Elementacular test~

Test for Elementacular clouds in a proper scene
Some neat features in this plugin, which allows for subtle wisping, so that the clouds aren't just purely static. Some jittering in against stuff like the temple.. Partially down on that model being decimated to death to pull in a low poly model. Maybe in retrospect I should've kept it higher+quads or seomthing and just endured a slower render time. Ohwell, maybe when I stack stuff in post that strobing will be easy to fix. 

animation + lighting still in early phase


All in all though, happy with this test.
Wizard god Matt helped me get Elementacular working at school now too, leJoy.

Elementacular post #2. Wasn't sure about it at first, but I think this plug in was a kinda decent investment. Sure, I coulda done it all in post.. matte painting. But the 3 generated clouds mean I get to do stuff in 3D. Scene#4 becomes $$$.

Plus, they billow and can be animated. So wispy moving clouds will make shots a bit more alive.

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. 

October

Revised Layout 22/02/2015

working on figuring out this ending. After 8 months of trial and error it's still seeing changes.  I'll never win