Hello all,
I've been searching for some free plugins (or very cheap) or techniques to render volumetric smoke mainly to create clouds which react to the sunlight in the background of my architectural renderings.
I know about afterburn, fume fx, and all the other plugins which work amazing but given the economy I don't have the money to spend on these plugins right now (expecially since they are just for the backgrounds or animations) and I wish to remain honest.
I'm using 3ds max and mental ray and ive tried the mental ray volumetric shaders to try to fake it but to no avail. I used the environment fire effect in 3ds max but it doesnt work with mental ray and it doesnt have self shading. Ive tried particle systems with opacity maps mapped on planes etc... and got close but its still not behaving how I want. Ive tried modeling 3d clouds and making several different materials using sss and other techniques but doesnt work.
I remember years ago (around 3ds max 3-4) I found some useful volumetric smoke plugins but i cant remember where or what they were called (maybe blur reyes or something). Anyone have any ideas. Im not looking for the plugins to look amazing just something to render volumetric effects that looks decent enough.
Thanks for the help
