A Time Apart: Shot 1 - The Clouds

Here's something I should've posted about a week or so ago:

During Wednesday's Maya class (06/03) we learned some more dynamics which sparked the idea that maybe I could used legacy particles to create my clouds, although the clouds in my pre viz work to a certain degree they are after all just planes and I want my camera to move through the clouds rather than pass through a super thin plane (Maya's equivalent to a piece of paper). In an attempt to make it more immersive I tried several ways to use them to make clouds, (sketch particles, volume particles, point particles, sphere particles and so on - basically I messed with many settings) but unfortunately I didn't think to screen capture or save any of the renders to post. The particles do have a cloud option but the clouds they could give me were too cartoon like for what I was going for so I tried to find a work around.

Camera IN the clouds

Instead of using particles, I was introduced to the fluid system in Maya and found some pre made clouds that already existed in maya, by luck there was a storm cloud that I could tailor to the look I wanted (although other cloud examples were tested which again I don't have to upload because maya crashed and took my saved renders with it that was stored in the render view).

Maya's default/before

My adjustments/after

Scene set up

I did a test render of the first few moments of my film now the lighting is almost there. I don't particularly like how the clouds have turned out, I might return to using planes like in my pre viz. The videos below don't have any light wrapping on the matte paintings.