Clouds/smoke/fog shader mixer product suggestion... or maybe settings for existing product?

sriesch

There are some volume cloud, smoke, and fog effects that I do not yet see a way to do in DAZ Studio, and wanted to suggest this as a possible Shader Mixer product idea for the expert shader vendors out there. However, I admit to not having played much with the existing tools in DAZ Studio yet; if these kinds of things can already be done and we just need some example settings to do it, even better.

I'm going to use Bryce for examples, because that is what I am familiar with. I have also started a thread in the Bryce forum for you to look at to try to collect better examples than I have available at the moment: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45252/ , hopefully more will be added in time as well.

Specifically, I'm looking for cloud/smoke/fog effects that cannot be easily duplicated simply with 2D planes and skydomes, such as volume materials that interact with objects within the scene (birds/aircraft/mountaintops/building tops in clouds, smoke around objects, ground fog to the horizon, etc.) UberVolume of course jumps immediately to mind but appears to have a few limitations, and I know there are some other shaders out there that I'm still unfamiliar with. So, here are a few things that might be handy in a new product (or things I don't know how to do with an existing product):

1: Apply the material in object space, instead of in worldspace. For example, maybe I have the perfect cloud shape, but I need to move it in my scene. I don't think I can do this with UberVolume, correct? (attached DS screenshot, ubervolume test.png).

2: Create a single cloud that has it's edges already inside of the object I apply it to, instead of having edges unnaturally clipped in sharp lines where it hits the edge of the object. I imagine I could probably "find" a piece of an UberVolume cloud that fits by repeatedly changing the scale and hoping, but it would be both perhaps a great deal of work, or maybe can't be found at all, not sure. In this low-budget Bryce test screenshot, the dark cloud in the upper left and the middle white cloud were just slapped on spheres with zero effort. The lower left torus does get unnaturally clipped on the inside, however the outside works.

3 maybe: Ground fog that fades from thick to nothing the higher up it gets, rather than abruptly ending in an obvious sharp line, and also extends to the camera and (apparently) to the horizon, also without obvious abrupt ends. But maybe that can already be done and I just don't know how?

I'd like to add more features when I can come up with examples and clear explanations, but I'll start with these points.