the best way to do skies

Support Basics & Interface
1

I’m working on a piece that involves a lot of ocean and skies, I’m wondering about ways of creating skies that may be animatable. I have so far had some success with using a huge 1/2 dome around my ocean mesh, the water picks up the reflections of the sky very well. My concern with this method is that with the spherical mapping required I won’t be able to paint the sky textures in a very intuitive way, and I can’t animate it. I don’t know much about the “world” settings, but it seems like a good way to go is to use the “world” shader for the background colour, and maybe model the clouds somehow. Any suggestions? Planes with procedurals? Volumetric effects?

the project blog is at: rimeoftheancientblender.blogspot.com

2

My guess: Textured skydome, with clouds made of stacked planes with alpha textures.

3

Do a search for volumetric clouds. Several Blender heads have created different variations in the past, I’m sure one of them should do for what you want.

Sonix.

4

you can make clouds out of particles too. it takes quite a few to make a good cloud though, so it will slow down your scene a bit.

5

I’d suggest a skydome or an anglemap, Your clouds should look too far away to look not apear part of the sky.