cfp

23rd November 2002 23:10 UTC

clouds
has anyone got any suggestions as to the best way of doing a cloud like effect? (not just smoke, i'm thinking fluffy cotton wool buds floating past (^_^)...)

i guess it's kind of similar to smoke but with many "whorls" grouped in clusters. tbh i never ran to smoke movements at the best of times so this is all past me (^_^).

any help much apprechiated

tom

jheriko

24th November 2002 15:28 UTC

I always use a cloud picture but I guess you could use a 'fluidic' movement like the one that I used in 'just go with the flow' and just modify it to pieces to create a cloud like effect.

cmountford

24th November 2002 17:27 UTC

remix these presets
My guess is you'd have to use a water bump similar to what I did for my "drunken smokey flares" presets & then use a DM to shape it into a cloud-like shape.

cfp

24th November 2002 18:41 UTC

thanks for the advice guys. i've had a fiddle with cmountford's one and got something convincing working.

do you mind if i use it in a preset in my next pack?? i'll give you credits of course.

tom

cfp

24th November 2002 22:11 UTC

here's the (nearly) final preset. (needs video delay)

any comments appreciated.

i've gone for a really moody sky rather than individual clouds cos they are officially way too hard.

the ground is a bit lame at the moment too.

tom

Jaheckelsafar

25th November 2002 00:00 UTC

That looks nifty.

Now, to suggest something completely redidulous, you could try and rig up a volumetric cloud with a superscope and you convolution filter and an additive blend. Kinda like this.


<offtopic> Would it be possible to make it so you could switch boxes in the filter APE with the arrow keys?</offtopic>

jheriko

25th November 2002 00:17 UTC

Another way to generate a cloud like texture is to use the water in combination with the scatter (maybe 50/50 blend it) and a gray unique tone set to 50/50 blend. You can then use moving particles or scopes to feed the effects in combination with any moving DM/DS/DDM. The result is varying... I've done a couple of similar things in my first and seventh pack.

cfp

25th November 2002 01:59 UTC

jaheckelsafar: first re:off topic: yes i could do that thing with arrows. i'll do it over my christmas vac, though you should be able to use tab at the moment which is almost as good isn't it??

your particle approach rocks. i never though of that. all i've got to do is think up the density equations for a sky full of clouds and we're sorted.

jheriko: your water/scatter combo gives a pretty nifty texture on the small scale but i think it was the larger structure (e.g. scopes and d.m.s) which is the principal problem for realistic looking clouds.

oh and well done on J7 btw just been through it and it's all pretty damn nifty. i'm well chuffed with the all kerazey things my convolution is up to nowadays (^_^)

cfp

Jaheckelsafar

25th November 2002 02:36 UTC

offtopic post
I can't use tab, control goes up to the buttons and cycles through them.

cfp

25th November 2002 02:42 UTC

odd. well i'll get that sorted. if i haven't posted anything by christmas nag me (^_^).

UnConeD

25th November 2002 04:27 UTC

TAB doesn't work anywhere in Winamp3... not your fault. Annoying as hell when coding scopes.

It's kind of logical that convolution is so common: it replaces tons of effects in AVS. For example, any "blur + brightness" combo can be reduced to a convolution instance. I've been using my own APE for volumetric effects though, which you will be able to see in Whacko AVS VI.

Tuggummi

25th November 2002 06:30 UTC

Well the tab doesn't work in the Convolution Filter in wa2 either. Just a note :p

jheriko

25th November 2002 18:21 UTC

Congrats on the senior membership Tug!

The particle effect looks cool, I had made something similar before but gave up on it because there is no really good way to make particles smaller in the distance than in the foreground... not that it matters for these clouds. I completely forgot about that way of doing it.

UnConeD - what sort of volumetric effects? Volumetric fog? Volumetric lighting? I don't know of any volumetric effects which don't rely on a 3D environment. Could you fill me in on what exactly quantifies a volumetric effect... I find it infuriating when I don't actually know what people are talking about.

cmountford

29th November 2002 22:22 UTC

sorry I've been gone so long
Congratulations on the senior membership, Tuggummi!

cfp: Sure, feel free to use it.

Sorry for taking so long to reply; I've been insanely busy with school lately.

(Had to stay up until 5:50 one night just to have to wake up at 6:50 for a poetry portfolio project, and I've got a bunch of assignments coming up of slightly lesser magnitude than the poetry portfolio.)

cmountford

30th November 2002 00:09 UTC

cfp: congrats on becoming a member!

You'll want to be sure when you make your pack that you include the APE.

Your preset's definitely cooler with the APE.

cfp

30th November 2002 00:34 UTC

tee hee thanks. i hadn't noticed the whole member thing.

pretty nifty i guess. (^_^)

i produce presets so hiddeously slowly it could be a fair while before the pack comes out (^_^)

cmountford

30th November 2002 02:25 UTC

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty slow, too.

Think about it...I joined in November of 2001, and I haven't released a pack yet. Plus the fact that I became interested in AVS quite some time before joining the forums.

So I'm not sure who's slower! (I am seriously getting ready to release a pack, though...Hopefully this isn't a bluff) :)

cfp

30th November 2002 13:38 UTC

i did release a pack plus another mini pack in the heady days of winamp 2 and that was way back in september 2001...

it was all so much simpler in those days before everyone worked out how to do 3d dyn.mov.'s... you could impress people with a simple 3d super scope... ahh those were the days (^_^)

tom

Jaheckelsafar

22nd December 2002 16:34 UTC

<poke poke>

if i haven't posted anything by christmas nag me (^_^).

dirkdeftly

22nd December 2002 19:32 UTC

Ever thought of trying to make a plasma fractal effect (e.g. what Adobe calls 'merge clouds')? I've thought about it for a long time, but I can't figure out how to do it in SSC. I'd do it in an APE, but I can't figure out how I'd recursively draw something and cover every pixel, all the time...Of course it can be and has been done, I just dunno how :p

cfp

23rd December 2002 16:50 UTC

re: atero

i think camillo is working on that plasma fractal. i e-mailed him a description of the algorithm a bit ago. as for the recursively drawing something problem, you would draw a complete frame on init then on every normal frame you would either just colour cycle a la fractint, or you would zoom in using "plasma" bilinear filtering, e.g. biliniear filtering with a random error term (which would also have to be scaled so it was biggest when the "new" pixel was exactly between the two "old" ones).

re: jaheckelsafar

i should have done that stuff to convolution by now you're right, but i've been away from my pc for a while and now i've switched into holiday chronic laziness mode.

as for the high numbers, it will clip if the absolute sum of either the positive or negative values is greater than 256, it was just a sacrifice i had to make to get optimised code. if you don't like it buy me a p4 or better still an athlon 64, and i'll recode it using sse2 (^_^)

dirkdeftly

23rd December 2002 22:35 UTC

i'm not that experienced in coding, so i dunno wtf you're talking about :)

Jaheckelsafar

23rd December 2002 23:10 UTC

There's nothing wrong with being lazy; especially now. Too bad about the clipping thing, but before I get you a better computer I gotta get me a new car. :p

Zatnikitel

22nd January 2003 18:25 UTC

nice

Jaheckelsafar

22nd January 2003 20:09 UTC

:nudge nudge: The holidays are over. :p