Moving Clouds
I've run into a similar "surface smoke" situation in RenderMan…fwiw, I've had
luck with the workaround of duplicating the object a few times, successively
smaller, with the same central point, and applying the smoke at various
opacities…looks better when moving than still. Another workaround was to
create a second smaller/larger duplicate object and fill it with a fairly
transparent color…RMan "glow" (different method than IPAS glow, I think)
works well, too.
There's a package on the Amiga called "Aladdin 4D" that apparently handles
turbulence- and image-controlled volume shading…examples I've seen have had
some surface artifacts, though…anyone have more info on true volume rendering
on the desktop? Do the algorithms and CPUs meet yet, or are we still a bit
aways from that goal?
jd