Lightwave volumetric Items, clouds and sky moods, planet clouds, fog, godrays Part 2.

[prometheus]

Just sharing if someone feels to discuss the volumetric system, what can be improved or what I did here and there, pro´s and cons etc.
mostly just screenshots of never finished never ending experiments, some of them not fully iterated to full quality, but you get the idea, most of these are quite big in scale trying to match real world scale clouds, unlike the provided LW content.

Everything here is just volumetric clouds, no photos involved.

Planet clouds are shape item and volume item, at real earth diameter size and the cloud sphere is the same, fully volumetric as well, though this one should be more smoother in density, I think I have much better stuff in there, but didn´t take screenshots of those yet, it´s like 191 incremental scenefiles for planet clouds, so I have a lot to go trough only for planet clouds, and just imagine everything else.

Various moods from feather clouds, godrays etc, fog and almost sunsets, some godrays, like that over water is global scattering, all distant suns, always tricky to get those right with volumetric distance, and if not careful edge dark clipping can occour as in this case to demonstrate that, you can adjust that by pulling back volumetric distance, as well as adjusting the actual textures to be more soft, with curves for instance.
Other godrays as the one with more fog in the bottom, that is not global volumetric scattering, but a fog volumetric items, so I can control groung fog and set a mood similar to real behavior where it fades up higher in the sky but yet tinting it redish orange green to some degree, and I do not have to worry about clipping as global scattering, nor volumetric distance settings.

there is no global illumination in anyone of these images, in these two first, you can see the difference between one cloud with environment light to help illuminated the back part where light isn´t penetrating and one without and how that looks like.
As always, we miss fast renders with GPU and a truly proper volume bounce multiple scatter method, and we miss infinite cloud layers as well, and spectra atmosphere..and, well enough for now.


[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kW8Ger]ScreenShot 03-11-21 at 02.51.26 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kW8Ga8]ScreenShot 03-11-21 at 03.54.41 AM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kW43bj]ScreenShot 03-10-21 at 06.52.22 AM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]


[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWda92]ScreenShot 03-10-21 at 11.54.35 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kW7uup]ScreenShot 12-31-20 at 04.46.22 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]


[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWbwmA]ScreenShot 01-18-21 at 07.22.12 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWbwqZ]ScreenShot 01-18-21 at 02.46.38 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kW8Gss]Layout_IvXjpBne1N by [/URL]

[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/187886675@N08/]Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]


[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWbwLJ]ScreenShot 04-28-21 at 06.51.31 AM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWda11]ScreenShot 04-28-21 at 02.28.31 AM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWbw7Y]ScreenShot 12-28-20 at 02.24.48 AM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]


[url=https://flic.kr/p/2kWbwv8]ScreenShot 01-09-21 at 08.15.21 PM by Michael Ivarsson, on Flickr[/URL]

 

[erikals]

 

[lardbros]

To be honest Prometheus, you've nailed all of these! They all look great!!

 

[prometheus]

To be honest Prometheus, you've nailed all of these! They all look great!!

Thank´s,
Always room for improvement, when I find out which stuff I wan´t to enhance that is.
Still some fractal adjustments that I think i necessary to enhance it all.

 

[erikals]

posted a link on Facebook, glad to share you got 48 likes Prometheus

https://www.facebook.com/groups/lightwiki/permalink/3536329539806353

 

[prometheus]

posted a link on Facebook, glad to share you got 48 likes Prometheus

https://www.facebook.com/groups/lightwiki/permalink/3536329539806353

Hey ..Thanks mate,

I could get an facebook account, I may have one, but I rather not, so if they wan´t some answers ..perhaps tell them to jump in to this thread instead, but I reckon they may shun away from these forums if they are there mostly.

Anyway, there are some questions there I could and would like to answer, but there you go.

None of these are VDB, Lightwave needs VDB fog volumes to be improved.

And no, don´t think I could pull these types of clouds off in blender, not with the same easy though the principles with volumetrics is doable and fractals, but it´s just that blenders fractals can´t compete ..not when it comes to cloud stuff, as for Blender cloud vdb and volume bounces as I showed with the disney asset, that is a completely different thing VS Lightwave.

Octane for blender perhaps...or more likely, Lino showcased some of that.
I also tried some cloud preset setups similar to this in blender, but still not as good, and in fact quite slow to render, but hard to compare since it by default runs with GI active.

No ..you can´t bake these clouds as old hypervoxels either.
and VDB mixing, it´s not gonna look nice...I would gladely throw in fluid simulations, but first they need to be very high res, and secondly, they can´t match the shading of volume items due to the lack of shadow density controls.

And yes, terragen is also slow, 1 hour or even much more, with my computer is to be expected, but then you have to keep in mind that Terragen renders with GI, and all the other elements such as terrain micropoy rendering, and complex algorithms for volumetric scattering on top of that..which is at another level than the scattering in Lightwave, if that was to be in lightwave as well...then gosh, goodnight.

 

[erikals]

I could get an facebook account, I may have one, but I rather not,

yeah, here too, the Only reason i got it was because of LightWave on FB

Thank You so much for sharing and giving more answers, i linked a FB post on it.
But yeah,"They" mostly hang over there.

I miss some activity over here, but hey...

yup, not far off from my conclusions...

thanks again!

 

[RPSchmidt]

How did you create the clouds? Is it just VDB and fractals? What are the node setups?

I have asked before if you would create some tutorials and personally, I am willing to spend money purchasing them if you perhaps hosted them with Liberty3d or some such.

Last question; on your Earth atmospheric clouds, should their tops be just a bit flatter? If so, is that possible?

Beautiful cloud work as always!

 

[ary3d]

Amazing results!

 

[prometheus]

How did you create the clouds? Is it just VDB and fractals? What are the node setups?

I have asked before if you would create some tutorials and personally, I am willing to spend money purchasing them if you perhaps hosted them with Liberty3d or some such.

Last question; on your Earth atmospheric clouds, should their tops be just a bit flatter? If so, is that possible?

Beautiful cloud work as always!

In this case, no VDB, only fractals with primitive item volume.

Takes to much time to describe the node setups for each image, and especially for all.
Yes, will have to think about tutorials again then.

Tops can be flatter, thinner..it is a bit tricky perhaps since you still want some variations in cloud depth, but I would probably agree on that for more realism to earth clouds, they should be thinner, and only small regions that "pops" up as high pillar clouds, that is very tricky with just one cloud layer, and also tricky if you add another null volume item to float over the others, especially since it requires a completely different scale for that litte extra pillar volume..and that changes scattering and other settings drasticly..which you can´t just copy and paste, and it´s hard to match the main "Global" cloud layer.

 

[LightWaveGuru]

"and VDB mixing, it´s not gonna look nice..."

in LW 2020 (but also in LW 2019) you can cleanly interpolate, subtract or add the different volumes with the boolean functions and then save new VDBs that can be rendered cleanly.

snip LWGuru

 

[prometheus]

"and VDB mixing, it´s not gonna look nice..."

in LW 2020 (but also in LW 2019) you can cleanly interpolate, subtract or add the different volumes with the boolean functions and then save new VDBs that can be rendered cleanly.

snip LWGuru

Rene, are you talking about Liquids now? I think you misunderstand this, Liquid VDB´s has no place here, we talk about fog volume VDB´s here for clouds, and I talked about the fact it lacks shadow density control ,which is a parameter allowing for soften/decrease the darkness, VDB volumes/fog mode do not have that.

Booleans functions isn´t appliable on fog volumes, that is what I and others were talking about.
You can´t interpolate them in any such way.

If you managed to add and subtract fog volumes directly as fog, and also interpolate filter the volume itselt, that would be news to me and interesting to hear if you found a way?

I will however still not overcome the lack of that shadow density control ..which is a bit crucial for the looks.
We could go to houdini and smooth filter vdb volumes to soften things up, but I am only at experimental stage on that, just as well as fusing different fog volumes together from different fog fluid simulations.

As you tend to refer to liquids, keep in mind that this thread will not deal with such VDB items, unless you push your luck for it
But you did answered to this specificly about fog, so I am just confused what you mean here, I did refer to this mixing of VDB in reference to VDB mix with volume item and the difference in looks between them.

If you did misunderstand, it´s all fine, just be clear about it.
And while you are here, how was it with octane and volumetric fog rendering, could it access all lw procedural textures, and especially dpon´ts rman collection or not?

 

[Tim Parsons]

These are really great Prometheus! I mean really great!

 

[prometheus]

These are really great Prometheus! I mean really great!

Thanks, but it still needs to up 20-50 percent, til I can say I would be satisfied, part of that is also multiple scattering not working as I believe it should, if at all.
Unfortunately no one is jumping in and showcase octane samples, and that is a part we need to discuss, VDB is one thing, volume item with these fractal types another thing..Octane would need to acess those ( I know it has it´s own)

Currently checking back to some VDB stuff, and with the most tedious workflow, blender fluid smoke sim, in to lightwave to remesh it as an obj, save it out and send to houdini and cloud rig it with noise and converting to vdb volumes with control over vdb resolution(can´t do that without resimulate that takes a lot of time)
This way I can pick out some vdb stills and make each one a mesh, fuse them and manipulate with blender remesher to use as model assets, and then convert through houdini to get volumes at the right resolution...and on top of that add houdini noise types to expand on the simple simulation, then save out to VDB and render in Lightwave or Blender, lightwave can have some interestin shading, but hard to adjust, while blender does a proper job at multiple volume scatter bouncing.

I managed to tweak the shading so that It´s decent in Lightwave, but still lacks just that multiple scatter effect, even if I raise indirect illumination to several hundreds.
As mentioned, for VDB´s..octance inside of Lightwave would be the thing.

 

[erikals]

Octane

i'm 95% certain that Octane renders would look Great.

send a sample scene to LightWave Guru and make him render it !

Win-win!

 

[prometheus]

i'm 95% certain that Octane renders would look Great.

send a sample scene to LightWave Guru and make him render it !

Win-win!

i'm 95% certain that Octane renders would look Great.

send a sample scene to LightWave Guru and make him render it !

Win-win!

Nah..he doesn´t seem so interested, or have time for it, He got the links to VDB disney assets to showcase how it could look with octane, but he didn´t really joined in to test that.
And for simple volume item, he´s got that as well ..it´s not that hard to check if a standard volume cloud (though It´s not really standard volume, it uses it´s own I think(
can be rendered inside of octane with native and rman textures, he doesn´t need my setups for that, as he point´s out himself..we only show so much, the rest is up for testing and learning.

Not sure if Lino or Rene said something about octane and the connection to Lightwave native procedurals and dpont rman, can´t recall..maybe they did, if I would ever consider octane, it got to have that working..even though I think it may have some nice fractals exclusively made for octane.

 

[erikals]

Nah..

ah, too bad. you'd have to hunt for an Octane user willing to test.

until then...

 

[erikals]

inspiration >

 

[prometheus]

inspiration >

Yes, nice..at that rate you could almost believe it´s just another fluid simulation.
and I think I actually need to do something about the situation and not rely on other users test, or even confirming how well octane performs, or what it is acessing.

Solution is to invest in something, what I am yet doing research on, and it may not be until some months anyway..need to make sure some income is in place and what the situation is around corona reliefs, vaccines etc.

Unfortunately there isn´t much to do if not Even Octane can access these fractals, I would be stuck with slow rendering unless investing in cpu of course, which may be one the inverstments anyway, but that will only solve render speed to some degree, I am still stuck with the bad multiple scattering, which I can do much nicer in you know what, but I can´t utilize that either for these kind of stuff with it´s horrible set of fractals.

but again, I heard rumours about Lightwave development kicking in for real this time, with new enhanced multiple scattering, and a GPU renderer, case solved...In my dreams.

 

[prometheus]

And some more of those planet clouds, I got so many more versions that I can´t post them all ..not right now.

​

RPSchmidt asked about flattening top and bottom I think, which is doable, see image 3 though I should perhaps make them even thinner, what you need to do after that is to adjust that clamping with additional fractals so you just don´t ge a completely flat top.

Environment light is not really recommended for render speed, it adds rendertime drasticly, so if avoidable don´t use it.
And comparing to just flat image clouds, i´s maybe some minute vs hour, but I have the freedom to tweak clouds almost to what my skills and imagination can mustard, and also make it animatable, and fully reacting more realisticly than the image map way, but not always that is necessary of course.

To showcase...

1. No environment light

2. With environment light

3. Clamping top and bottom of the cloud layer ( to flat)

4. Adjusting the clamp with a secondary fractal layer, this one a completely different fractal than the underlying main cloud layer which mostly in this case becomes a distribution cloud density layer, and the secondary adresses the cloud height, can go thinner I think as well, maybe later.

5. Just a different fractal.

6. And some more depth again, increased atmosphere size and increased shadow density wich makes it a bit tougher for light to pass trough the atmosphere and thus a bit redish at the end length.
You can tweak this endlessly it seems, increase absorbtion, change assymetry/anisotrophy, change color scattering values, change shadow intensity, change overall atmosphere density, and all this just in the atmosphere layers, much more can also be adressed in the actual cloud layer.

I could experiment by using more cloud layers as well, manually adjusting single peak null cloud layer that would act as a single high pillar cloud is tough though, partly because of the scale at 6.4 Mm in radius I work at, and how different the scattering and all other parameters are depending on the actual scale of the null/volume..so it´s not easy to match shading exactly and you just can´t copy and paste from the main layer and expect that to look good, my bet is to actually just clone main cloud layer and use a different fractal land clamping functions.