Patreon Tutorial #44 - Redshift Volume Shading - Part 2 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! In Part 2 of the volume shading tutorial I will be picking up with a custom cloud VDB asset and applying the same process used on the previous tutorial for the Disney cloud to hone in the volume shader properties. I will also explain why anisotropy is so important, in particular with clouds and how it needs to be balanced with everything else. I also explain why it is a bad idea to use it on the Disney cloud asset which has the anisotropy psuedo-faked by baking in the density of the edges. Which is great for performance but limits the viewing angles it can be seen from that look correct.

After working on a custom VDB cloud and going over the shading process I will move on to working with a free Pyro asset from JangaFX's Embergen webpage. You can of course use your own assets, but this is a free example anyone can download.
https://jangafx.com/software/embergen/download/free-vdb-animations/

I will go over the shading process again which is similar to the approach I take every time for clouds, but in this particular case there are some differences are the consideration of the emission and how it needs to be balanced with the overall density and its relationship to the blackbody color.

Hopefully after this tutorial you will understand the general process I always begin with to quickly get going and then fine tune the results to get the desired look. The big medium small approach to getting the shader to react how I want, some optimization considerations you can approach, and what each parameter does in relation to the others. Thanks again for all the support on Patreon, and have a great day!