I spent this past weekend completely revamping the clouds in the shot, along with switching the project back to Arnold. I would have really liked to use Karma, but due to time constraints I switched back.
Instead of using H20s skybox approach, I built these clouds using H20s cloud shape generate workflow. Using the previous skyfield generated, points are scattered along after converting it to a surface. Then using an attribute noise, I remove the points based on a threshold, which gives me the points I use to scatter the cloud shapes along.
Applying multiple layers of noise to the converted VDB
It doesnt look like much in the viewport, but the magic cloudy look comes in the shader and lighting
Using a curve and generating the shape from a line, I use this same process to lay out and generate the other layered clouds in the scene
Scene Layout
I have most of the scene laid out, now to tackle rendering. I have each of the cloud layers and aspects split up into different render ROPS, and plan to render throughout the next two days and then get into compositing. In the one test render I did at 2k resolution, each frame nearly 2 hours, more than half of them hit the two hour kill limit on our render farm.
Early lighting and renders
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