Clouds playground!

[romullus]

Is the 'apply shadows from clouds' checkbox located in the Corona Sky component?

It's in the sun object's parameters.

[danio1011]

We continue to love the clouds.  However we're working on an island project right now where it's typical to see distant clouds on the horizon (pink at sunset, etc) but NO clouds above you.  It's just a certain 'look' we're after.  Is that possible with the corona sky clouds?  I've modified the seed endlessly, and dropped the height limit to as low as I can but just can't quite seem to create a 'horizon bias.'

Thanks!

[lupaz]

Also feature request - i would love to have an option for partial cloud coverage. No need for something fancy like painting maps for explicit control, a simple spinner "horizon bias" would be already great - quite often IRL you can see beautiful clouds over horizon, while sky overhead is completely clear, it would be nice to be able to replicate this in Corona.

Romullus mentioned this before and I'd like to add a +1 for this.

[JoeS]

So I have a question about motion blur with the clouds I can get motion blur if I animate the camera and just rotate it. But if I animate the clouds with Offset x say around 1000m and use a long shutter speed I get no motion blur with the clouds. I am trying to shoot like I would do with landscape photography. Any ideas ?

[JoeS]

As you can see the render is motion blur of the camera rotating with clouds and a reflective ground plane. But I would like to use a longer shutter speed to create cloud motion blur like you would in real world photography. After testing, is this a missing feature ? I have attached a real photo to show what it needs to be doing so the rest of the scene can remain static and unaffected.

[romullus]

Did you try to activate geometry in Corona camera's motion blur rollout?

[JoeS]

Hi romullus

Yes I have tried with geometry enabled on the camera and both camera and object at the same time etc.

[JoeS]

Another question can you have light shafts through the gaps in the clouds or is this just a 2D map ?

[TomG]

Motion blur is not possible with clouds at the moment, either for their movement of for camera translations - as you note the only thing that will generate blur is if the camera is rotating. From my personal testing, light rays through the clouds do not work (that is, volumetrics). Hope this helps and is not too disappointing!

[JoeS]

Hi Tom

Thanks again for your reply's and taking the time. I did test light rays with a volumetric material in the global volume material slot. I was hoping that since the clouds are able to cast shadows that this would enable a light shaft effect. Not gonna lie Clouds being a major feature of the corona 9 release this seems like a missed opportunity even if it is faked in some way for render speed. It would have given some really creative tools for archviz that have been missing. I will test it with scattered VDB's see what I can come up with I know Terragen creates lush VDB clouds that can be exported. I have attached some real photo samples for future reference. 

[maru]

Here is a trick:
Set up your scene with the animation you wish (e.g. animated clouds, some animated geometry - whatever you wish).
Do not enable motion blur.
Render your image as a sequence with pass limit set to 1 (it could be more if you wish to get better overall quality) and save each frame in CXR format.
Then open CIE, use the "merge" option in CIE, and pick your CXR frames.

You should get something similar to motion blur as the frames will be simply stacked on each other.

You can also use a different format and stack them in other software.

To get a different motion blur curve, you would probably have to adjust the shape of the animation curves in the 3ds Max curve editor.

[Ondra]

We continue to love the clouds.  However we're working on an island project right now where it's typical to see distant clouds on the horizon (pink at sunset, etc) but NO clouds above you.  It's just a certain 'look' we're after.  Is that possible with the corona sky clouds?  I've modified the seed endlessly, and dropped the height limit to as low as I can but just can't quite seem to create a 'horizon bias.'

Thanks!

try doing cloudy + cloudless CoronaSky and blending them with some angle-based falloff map... maybe it will work reasonably...

[JoeS]

We continue to love the clouds.  However we're working on an island project right now where it's typical to see distant clouds on the horizon (pink at sunset, etc) but NO clouds above you.  It's just a certain 'look' we're after.  Is that possible with the corona sky clouds?  I've modified the seed endlessly, and dropped the height limit to as low as I can but just can't quite seem to create a 'horizon bias.'

Thanks!

try doing cloudy + cloudless CoronaSky and blending them with some angle-based falloff map... maybe it will work reasonably...

If you play with the improved model altitude and cloud position altitude you can get some ok results. The biggest problem is the gradient at the horizon line that fades out the clouds, would be nice to be able to reduce it. Would make it look cleaner and further in the distance like the attached photo.   

[dj_buckley]

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the brightness intensity of the clouds doesn't scale with the sun multiplier.

So if the sun is on, the clouds go really bright, if you reduce the sun multiplier to say 0.1, the clouds brightness doesn't change.  They only change when you turn the sun off completely.

[rowmanns]

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the brightness intensity of the clouds doesn't scale with the sun multiplier.

So if the sun is on, the clouds go really bright, if you reduce the sun multiplier to say 0.1, the clouds brightness doesn't change.  They only change when you turn the sun off completely.

Hey,

Which Corona version?

Rowan