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>> Hey. What's up, Blender users?

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I am Jonathan.

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And in today's video, I will show you how we[br]can use the new volume modifiers in Blender 2.91

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to easily create clouds in EEVEE.

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This is especially useful because now[br]we can see our cloud in the viewport

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and are not limited to node-only setups.

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This video is pre-recorded and uploaded.

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So if in the meantime any other[br]creators published a tutorial

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about the same topic, I'm sorry.

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And with that said, let's[br]get straight into the video.

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And by the way, if you enjoy my[br]content, consider subscribing

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because I upload a new video every Saturday.

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To create a cloud with the new[br]volume modifiers, we, of course,

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first need a base mesh that[br]represents our cloud.

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And I'll create this one with metaballs.

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So let's add in a metaball[br]and maybe scale it down.

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And now, with Shift-D, we can[br]just duplicate it and move them

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into a shape that roughly represents a cloud.

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We also don't need much detail in the shape[br]because we'll later use displacement modifiers

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on our volume to create all the[br]little details in our cloud.

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So once you have a basic metaball[br]shape, let's select it and press Ctrl-A

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and choose visual geometry to mesh.

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This will convert our metaballs to a mesh.

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And now, we can use this empty volume object[br]together with the mesh to volume modifier

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to create a volume out of this mesh.

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And as you can see right here, we[br]also have a volume displace modifier,

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which we will use to later add all[br]the little details to our cloud.

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Now, this modifier has some settings,

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but the most important one is[br]definitely the voxel amount one.

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We can use this slider to control[br]the resolution of our volume.

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But for now, I will keep it relatively[br]low, to about 64 voxels, because, that way,

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all the volume displace modifiers[br]will all load pretty quick.

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So, let's start with the first iteration,[br]and let's add in some of the bigger details.

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So let's click on new and then this[br]button right here, and choose clouds.

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I will use a scale of maybe about two.

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We can also adjust the depth[br]for some finer detail.

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We can now play around with the strength slider.

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But be aware that if you slide[br]it too high, Blender could crash.

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This happened to me in the past.

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You can also see that the volume[br]is clearly displaced on an axis.

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This might become apparent later.

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But right now, we will keep[br]the strength pretty low.

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So this shouldn't be an issue.

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Great. Now that we have some bigger[br]details, we, of course, want to add more.

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So let's add in some medium ones.

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Let's again select clouds[br]but now maybe a size of one.

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And you can already see that we get[br]some finer details around the edge.

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This is great.

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And we can now also adjust the strength,

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maybe even into the negative[br]direction, to get a cloud shape we like.

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And just like in the normal displace modifier,

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you can also choose an object[br]to control the texture mapping.

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And this is already looking good,[br]so let's add even smaller details.

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You can now see that we have to turn[br]down the strength a lot, to maybe 0.25.

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Great. And if we now up the[br]voxel amount to maybe 128,

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we can really see all the detail in our cloud.

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Okay, that's great.

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But there are still some things left to do.

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Let's firstly go into rendered[br]mode, add in a sun lamp right above,

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and give it a strength of maybe 10.

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We will use this sunlight[br]to just light up our cloud.

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To make this more pretty, let's[br]also enable volumetric shadows,

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and let's turn down the tile size to two pixels.

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And we can already see that our cloud[br]is starting to look like a cloud.

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But clouds often have a flattened bottom.

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And we can easily do this with just a few nodes.

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So let's select our volume, click new,[br]and let's add in a gradient texture.

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For now, I'll set the tile size back to eight[br]pixels so everything renders a lot faster.

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We can now plug the factor[br]into the density slider.

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And with CTRL T, add in a texture[br]coordinate and a mapping node.

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You can see that nothing is[br]really happening right now,

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so let's select the object coordinates.

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And now, our gradient is cutting[br]off our cloud in the middle.

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But this happens on the wrong axis.

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So let's rotate it 90 degrees on the y-axis.

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And now, we can see that[br]our cloud has a flat bottom.

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But this falloff is right now pretty harsh.

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So let's add in a mix RGB[br]node, as well as noise texture,

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and mix the vector with the factor of the noise.

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And if we now adjust the slider, you can see

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that we can make the falloff[br]a bit more interesting.

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We can now, of course, adjust the noise size[br]and make it more noticeable with a color ramp.

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Now, all that's left to do is maybe[br]add in a math node, set it to multiply.

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And now, we can make the cloud a lot thicker.

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Great. Let's change our tile size[br]back to two and preview our cloud.

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And this is already looking pretty good.

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But, of course, we are still[br]missing our sky background.

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So let's add in a camera, clear out everything,[br]and rotate it 90 degrees on the x-axis.

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And now, we can just move it[br]back and have it face our cloud.

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And now, let's add in our world background.

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The easiest way to do this is to[br]add in another gradient texture.

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And you can see that, again,[br]it is on the wrong axis.

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So let's rotate it 90 degrees on the y-axis.

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Change it to easing to have a smoother gradient.

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And let's add in a color ramp, and now[br]make the one handle a light blue color

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and the other one a dark blue color.

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But you can see that we are[br]only seeing the light blue one.

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And this is because all the[br]dark is left on the top.

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But we can easily change this[br]by adjusting the X location.

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And now, we have our nice[br]gradient in the background.

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Awesome! And now, we have a[br]very simple cloud in Blender.

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And we can even just use this[br]mesh, scale it maybe up or down,

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to easily create variations of our cloud.

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For example, just like this.

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In the end, I would suggest you to turn[br]up the samples right here, to maybe 128,

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and also turn up the voxel amount.

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Keep in mind, this voxel amount is[br]relative to what you did in your scene.

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Okay. Great!

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And that's basically it.

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This is how we can now easily create[br]custom clouds and volumes in Blender EEVEE.

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Right now, I would only suggest you to[br]use this in EEVEE because, in Cycles,

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some interesting visual bugs can[br]occur, like blockiness in your volume.

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I hope this tutorial was helpful.

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I hope you learned something.

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And if you did, consider liking and subscribing.

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And you'll see us in the[br]next video next Saturday.