Clouds

[inabottle]

Need help with realistic clouds, Im not talking the simpsons style clouds, all fluffy and what not, Im talking like broken up fading clouds, slightly like a fog, but broken up like a mist. If I could get any tips or whatever it would be greatly appreciated

Rian

Over and Out

[molucca]

I took a shell image and performed a trace. Then deleted the background object and rearranges some of the objects. Then exported to PNG/alpha. Opened the image in Elements, and applied gaussian blur. Then, desaturated the image. Save in PNG/ alpha again. Open the image in Xara X, and use as clouds. This image had linear transparency applied to transition the image.

Rich

[RAMWolff44]

Hi Rian,

Try playing with the Fractal Cloud or Fractal Plazma fills. You can achieve all sorts of cool stuff with those.

Here is something I whipped up in about 2 minutes. 2 rectangles. One filled with Sky Blue the other White. Make sure the Sky Blue rectangle set to be on top and is half the length (from north to south) as the White filled rectangle.

Go to your Fill tool icon and then up to your drop down selection box and choose Fractal Clouds. Skew it and resize it to your hearts content untill you have the formation you prefer. Then click on your Transparency tool icon and choose Linear trasparency from the drop down and move the handles untill you have the rectangles trasparency fading as it's moving south and that gives you more of a natural sky line effect.

All done, basic but then you play with layering too with using the transparency fracal clouds and fractal plazma as well. Lot's of fun. I love my fractals!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

---Wolff On The Prowl---

http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/

[Mike Bailey]

This is an old demo picture, all the fog and mist effects are Xara fractal clouds or plasma, I don't remembers which.

[RAMWolff44]

Using two of the fractals that I created (the set is here in the XaraX forum under Fractals Galore...) I created a grassy field with hazy mist over the top and then finished off the cloud example with a few more layers of transparent fractals to create this little scene. Was lots of fun and took me an aditional 15 minutes!! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

---Wolff On The Prowl---

http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/

[Soquili]

Hi Rian,

You may find this Clouds thread interesting.

Soquili

[RAMWolff44]

Same one just a different set of fractals and a star field fill with, you guessed it, fractal transparency layered on top.

Hey why not!! I'm having fun again and that's a good thing.

I call it: Alien Sunset II

Richard http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

---Wolff On The Prowl---

http://www.ramwolffsworld.com/

[Su Lawrence]

Here's something I used in a picture, reduced in size here. Don't know if this is any help to the kind of effect you are looking for. It was a long time ago I did this so I'm not exactly sure of the steps, but here are the settings for the attachment.

The sky colours were taken from some desert photographs using the colour picker in the colour editor. The basic cloud effect is then just two overlaid transparent shapes.

1. Freehand draw a rough cloud shape (about 430 x 137 pixels size in the attachment), with a flat white fill. Give this object a fractal cloud transparency (start 0% - end 100%), about 27 dpi and a fractal graininess of 15%, plus a large feather (40 pixels). Transparency profile was 0.32 in the top box and -0.16 in the bottom box, which just defined it more and removed some colour. I adjusted the transparency end nodes and shifted the centre node until I had a pattern I liked ... then ...

2. Clone this, give it a colour from the sky and using the colour editor with the HSV model, lighten and grey this colour. Click on the centre transparency node and nudge it slightly down and left (ie away from the light source) ... to give a sort of 3D effect. I changed the transp profile to 0.14 in the top box. Then sent it behind the white cloud shape.

I then cloned the two cloud objects, adjusted the nodes to give a different shape and moved it to another area (overlapping the first ones) to make a larger cloud. The white overlaid object doesn't have to match the blue-grey one exactly, I moved the nodes of this second white cloud object inwards, which gives some faded areas that aren't so white. Alternatively increase the centre transparency to give a less white effect or play around with profiles, off-white colours etc.

Sorry a bit of a fluffy explanation, but then I suppose that's fitting to the subject!

Regards

Su

[inabottle]

Thanks for your help it was greatly appreciated.

Rian

Over and Out