How to make realistic clouds

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:49 pm

Hi

I was thinking a long time ago about making a video tutorial to explain how to make realistic clouds with AS but i havent had time so i decided to leave you here a file of it and a short explanation:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6VZ4FGV4

What you have to do is simply:

-first make a random shape with the drawings tool, make it white,
and reduce its alpha value.

-Then go to layer settings, in noise settings check noise fills and set the values in

offset: 18 and scale: 4.

The values dont have to be exactly these ones, they can be different values and still get a great result.

Check the file and you will have a better idea of what i im talking about.

If you wish you can create a layer on top of the layer with the clouds, make a square that fills the whole screen and fill it with any color, then change its layer blending mode and you will get interesting results like these ones:

Enjoy!

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Wed Mar 10, 2010 11:29 pm

Thanks Parker, that's nice of you to show your file so we can study it!

toonertime · Post by **toonertime** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:05 am

i never used noisy fills, just animated fill.
thanks for the tips

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:07 am

It looks very well and nicely done. Just a drawback: you cannot use it for animation because the noisy fills changes on each frame. It has to be rendered and imported as image to be able to move or to camera pan.
-G

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 1:09 am

Genete wrote:It looks very well and nicely done. Just a drawback: you cannot use it for animation because the noisy fills changes on each frame. It has to be rendered and imported as image to be able to move or to camera pan.
-G

Yes you are totally right, thats a little problem but its solved the way you said it.

Vagabond · Post by **Vagabond** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:29 pm

Ctrl+R, save as png then import png as image layer. They look good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lALIaxeeSFQ

another layer or two for those clouds that break off and fade away would be nice. I'm at work right now hiding my laptop behind my work computer. Can't wait to get home to play with this! Thanks Parker. You got skillz!!

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:31 pm

Vagabond wrote:Ctrl+R, save as png then import png as image layer. They look good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lALIaxeeSFQ

another layer or two for those clouds that break off and fade away would be nice. I'm at work right now hiding my laptop behind my work computer. Can't wait to get home to play with this! Thanks Parker. You got skillz!!

yes its better like you say.

Your welcome my friend

.

DK · Post by DK » Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:53 am

Just wondering why you have to use the noise settings at all? I turned off noise and it still looks great. Well done Parker.

Cheers
D.K

PARKER · Post by **PARKER** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:49 am

DK wrote:Just wondering why you have to use the noise settings at all? I turned off noise and it still looks great. Well done Parker.

Cheers
D.K

Yes they look good without noise settings as well.
You can use noise settings to give them diferent looks.

Vagabond · Post by **Vagabond** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 12:36 pm

I decided to get to know the noisy options a little more and test them on the ocean.

DK is right about Parker's clouds looking good without the noise but if you draw a simple shape then the noise adds the complexity the vectors don't. I basically drew a flattened circle. The shading took too long so there's little of that.

I also used the noisy fill for the waves and ripples in the ocean. i was KEYFRAMING this up til now-- adding points and using wavy effect. One button in the layer settings looks better than 10minutes of tinkering. I feel as stupid as I did missing Genete's comment. Now I know. And knowing is half the battle.... Goooo ASPro!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofl8T5EYTlQ

I blurred the sun and took out the noise for the horizon. I'm still working on those "ripples" trying to make them more... more... watery. i think I just figured out how to make the gradient fill work for that. Thanks for everyones help.

Parker, thanks for uploading your 5.6 work. Seeing the characters in ur free anime content files and then seeing the same scenes rendered is really helpful. If Blender can bring folks together to make Big Buck Bunny and Durian can't Smith Micro do something similar? the talent here is amazing! Good luck to everyone working on their private masterpieces.

muffysb · Post by **muffysb** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:03 pm

It's already looking good! My first suggestion is to use a mask at the horizon line to obscure the noise where sea meets sky...if I ever saw the horizon jumping around like that, I'd think the world was about to end!

Likewise the sun, it looks a bit unstable. Maybe a bit of blur, or exporting a frame and reimporting it so that the jitter goes away.

If only we could set the speed of the noise effect...

Cheers,
Muffy.

Vagabond · Post by **Vagabond** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 2:52 pm

...if I ever saw the horizon jumping around like that, I'd think the world was about to end!

Great suggestions Muffy. Yeah, you're right about the horizon. Crazy for such a peaceful scene. I have a story involving water that I have been point animating some effects up til yesterday. Now I see it's pointless to have so many points! I kinda wanted the sun to glow/grow but the noise effect is harsh. Will rendering out a png image sequence and then importing it at a different fps work? OR Can I put the sequence in a switch layer and vary the timing at will?

muffysb · Post by **muffysb** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:05 pm

The noise effect definitely has a "bad trip" quality.

I'd experiment a bit with the sun. Maybe you can use the noise as INSPIRATION, creating a new layer and tracing over a single frame of the noise to create a new set of objects with that wonderful unpredictable, jagged quality.

Then get rid of the original noisy sun and do some combination of point animation and layer animation on the new version (with no vector noise at all). Experiment with blend modes, changing opacity, blur, shading. This will allow you to carefully control the speed and quality of the effect. If you cycle the different effects at different speeds, you can still get an unpredictable look without having to do a huge amount of work, and when you get it right it will be STUNNING!

By changing colours and opacity of the different shapes over time, you could get a really nice sun, I think.

Cheers,
Muffy.

muffysb · Post by **muffysb** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:09 pm

...or, as you said, export a PNG sequence, and maybe bring five frames back in on five layers. Layer them all on top of each other and slowly fade between each one. Switch layers would jump from layer to layer too abruptly, I think.

There's no such thing as too many layers! And blur is your friend.

Uolter · Post by **Uolter** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:09 pm

muffysb wrote:
If only we could set the speed of the noise effect...

Cheers,
Muffy.

Why don't try using noisy keyframes instead of layer setting? They have some useful options