Clouds Unravelled – The Ins and Outs of Cloud Design in VUE

These webinars teach you the fundamental concepts of working with Spectral Clouds in Vue. Clouds are a complex subject to master, since they are entirely procedural. If cloud design has always felt like trial and error, then this on-line class is for you!

Session 1 : Saturday 26th of January : 20:00 GMT (London)/ 12:00 PST (Los Angeles) / 15:00 EST (New York)

1. Understanding cloud layer and cloud material
2. Density functions in cloud materials: intro to the function editor
3. Custom Cloud Layer Profile
4. Detail Amount and feathers
5. Cover, altitude variations & shadow density
6. Shading clouds with density, opacity, sharpness and ambient light
7. Cloud anisotropy
8. Modulation functions explained
9. Local & world coordinates and scale settings explained
10. Making clouds follow a terrain with altitude offset modulation & altitude offset effect on Z
11. Limiting clouds to a specific area with cloud zones & procedural functions
12. Creating mammatus clouds
13. Creating a sea of clouds with height modulation
14. Render settings

Session 2 : Sunday 27th of January : 20:00 GMT (London)/ 12:00 PST (Los Angeles) / 15:00 EST (New York)

1. Quick recap of the previous webinar
2. How clouds interact with the atmosphere & how to create godrays
3. First Q&A
4. Sky Ambient Color & Sun Ambient Color
5. Creating an underlit sunset
6. Second Q&A
7. Planetary clouds

We will work mostly in Vue’s Function Editor, so this webinar is also a good opportunity to get comfortable with functions and graphs. There is no previous knowledge of the Function Editor required. We will ease into nodes nice and slowly!

As a bonus, the webinar also covers the new cloud-related features in the latest release of Vue, including:-

• OpenVDB import and export
• Improvements to metaclouds
• Render speed improvements
• How to create clouds from meshes

In the second session, you will additionally have the chance to ask questions about your own cloud scenes, which you may message Digital Art Live prior to the webinar. Note: Please only include the clouds in your scene and remove all other objects due to file-size.

About the Presenter : Daniel Seebacher

Daniel Seebacher has been using PlantFactory since its first version and has twelve years of background in VUE. He recently held a PlantFactory webinar on behalf of e-on/Bentley for students of the Bournemouth University in UK. His area of expertise lies in VUE’s Function Editor and PlantFactory’s node-based plant construction. He has contributed preset content and tutorial files to both VUE and PlantFactory and is currently writing a comprehensive book on VUE’s Spectral Cloud System that will unravel advanced node-based techniques for building Cumulonimbus clouds and much more. Daniel was featured in 3D World Magazine and has contributed a chapter to Duncan Evan’s “Digital Mayhem: 3D Landscape Techniques”. In 2010, he was among the finalists of e-on’s 3D Environment Competition.

Besides rendering natural environments, Daniel works in the German publishing industry. He is a trained bookseller and has a Master of Arts Degree from the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich in Publishing. He is currently employed as an Author Relations Manager at one of Germany’s biggest self-publishing platforms and in charge of e-book distribution, marketing and sales for self-publishing authors. In his spare time, he plays in various orchestras and loves all kind of gaming, books and movies.