quick study on volumetric clouds

[SgWRX]

just did a quick study on using volumetric clouds for a render.

 

observations:

 

• standard material - with opacity map took 12 mins to render just this portion (see attached)
  
• standard material - with opacity map didn't need any tweaks to max trace depth settings in mr render settings
  
• standard material was used with "face map" option selected
  

 

• mentalray a&d material - used same opacity bitmap in the cutout, couldn't figure out how to do a "face map", so did a snap shot of the pcloud and added a uvw map modifier set to "face".
  
• mentalray a&d material - took 2m12s to render the whole images (attached is only about 30% of the scene)
  
• mentalray a&d material - had to up the max trace depth settings to 18 and max refractions to 18 before i got rid of most of the artifacts
  
• down fall with this is animating the clouds to move a bit because i've converted the pcloud to a mesh
  

 

i also tried "pass through" on the cloud object for FG settings and it seemed OK if not a little less grey around the edges.

 

i can see using volumetric clouds to help add interest to otherwise basic rendered images.

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