Making clouds

[tjvoll]

I would like to make a sheet of clouds. Like what you see when you look out the window of an airplane and you're above them. I was thinking about copying an .id3 object to the points of a grid, but i want it to look more random than that.

I was wondering if anyone had ideas of where i could begin.

thanks,

tom

[Lukich]

Metaballs of random sizes copied onto the grid points?

Luka

[tjvoll]

ok, i have a question about that.

In a copy sop, if the grid is the template, and the metaball is the primitive to copy, where do you put the expression to make each metaball a random size. Like, i was thinking i could just put a rand() function in say, the scale x parameter, but changing that value doesn't have any effect on them.

Would i have to have a bunch of different sized pre-made metaballs and copy them?

tom

[sirogi]

add a attribcreate SOP between the grid and the copy SOP

name the attribute "pscale" and set its value to something like rand($PT) (be creative )

(Alternatively, the Point Sop has the same "pscale" attribute under the particle tab)

then go down to the copy SOP and check "stamp inputs" in the stamp tab...done!

that's a shorthand way, because copy Sop does recognize the "pscale" attrib name...and knows what to do with it....

for other, more "exotic" uses for stamping, you can define parameters in the stamp tab (lefthand column), and write an expression (righthand

column) that would affect your stamped objects...

there should be some tutorials that cover this...good to know cool to use...

cheers!

[miguel m]

In the overview section of the CHOPS book there is a decent copy stamping example. One that copies 3 snakes.

[tjvoll]

Great! Those suggestions are working wonderfully!

Thank you very much.