Celestia Forums

Hi there! After an hard work on the cloud shader I'm somewhat satisfied about the clouds map that have been able to get. The most tricky part are still the turbolences; usually they tends to looks unrealistics when forced to mimic hurricanes. But anyhow...



If you like clouds like these, I can supply it with easy, since the clouds' coverage is linked to the seed's generator, thus every map will looks diversely.

http://fenerit.interfree.it/files/fictional_clouds_map.zip [about 10Mb, 4k (cloudsmap + normal) PNGs]

Please, feedbacks should be very appreciated.

They look nice but a bit too 'cotton wooly', more streaks me thinks.

Thank you for the suggestion. I may find the right shader's layer in which to do that.

Maybe using several layers of noise, all with different scales, would help instead of just one?

W0RLDBUILDER wrote:Maybe using several layers of noise, all with different scales, would help instead of just one?

Well, the map above is built on 11 layers. The main problem with the "streaks" is to do the warping/shearing of the main Perlin noise's fluffs realistic, without exaggerate with the values, otherwise the deformations would be easily reckoned. With other two layer of fractal noise I'm experimenting now the "creeps" on "cotton woolys"'s borders.

P.S.
"layers" is an uncorrect term; being the shader yeld in procedural mode, I'm using a modular shader builder, made of wired connections, like the old sound oscillators.

This elaboration is lesser "puffy" and introduces turbolences. These latters and their distortions have been constrained onto Chebychev functions in order to avoid a bit the usual "swirls". There are several Chebychev functions; for personal tasks I know just that about sound filtering, so I've used that parameters. Maybe other are betters: who knows?



Zip here (about 10Mb)

The last and least elaboration. Fine tuning of some parameters. I do not think to work around it anymore. This is my personal contribution to all those who build Sci-Fi scenarios. Class M planetary clouds.



Zip here

Note: I've sent ten fictional maps on MotherLode. All maps looks similar in apparence (how they looks) and in density (coverage) but not on distribution (randomization of alpha background); so they are all differents. No normal-map, sorry. For this latters, if you use GIMP, here: http://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/ there is the plug-in and the help.
For good results:
- Filter = prewitt 5x5
- minimum Z = 0
- Scale = 0,010000
- Height source = average rgb
- alpha channel = untouch (disabled by default for alpha maps).

If ML team will approve them, you will find it there. Enjoy.
- end of topic -
P.S.
Feedbacks are appreciated.

WARNING:

Read here before to deal with such a normalmap plugin.