Learning OpenVDB Lightwave 2019

[prometheus]

OK, a few things to cover here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibtwbnZak20

Experiment with a modified supplied scene, (textures, lighting, added some movement)

But the big thing I did was to increase the frame rate in the scene, and then slowed the resulting video.
This seems a pretty good way of adjusting the pace of things! Not a perfect reproduction, but rather good.

Smaller steps also seemed to significantly reduce the calculation time per frame, which makes sense if it's an iterative process converging on a solution.

On the personal side, I've moved from London Uk, to Chisinau, Moldova!

You are more ahead of me in reference to the liquid VDB toolsets, I still have lot to discover there.

As for moldova? interesting.
The only thing I heard about it ...It is that it is claimed to be one of the poorer countries in Europe, that being said..I hope you are settling well there anyway and that there may be other things about the city and the country that attracts, or
family, friends that matters most, or job situation.

Personally I have never thought of moving and leaving Sweden, until more recent years..our society here is changing rapidly in a way I don´t like.

[starbase1]

Very low cost of living, my wife is from here so I have family. Internet is fast and cheap, and they don't tax alcohol, so a bottle of top quality champagne, (and I mean top) is about 5 euros. (It's one of the top wine regions in the world).

[starbase1]

My opinion on those Liberty 3d tutorials.

I found them helpful, and clearly presented, broken into sensible sized chunks. A good way to get started.

However, even with both the sets bought, there are some significant gaps in what is covered. For example, the clouds that you produce will look like smoke, not like cumulus style bright clouds with clearly defined edges. Maybe a second viewing will reveal something I missed the first time around.

[prometheus]

Very low cost of living, my wife is from here so I have family. Internet is fast and cheap, and they don't tax alcohol, so a bottle of top quality champagne, (and I mean top) is about 5 euros. (It's one of the top wine regions in the world).

Yes..I thought you had some family connection since you moved to this place, and figuring it would be cheap in many areas considering it´s poverty ranking, as long as you can feel safe in the neighborhood, decent job and salery etc..guess it´s just fine and dandy.
I am pretty much a non drinker, except for only 0,5 percent of alchol in some briska pear cider, which you can buy in the local grocery store, 4,5 percentage..I don´t like.
Whisky and liqueur is something I could take a zip on at christmas dinners or new years eve (don´t like champagne), but other than that..no beer or booze at all

My opinion on those Liberty 3d tutorials.

I found them helpful, and clearly presented, broken into sensible sized chunks. A good way to get started.

However, even with both the sets bought, there are some significant gaps in what is covered. For example, the clouds that you produce will look like smoke, not like cumulus style bright clouds with clearly defined edges. Maybe a second viewing will reveal something I missed the first time around.

As for any of the cloud series from Liberty, or vdb clouds, or primitive volumetrics or fluids, I honestly don´t think the results looks good for clouds..not from the small sample I have seen, that would be Gibsons I think.
Kelly has cloud training with TurbulenceFD, and also some with the primitive item volume mode, and fusion comping, that series is probably better..but is still not really impressive as to be decent clouds.

I reckon both those series may contain much valuable stuff anyway in terms of explaining and going throught what various settings does, and describing the underlying principles..so I can´t say much about that..other than the output results f or getting realistic cloud looks isn´t there.

VDB clouds could look better than what I can see from the samples in gibsons screenshots, perhaps he has better samples?
Then again, I have gone trough trials with the imported VDB assets for evaluating how well we could light the cloud, so that was purely a lighting and shading volume research, and my conclusion is that Lightwaves VDB shading(scattering density) and the GI for volume bouncing isn´t good enough compared to a certain alternative.
That thread you may have seen in the General discussion section.

For simulating clouds, I made a little fuzz on a houdini training series that looked very comprehensive in terms of studying real reference cloud movements and then adapting to a fluid simulation in houdini.

[starbase1]

Not a big drinker myself, but I'm learning to appreciate really good wine. Cost of living in general is about 1/3rd London.

Anyway, back at the graphics!

I tried some experiments with some cheap bought clouds, they came in 2 versions. I trued the hi and low res versions, and also made a fairly hunky change in the step size.
(Not using nodes for this yet, I want to keep things as simple as I can for experiments).

Any difference between high and low res was difficult to see.

What I was not expecting was that changing the step size would affect the cloud brightness a LOT.

Still not getting anything like nice fluffy sharp edged cumulus clouds. But there's a way to go yet.

[starbase1]

Aha! Getting somewhere, this is not too bad.

Again, keeping it simple for now. I turned off global illumination, and moved to a distant (dome) light, with a major boost in the effect on volumetrics.
I attach a screen shot for the settings I used, should anyone else want to play.

Nick

[prometheus]

Aha! Getting somewhere, this is not too bad.

Again, keeping it simple for now. I turned off global illumination, and moved to a distant (dome) light, with a major boost in the effect on volumetrics.
I attach a screen shot for the settings I used, should anyone else want to play.

Nick

Was it pixelab freebie clouds? some of those doesn´t look good from beginners, simply poorly done.
This one is a little better..https://www.thepixellab.net/new-text...free-vdb-cloud

I can showcase a blender render of it how sweet the GI is working on it a little later.

GI isn´t needed always, depends on if the cloud should scatter the light many times or not, not always a cloud or lighting conditions allow for that, but for that extra awesomeness, we need GI.
https://www.thepixellab.net/new-text...free-vdb-cloud


The Disney cloud asset seem to be gone from their site now..not sure if it is available or if one can redistribute it.

Have go and reclaim my keyboard for now and will get back within some hours.

As for your renders, yes..it´s shaping up, but the hard part is to get the whiteness, not being overblown by too strong light, or too much volumetric intensity, have it a bit thicker as well,
multiple scattering is sort of what takes place to brighten the cloud from the inside, without getting it to strongly lit, but it depends on overall Lighting condition of course.

On little rule to avoid, is to not cross over the original scattering densiity within the vdb, that will cause blocky artifacts, so that is a tricky part with vdb trying to get it thicker with scatteriing alone, when you shouldn´t overide that channels provided density.
So it´s also up to the actual original vdb to be thick enough.

[starbase1]

The clouds were from here:
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models...lume-1-1428125

I must say I'm looking very enviously at Embergen!
Real time?

Maybe not good for everything, but the flames and speed sure are impressive...

[starbase1]

A couple more clouds to be going on with.

Did the LW2020 upgrade make things much better for VDB's?

[prometheus]

The clouds were from here:
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models...lume-1-1428125

I must say I'm looking very enviously at Embergen!
Real time?

Maybe not good for everything, but the flames and speed sure are impressive...

Well..those VDB clouds aren´t very good looking ..I am sorry I have to say, and it´s about the noise, shape.
You can just run some sims with gas solver and get better results, or better yet, simulate some in blender and export to lightwave if you want to use that as vdb, but as mentioned..the multiple scattering ..and also rendering is better and faster, so they need to step up with GI and multiple bounces, and also...not falling behind anymore but apply GPU rendering.

Embergen, yes..pretty much realtime(in Embergen) depends on if you try the highest resolution there will be lag anyway, I haven´t downloaded and tested the later versions which I have to to soon, it´s a14 day full trial, meanin you can export as much as you want during that trial period and check out how it works for you, so make sure you have nothing to do but try the demo for 14 days, milk and cookies required



As for 2020..don´t know, haven´t even bothered to try it´s demo, neither upgrade..you need to ask someone else for that, if they haven´t enhanced it with proper multiple scattering..than I doubt it is that much better for clouds, and we know it still is cpu rendering..ergo, slower than a gpu for fast feedback in the viewport, unless you have invested in a very high end workstation specially with CPU cores in mind.

[prometheus]

Check...
https://forums.newtek.com/showthread...29#post1602129