Atom Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Hi All, I am playing around with the Cloud node. I have my font converted into a cloud. For the next step I wanted to use a wind force to blow it away. However, when I look for the force I can not locate it. Do I need to jump out of my cloud object and add the force at another level? What is the work flow with adding a force to affect a cloud/volume? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 The cloud is a volume, so you can bring in the volume into Dops via the Populate Containers tab, Source from Volumes and apply some forces for 'real' volume movement and wispyness, or, you can run the polygon text as a RBD object in Dops, i.e. change the SOP Path of the RBD Object node to the polygon text, then attach the volume cloud to the dopimport node. This will then use the 'Transform Input Geometry' option to move the cloud. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atom Posted August 16, 2015 Author Share Posted August 16, 2015 Marty, thanks for the suggestions. I got the RDB method setup as you suggested but that method does not allow the cloud to blow around. The letters retain their shapes and the forces do move the font. The bounding box of the volume remains the same size. What I am looking for is a way to blow the letters away a bit which would involve the volume expanding. The populate containers method keeps asking me for a fluid. I don't want to add a fluid to my scene so I guess I just don't get that approach. Is the cloud object just some legacy node? Am I wasting my time playing around with it? Should I just be going right for some smoke sim perhaps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmfield Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 I haven't messed with this type of setup but I imagine the thing here being, you need a container - like a domain in Blender - and then you populate that (which basically equals an attribute transfer) and then you simulate that setup. I'll see if I can do a quick set it up here and if so, I'll post a scenefile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skybar Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 The clouds is just a static volume. You need to bring it into dops and do a pyro simulation, with your initial cloud volume as a source. Right now you are in essence creating a sphere and expecting it to drop to the floor in sops. It doesnt work like that. I guess you could also play around with VDB Advect SOP or whatever its called, if you have a velocity field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmfield Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 So I played around for a while and it really is as simple as using the shelf tools on your cloud setup - though you need to delete the create volume SOP and mess about with the grid settings in DOP's to match your cloud setup - but it's fairly straightforward. Don't know if it's even worth posting the scene file... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 Is the cloud object just some legacy node? Am I wasting my time playing around with it? Should I just be going right for some smoke sim perhaps? IIRC the documentation also says to use a smoke sim for moving clouds. In regards to legacy; no, they were introduced in ~H12.x with openvdb. It's quite a nice shelf tool, quickly making a fluffy cloud without a Dop simulation. The cloud-light setup is worthy just to attach to a volume sim to get that cloudy look - dive inside to see it's not just your standard network Overall the shelf tools can be hidden, toggled off with the lefthand arrow at the far left of the shelf. With time you'll reach less for them and just build what you need from nodes, or, from butchering a shelf setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmfield Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 (edited) Playing around now, I must say VDB's are much quicker, the cloud tool feel very sluggish in comparison... VDB.cloud.text.test.hiplc Edited August 16, 2015 by Farmfield Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atom Posted August 16, 2015 Author Share Posted August 16, 2015 Thanks, I have actually dived into modifying the Cloud Noise VOP. The problem with using Pyro or a smoke based solution is that I need a lot more resolution than using the cloud volume to achieve the same look. I have my cloud looking nice and rendering with OpenGL so I am trying to keep it light weight and avoid simming on every frame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farmfield Posted August 16, 2015 Share Posted August 16, 2015 About the Cloud Noise SOP (VOPs are Vex Operators), you can basically set what that does up one Volume VOP, once again, it's pretty straight forward stuff. And just generally in regard to using VDB's for creating non-dynamic cloud type setups, I would highly recommend this awesome tutorial by Andreas Vrhovsec's from Digital Tutors... He uses some really neat tricks in that for setting up very cool, non-dynamic cloud movement. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denzelvii Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 On 8/16/2015 at 0:50 PM, Farmfield said: Playing around now, I must say VDB's are much quicker, the cloud tool feel very sluggish in comparison... VDB.cloud.text.test.hiplc Hi Farmfield, I was able to replicate your setup with my own cloud geo, everything except for the fact that my pyro sim is constantly emitting smoke from my selected geo rather than simply dissipating as your geo does. I've tried multiple shelf tools and copying all your settings. Any advice? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denzelvii Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 42 minutes ago, Denzelvii said: Hi Farmfield, I was able to replicate your setup with my own cloud geo, everything except for the fact that my pyro sim is constantly emitting smoke from my selected geo rather than simply dissipating as your geo does. I've tried multiple shelf tools and copying all your settings. Any advice? Thanks Figured out that I had to keyframe the activation parameter on the Source Volume node. Sorry to bother! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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