- [Voiceover] We're ready to add a cloud layer
and customize it.
First, let's speed up our test renders by hiding
some of the unnecessary objects.
We'll put things on to display layers.
Go down into the world browser at the bottom
and click New Layer.
And then select that layer, click it again
to rename it.
Call it Trees.
And then select all the Mediterranean Cypresses
click the first one, shift-click the last one,
and then drag and drop them just below that Trees layer.
Now they're added to that layer.
We can hide them, for example,
by clicking on the Eyeball button a couple of times.
It's made shy.
Then we de-select the layer.
They're actually hidden.
All right, I'll bring that back by clicking
and now it's visible again.
But let's make it invisible to the renderer
and we can do that by clicking on the icon here.
We'll put the global ecosystem
onto a layer of its own as well
in order to hide it in the render.
Create new layer, click it,
click it again and we'll call it Ecosystem.
Drag and drop the global ecosystem object into that layer
and once again, hide the layer.
You can also hide it by right-clicking and in the menu,
choose Hide Current Layer From Render.
And the sea, as well, we want to hide that.
Click on its icon, or right-click and choose
Hide From Render.
And, when we hide the sea level from the renderer,
we also hide it in the viewport.
We'll do a baseline test render now
with preview quality.
Let's set the quality of the quick render.
Right-click on the camera icon.
And make sure you've got Preview chosen.
And then left-click to create a test render with no clouds.
That's stored on disk in our render stack.
And now we'll go into the Atmosphere Editor
and in the Clouds tab, we can add a new Cloud Layer.
Click the right-facing arrow to load.
The material browser opens up.
You may be taken to some other tab within that browser
such as the Basic tab.
And you might need to navigate to find the Clouds tab.
And under Spectral 2,
we're looking for Flat Cumulus.
Click on that.
It's loaded as a cloud layer.
And now let's test render
to see what it looks like by default.
Once that render is complete,
let's go back into the Atmosphere Editor
and start to customize this.
Increase the cover amount up to its maximum of 100
and press Return.
We can see in the preview here
that it's a much thicker cloud.
Let's expand the preview out to 100 meters.
Click on the down arrow there and choose 100 meters.
And our preview render is encompassing a larger area
of the sky.
While we're here, let's rename that cloud layer,
click on it and we'll call it Uniform Simple Repeater.
We've renamed that layer
and now let's do a test render with a new setting for cover.
It seems like a very thick layer of cloud
but it's a good demonstration of our next setting
which is the shadows cast by the clouds.
We actually want to turn that off
in order to speed the render process.
And to do that, we'll go into the Material Editor.
Right-click on the sample of the layer
and choose Edit Material.
The Advanced Cloud Material Editor opens.
In the Lighting and Effects tab,
let's disable Cast Shadows and GI Ambient Lighting.
Click OK.
And render once again.
This should be a faster render
because we're not casting a shadow onto the ground.
Let's compare it.
Go into the render stack.
And here it is with no shadows,
and there's a version with shadows.
It's a little bit of a subtle effect in this case
but our render time is definitely faster.
Close the render display and back in the Atmosphere Editor,
we want to change up a bunch of these atmosphere settings.
Let's set the Altitude to 400 meters,
the Height to 200,
the amount of Cover we've got at 100,
Density we'll also set at 100,
Opacity we can increase a bit to 63,
the Sharpness up to 100%,
Feather of 0,
Altitude Variations 60%
and Ambient Lighting down to 0
to maximize the contrast between the light and shadow.
And of course, I've experimented with this scene
and arrived at these settings,
but you are more than welcome to experiment
with your own settings.
Changing a parameter by a small amount
may have a large affect on the look of your rendering.
With those settings put in, let's click OK
and do another test render with our now customized version
of the atmosphere.
That's our first pass at a custom cloud layer.
We still have more fun, though, with the Function Editor.
We'll take a look at editing a cloud function
in the following movie.