A classmate showed me a really neat Maya plugin, Elementacular, for simulating cloud based off geometry. I've been keen on it for a while, though I've been kinda put off by the $175 price tag in case it doesn't live up to the hype. I've seen a fair bit of criticism for it, because while their videos show it being played in seamless realtime with multiple lights and huge heavy cloud formations, in reality it's quite slow and clunky,
Soyeah, a demo's been made available, and it's really nifty what you can do with a few spheres and point lights. Here's some of my trials~
The home PC's a bit sluggish for this GPU intensive stuff, so I'll need to check it out at school and see if I can operate it on the machines there~ If it works and can go onto the renderfarm, I'll be set! If not, I shall cry for stumbling upon another production hurdle~~
EDIT: school computers just crash when I even try to load a scene with the cloud simulations in them. Graphics card's compatible, so it's something to do with the GPU? I don't have the tech savy or the time to deal with this much ridiculousness..
Ohwell, perhaps best I decided to hold off before buying it? Maybe I'll just try rendering the clouds from home and compiling in AE.
I'll have a chat next week, see if I can get this working but ugghhhhhhhhhhhh why does this have to be complicated.
I'll have a chat next week, see if I can get this working but ugghhhhhhhhhhhh why does this have to be complicated.
