Starbright Illustrations (blog)

By The Illustrator 　http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/2009/09/07/working-on-my-3d-new-particle-system-clouds-and-reading-the-blenderwiki-blender-manual-a-free-file-easy-to-make-into-an-ebook/

Who knew that by wanting to put a cloud in the sky above my 3D cartoon universe, I would be pushing at the boundaries of what is possible with Blender. Apparently volumetric clouds are the best solution but they are not available as part of Blender’s suite of 3D tools and features, yet, but someone is working on them.

In the meantime I found some useful cloud rendering tips here. Particles are the key it seems.

To get the clouds to be clumpy, instead of spread out like mist – or, as in one of my worst disasters, an attack of the measles – I duplicated the emitters and clumped them together. When the emitters are arranged in a clump, then every time Blender decides an emitter should spit out a particle, they all spit out a particle.

If there are seven emitters, then seven particles get spat out at the same time. That’s what makes the particle mist lumpy and clumpy. A nice and easy, quick and dirty solution to creating clouds in 3D.

I arranged each clump of seven or eight particle emitters off to the left with their norms pointing across the camera view in the direction I wanted the clouds to travel in. Then I just turned the norm value up to 1, and the particles form a cloud and drift off across the landscape at a leisurely pace, bringing happiness wherever they go.

This is the latest render of the animated movement of my “new particle system” 3D clouds – I’m very proud of them.

I’ve also fluffed up the grass (also particles) by simply reducing the area each grass particle system has to cover. No textures needed in either the grass or the clouds, that just seemed too hard – although I am considering adding a texture to the cloud renders.

In a related note, I have been playing with Blender for months now, and a couple of days ago I thought “I’m ready to start going deep”, and that meant downloading the manual  Doc:Books/Essential Blender – BlenderWiki. For me the next step was turning it into an eBook with Mobipocket so I can read it on my phone on the bus. I’m already at chapter 4, about manipulating meshes, and already one of the things I read saved my Bacon.

I was moving a clump of particle emitters around in 3D space (the “cloud makers” I was talking about before), and every time I set the animation running they would all jump to the same location. I could not work out why, and I could not find a solution in my usual first port of call, the 3D graphics community forums, like the one on Blender Artists.

But “Essential Blender” had the answer – simply click the x in the object’s IPO window header. After that it will move independently and won’t feel the need to suddenly share the exact same coordinates as its duplicates. Thanks “Essential Blener”, I owe you one.