Free volumetric smoke plugins/techniques

[gordo3di]

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

[vizfx]

Some help from AREA - just MR (read the entire thread)

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/lighting---rendering/cg-clouds

Edited October 1, 2009 by vizfx

[gordo3di]

Wow stupid me I completely forgot the AREA and that tutorial gave me some good ideas. After 10 mins of playing around I came up with something that should work for my purposes. Real volumetrics would look nice but they are slow and I think this is good enough to start playing with.

 

I also had problems with mrSky and using haze. As someone said the clouds "look like a dust storm". This tutorial fixes those problems.

 

http://www.3digraphics.com/cga/sky1.jpg

http://www.3digraphics.com/cga/sky2.jpg

http://www.3digraphics.com/cga/sky3.jpg

http://www.3digraphics.com/cga/sky4.jpg

 

Combining this tutorial and displaced clouds might be the perfect answer.

 

Thanks