I'm having a hard time getting a good set-up to produce volumetric 3D clouds the camera can fly through--it's pretty frustrating trying random settings out as they take so long to render. Can someone provide me with the settings that would at least get me off to a good start, or perhaps
(even better) arrange to send me a sample max file? Any assistance would be really appreciated--thanks!
Just reread your post, at first I thought you were having trouble getting good 3D clouds, only.
It now looks like you're looking for good settings for a fly through that won't take too long. I'm trying some stuff.
Don,
Thanks. I'll give it a try and let you know what develops. Also found other parts of your site useful, and even remember doing your "Six-minute scene tutorial" back in the day. Really appreciate the help!
Ha ha, cool, in fact I just restored the old web site yesterday.
I wasn't doing anything with the space, so I thought better to have the older stuff than almost nothing.
Thanks for letting me know it's been helpful.
Let me know how your present project goes,
Don
Well, I couldn't get the same rendering results with your second file (the one with the moving camera), but found the initial set-up to be extremely useful for what I was going for anyway. Using these settings will provide an excellent fly-through (though it does take forever to render), but unfortunately what you can't do in Dreamscape is pan your camera straight down to look at the cloud deck, since the clouds/sky don't exist past the arbitrary horizon line (a feature I've never liked since my first use of the software). I suppose a workaround for this would be to invert your camera and actually film the clouds from below, which would allow you to pan 'down' on them all you want.
I seem to remember another website where someone had posted some great cloudscapes he had created using Dreamscape, but he wasn't as generous as you were in sharing the settings he'd used to get them. Once again, thanks for the great assist.
I think I may know the site you are referring to about the clouds,
but my first search didn't come up with it. Don't really have time to get deeper into it,
but may try again, if I don't get too distracted in the morning.
One site you might have seen was one by Johannes Schorby (not sure about the spelling), but I haven't been able to find it.
Yep, that was the guy! He did great stuff with the cloud feature, but (unlike you) was pretty mum about the details. . .
Wondering if DS will be Max 9 compatible, and when they'll get around to making it work with Mental Ray. . .
Hello,
All our plugins follow 3ds max version release schedule.
We already have 3ds max 9 compatible builds that are undergoing testing procedures.
Mental Ray compatibility is a another story and not that easy to do as it's a stand alone renderer and not integrated as fR, Brazil of VRay are.
Regards,
Kresimir
Kresimir,
Thanks for the update. It's funny though, from a user's standpoint, that Mental Ray, which is included with the Max license, is considered stand-alone, while the others are not. . .
