Patreon Tutorial #48 - Houdini 20 Cloud Tools - Part 3 (Patreon)

Hey guys! This is part 3 of our Houdini Cloud Tools tutorial. At this stage we have a solid foundation understanding how these new SOP nodes work at a lower level by mixing noises, and we also know how to combine this the VDB tools to make a Skybox and fill in sections of our sky. Now we can take this to the next level with the Cloud SOPs dedicated to building individual cloud assets.

There are several Cloud SOPs dedicated to generating our initial forms, and from these initial shapes we convert them into VDB volumetric data which we can modify using our Cloud Noises. We can also modify the incoming data further with dedicated SOPs for clipping or modifying the density and more. All these tools in combination allow you to have a ton of flexibility in the way the volumetric data is modified to model and sculpt away at our cloud assets.

Using this approach you can art direct and manipulate your cloud as needed and generate different VDBs to easily layout and render. In the end I duplicate these clouds a few times and lay them out in combination with our previous 2d high altitude clouds, 3d midground skybox clouds to get a full range of clouds in our shot. This was a fun tutorial using techniques I plan to use often to fill in environment backgrounds when needed. I hope you learned something new and enjoy making clouds in your own scenes. Thank you for all the support and have a great day.