1/Misc/Entries/2008/8/26_Travels_through_the_east.html