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I've recently had some time to investigate a possible workaround to generate clouds with the daylight system. I've now put this material onto the database under the misc directory.Its called Cloud Generator V1.0

Basically you need to create a skydome to cover your scene.The skydome needs to be mapped with its normals facing inwards.Assign a dummy texture in your modeling app to the dome, then after loading your scene into octane,attach the Cloud generator to the skydome.

Use the daylight system and adjust the time of day.

then adjust the three controls called Cloud Size,Cloud Cover and Cloud offset position to alter the type and amount of cloud and their position in the sky.
Please see screen shots below.

The system isn't perfect but you may find by playing around with the 3 sliders that you can generate some reasonably decent looking clouds.

I've also uploaded my simple test system if you want to just have a play with the settings.

Have fun

Jaba

Very nice indeed. I have a use for that in my current scene.

Looks awesome!!

Just threw the cloud generator into an HDR scene and it works really well. Originally I had a plane acting as background clouds... this worked so much better and it does not cast "plane shadows or block light with plane geometry" but if I correct this actually lets light through the clouds in the dome and should cast shadows onto the ground as well. Is that right?

This is only one minute on a scene with scattered grass and lamps and renders pretty slowly regardless.

Question though to clarify my thinking. If you use an HDR scene or sunlight and have "keep_environment" enabled and "alphachannel" OFF in your kernel settings. Then the "sky" created by either the sunlight or HDR will stay with the rendered image. As your could dome has some transparency to it then what is behind it and "enabled" just becomes part of your finished render. So what you tweak is what you get as opposed to having to use a background mesh, or an alpha channel that might not register correctly.

Very bloody nice mate!!!

Peter

Very nice. This should come in handy. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the compliments.

The only problems I've found with it so far are that you can get a lot of reflected colour off other objects in the scene, back onto the clouds.Except in direct lighting - ambient occlusion mode, where the clouds remain white.Also unfortunately it cannot generate nimbus or certain other types of clouds.

see for ref:http://airlineworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/cloud-types/

For Ref the plugin will not work on a plane,only on an irregular surface (like a dome).

One other thing you might like to try is to alter the mesh size of the dome. this will also change the nature of the cloud formations along with using the controls.

Jaba

Thanks mate, it looks great ...i will try it.
Thanks again.

cheers
resmas

Let this one cook overnight... less noise and I stretched the vertical scale of the dome to get thicker clouds and less reflection of the lights in the clouds themselves. In this sunset shot the lights showing up in the clouds probably helps : > )

Peter

Thought i'd try this test

stuck an airliner model halfway through a rough mesh layer with a further rough mesh layer below

I applied the cloud generator to both layers

after 20 mins of playing with the sliders for both layers , i came up with this!

see below.

A final test

changed the view of the 787 Dreamliner and changed the underlying cloud formations.Added some contrails also using the cloud plugin ( they seem to work OK after adjustment) then finalized in Photoshop with some motion blur to give it an impression of speed.

Thanx Jaberwocky,
.
This is awsome. Thanx for sharing.
This makes mixing two renderings (daylight and hdr) or postproduction (adding sky when using alpha background) less needed,
and that is very handy when making animations. And besides that... It is very cool to make a rendering with just 3d objects instead of cloud image.
Again, this is awsome.

I am using the (fantastic!) Archicad plugin (by Face_off) and at this point the node for Cover clouds is not adjustable when having imported the material form the Live DB.
Hopefully the API of Octane will make it impossible soon to get the node points of the gradient node,
because at this point that is not possible.
The two other nodes work fine, so maybe there is another way to set up the material for cover clouds in a a way it is also usable in plugins? If not, I 'll just have to wait for the new API to make it work... Hopefully it will.

See ya,