1 00:00:00,036 --> 00:00:01,216 >> Hey. What's up, Blender users? 2 00:00:01,216 --> 00:00:01,946 I am Jonathan. 3 00:00:01,946 --> 00:00:06,826 And in today's video, I will show you how we can use the new volume modifiers in Blender 2.91 4 00:00:06,826 --> 00:00:09,106 to easily create clouds in EEVEE. 5 00:00:09,106 --> 00:00:13,906 This is especially useful because now we can see our cloud in the viewport 6 00:00:14,196 --> 00:00:16,436 and are not limited to node-only setups. 7 00:00:16,856 --> 00:00:19,106 This video is pre-recorded and uploaded. 8 00:00:19,106 --> 00:00:22,856 So if in the meantime any other creators published a tutorial 9 00:00:22,856 --> 00:00:24,456 about the same topic, I'm sorry. 10 00:00:24,456 --> 00:00:27,916 And with that said, let's get straight into the video. 11 00:00:27,916 --> 00:00:30,886 And by the way, if you enjoy my content, consider subscribing 12 00:00:30,886 --> 00:00:33,486 because I upload a new video every Saturday. 13 00:00:33,486 --> 00:00:36,636 To create a cloud with the new volume modifiers, we, of course, 14 00:00:36,636 --> 00:00:39,906 first need a base mesh that represents our cloud. 15 00:00:39,966 --> 00:00:42,476 And I'll create this one with metaballs. 16 00:00:42,476 --> 00:00:46,126 So let's add in a metaball and maybe scale it down. 17 00:00:46,456 --> 00:00:50,646 And now, with Shift-D, we can just duplicate it and move them 18 00:00:50,646 --> 00:00:53,206 into a shape that roughly represents a cloud. 19 00:00:53,796 --> 00:00:58,476 We also don't need much detail in the shape because we'll later use displacement modifiers 20 00:00:59,006 --> 00:01:02,926 on our volume to create all the little details in our cloud. 21 00:01:03,546 --> 00:01:07,906 So once you have a basic metaball shape, let's select it and press Ctrl-A 22 00:01:07,906 --> 00:01:10,346 and choose visual geometry to mesh. 23 00:01:10,516 --> 00:01:13,566 This will convert our metaballs to a mesh. 24 00:01:13,566 --> 00:01:19,206 And now, we can use this empty volume object together with the mesh to volume modifier 25 00:01:19,616 --> 00:01:21,926 to create a volume out of this mesh. 26 00:01:21,996 --> 00:01:26,016 And as you can see right here, we also have a volume displace modifier, 27 00:01:26,016 --> 00:01:29,266 which we will use to later add all the little details to our cloud. 28 00:01:29,656 --> 00:01:31,776 Now, this modifier has some settings, 29 00:01:31,776 --> 00:01:35,196 but the most important one is definitely the voxel amount one. 30 00:01:35,376 --> 00:01:38,756 We can use this slider to control the resolution of our volume. 31 00:01:38,866 --> 00:01:44,776 But for now, I will keep it relatively low, to about 64 voxels, because, that way, 32 00:01:44,776 --> 00:01:48,576 all the volume displace modifiers will all load pretty quick. 33 00:01:48,866 --> 00:01:53,966 So, let's start with the first iteration, and let's add in some of the bigger details. 34 00:01:53,996 --> 00:01:59,036 So let's click on new and then this button right here, and choose clouds. 35 00:01:59,146 --> 00:02:02,366 I will use a scale of maybe about two. 36 00:02:02,366 --> 00:02:06,096 We can also adjust the depth for some finer detail. 37 00:02:06,456 --> 00:02:09,496 We can now play around with the strength slider. 38 00:02:09,676 --> 00:02:13,216 But be aware that if you slide it too high, Blender could crash. 39 00:02:13,326 --> 00:02:14,636 This happened to me in the past. 40 00:02:14,636 --> 00:02:19,456 You can also see that the volume is clearly displaced on an axis. 41 00:02:19,766 --> 00:02:21,826 This might become apparent later. 42 00:02:22,276 --> 00:02:24,736 But right now, we will keep the strength pretty low. 43 00:02:24,736 --> 00:02:26,326 So this shouldn't be an issue. 44 00:02:26,506 --> 00:02:30,076 Great. Now that we have some bigger details, we, of course, want to add more. 45 00:02:30,516 --> 00:02:32,486 So let's add in some medium ones. 46 00:02:32,956 --> 00:02:36,076 Let's again select clouds but now maybe a size of one. 47 00:02:36,076 --> 00:02:39,826 And you can already see that we get some finer details around the edge. 48 00:02:40,146 --> 00:02:40,676 This is great. 49 00:02:40,676 --> 00:02:42,576 And we can now also adjust the strength, 50 00:02:42,976 --> 00:02:46,776 maybe even into the negative direction, to get a cloud shape we like. 51 00:02:46,776 --> 00:02:49,456 And just like in the normal displace modifier, 52 00:02:50,016 --> 00:02:53,546 you can also choose an object to control the texture mapping. 53 00:02:53,546 --> 00:02:56,726 And this is already looking good, so let's add even smaller details. 54 00:02:56,726 --> 00:03:02,356 You can now see that we have to turn down the strength a lot, to maybe 0.25. 55 00:03:02,576 --> 00:03:06,336 Great. And if we now up the voxel amount to maybe 128, 56 00:03:06,336 --> 00:03:09,706 we can really see all the detail in our cloud. 57 00:03:10,356 --> 00:03:11,486 Okay, that's great. 58 00:03:11,486 --> 00:03:13,596 But there are still some things left to do. 59 00:03:13,896 --> 00:03:17,936 Let's firstly go into rendered mode, add in a sun lamp right above, 60 00:03:18,076 --> 00:03:20,626 and give it a strength of maybe 10. 61 00:03:20,626 --> 00:03:23,636 We will use this sunlight to just light up our cloud. 62 00:03:23,636 --> 00:03:26,676 To make this more pretty, let's also enable volumetric shadows, 63 00:03:26,676 --> 00:03:29,276 and let's turn down the tile size to two pixels. 64 00:03:29,456 --> 00:03:33,666 And we can already see that our cloud is starting to look like a cloud. 65 00:03:34,206 --> 00:03:36,826 But clouds often have a flattened bottom. 66 00:03:36,996 --> 00:03:40,136 And we can easily do this with just a few nodes. 67 00:03:40,136 --> 00:03:46,036 So let's select our volume, click new, and let's add in a gradient texture. 68 00:03:46,036 --> 00:03:50,776 For now, I'll set the tile size back to eight pixels so everything renders a lot faster. 69 00:03:50,776 --> 00:03:53,596 We can now plug the factor into the density slider. 70 00:03:53,726 --> 00:03:57,496 And with CTRL T, add in a texture coordinate and a mapping node. 71 00:03:57,706 --> 00:03:59,986 You can see that nothing is really happening right now, 72 00:03:59,986 --> 00:04:02,216 so let's select the object coordinates. 73 00:04:02,476 --> 00:04:06,916 And now, our gradient is cutting off our cloud in the middle. 74 00:04:07,156 --> 00:04:08,706 But this happens on the wrong axis. 75 00:04:09,256 --> 00:04:11,796 So let's rotate it 90 degrees on the y-axis. 76 00:04:11,796 --> 00:04:14,606 And now, we can see that our cloud has a flat bottom. 77 00:04:15,226 --> 00:04:17,536 But this falloff is right now pretty harsh. 78 00:04:17,536 --> 00:04:20,586 So let's add in a mix RGB node, as well as noise texture, 79 00:04:20,736 --> 00:04:25,366 and mix the vector with the factor of the noise. 80 00:04:25,996 --> 00:04:28,286 And if we now adjust the slider, you can see 81 00:04:28,286 --> 00:04:30,816 that we can make the falloff a bit more interesting. 82 00:04:31,176 --> 00:04:36,156 We can now, of course, adjust the noise size and make it more noticeable with a color ramp. 83 00:04:36,156 --> 00:04:40,296 Now, all that's left to do is maybe add in a math node, set it to multiply. 84 00:04:40,296 --> 00:04:43,286 And now, we can make the cloud a lot thicker. 85 00:04:43,376 --> 00:04:47,106 Great. Let's change our tile size back to two and preview our cloud. 86 00:04:47,346 --> 00:04:48,946 And this is already looking pretty good. 87 00:04:49,076 --> 00:04:51,796 But, of course, we are still missing our sky background. 88 00:04:52,066 --> 00:04:58,586 So let's add in a camera, clear out everything, and rotate it 90 degrees on the x-axis. 89 00:04:59,416 --> 00:05:02,686 And now, we can just move it back and have it face our cloud. 90 00:05:03,186 --> 00:05:05,356 And now, let's add in our world background. 91 00:05:05,806 --> 00:05:08,836 The easiest way to do this is to add in another gradient texture. 92 00:05:09,216 --> 00:05:12,156 And you can see that, again, it is on the wrong axis. 93 00:05:12,416 --> 00:05:15,186 So let's rotate it 90 degrees on the y-axis. 94 00:05:15,476 --> 00:05:18,666 Change it to easing to have a smoother gradient. 95 00:05:18,666 --> 00:05:24,306 And let's add in a color ramp, and now make the one handle a light blue color 96 00:05:24,446 --> 00:05:26,156 and the other one a dark blue color. 97 00:05:26,836 --> 00:05:29,906 But you can see that we are only seeing the light blue one. 98 00:05:30,316 --> 00:05:32,736 And this is because all the dark is left on the top. 99 00:05:32,946 --> 00:05:36,136 But we can easily change this by adjusting the X location. 100 00:05:36,276 --> 00:05:39,076 And now, we have our nice gradient in the background. 101 00:05:39,076 --> 00:05:42,146 Awesome! And now, we have a very simple cloud in Blender. 102 00:05:42,306 --> 00:05:47,876 And we can even just use this mesh, scale it maybe up or down, 103 00:05:47,876 --> 00:05:50,116 to easily create variations of our cloud. 104 00:05:50,326 --> 00:05:51,906 For example, just like this. 105 00:05:52,316 --> 00:05:57,166 In the end, I would suggest you to turn up the samples right here, to maybe 128, 106 00:05:57,166 --> 00:05:59,576 and also turn up the voxel amount. 107 00:05:59,746 --> 00:06:03,456 Keep in mind, this voxel amount is relative to what you did in your scene. 108 00:06:03,456 --> 00:06:04,166 Okay. Great! 109 00:06:04,166 --> 00:06:05,446 And that's basically it. 110 00:06:05,446 --> 00:06:09,686 This is how we can now easily create custom clouds and volumes in Blender EEVEE. 111 00:06:09,876 --> 00:06:14,446 Right now, I would only suggest you to use this in EEVEE because, in Cycles, 112 00:06:14,446 --> 00:06:18,026 some interesting visual bugs can occur, like blockiness in your volume. 113 00:06:18,546 --> 00:06:20,016 I hope this tutorial was helpful. 114 00:06:20,066 --> 00:06:21,126 I hope you learned something. 115 00:06:21,196 --> 00:06:23,256 And if you did, consider liking and subscribing. 116 00:06:23,516 --> 00:06:26,976 And you'll see us in the next video next Saturday.