|
Important -
For this tutorial I will show the worded directions
along with the exact keystrokes it takes to perform
each
step. If you are fluent enough with Blender you
may not have a need for the keystrokes line. Each
step within the keystrokes line will be separated by
a semicolon. Arrows will indicate that you
should be following a menu path.
Section 1 - Setup
Step 1:
Let us begin by opening a new scene.
-- “Ctrl X” -OR- File>New>Erase All
If you have kept the default scene that Blender
automatically sets up, you will want to delete
the default cube. I normally have the screen
set up to front view at the beginning.
-- “X”>Vertices ; “1”
My Screen now looks like this…
Step 2: Add a plane. This is
what the cloud will be emitted out of after the
particle setting is added to the object. Skew the
plane along the X-Axis by a factor of 10 and then
move your view slightly to see your plane in 3D. A good
way is to look through the camera. This way you will
know exactly what it will look like when you decide
to render your scene.
-- Add>Mesh>Plane ; “S” ; “X” ; “10” ;
“0” (Camera View)
Step
3: In order to see the clouds better
when you render, move the plane back by about 5
on the Y-Axis and also by -5 on the X-Axis. In order
to see the particles you must be in Object Mode.
After you have done this, go to the Physics buttons and hit
New in the physics tab.
-- “G” ; “Y” ; “5” ; “Enter”
-- “G” ; “X” ; “-5” ; “Enter”
-- “Tab” ; “F7” ; Click the “Physics Button” ; Click
“New”
Great! We now have the particles hooked up to your
plane. Right now, however, there are no particles to be seen.
To see them you will have to make a few
changes to the particle settings.
Section 2 - Settings &
Texturing
Step 4: So
far we have set up the basic scene for our clouds.
For this tutorial I am going to show you the clouds
whilst stationary. As you can see, where the New
button used to reside there are now two tabs worth of
settings. On the Particles tab hit the Static
button. Little dots should appear on the plane. To
make the particles come off the plane go to the
Particle Motion tab and then change the Normal
setting to .250 and the Random setting to .100.
-- Click “Static” ; Click “Particle Motion” Tab ;
-- Click “Normal” ; Type in “.250”
-- Click “Random” ; Type in “.100”
Step 5: In order to make
these particles look like clouds, we have to make a
texture for them. So go to the Materials tab
and click on Add New. After that all of the
material buttons will appear. Click on Halo. Go into the Shaders
tab and change the Halo size to “1”, Hard
to “35”, and Add to “.080”. You also want to
select HaloTex
and Shaded. Over in the MapTo tab, turn on
Alpha. Finally, you should change the RGB color to
white.
Instead of doing a keystrokes line here, I have
these screen shots for you to look at and match on
your blender file:
Step 6: Now go to the Texture
buttons. Click Add New. Under Texturing Type
select Clouds in the slide out menu.
-- “F7” ; Click “Add New”
-- Select “Clouds” under texture type
Now we have to play with the texture settings:
- In the Colors tab, (this is in the same box that
the “Add new” button was in), change the “Bright” to
“2.000” and the “Contr” to “4.000”
- In the Clouds box, select “Hard Noise”, set the “NoiseSize”
to “2.000” and the “NoiseDepth” to “6”. to “6”.
You can see these settings in the picture below:
Step 7: This is the moment
you have been waiting for! Go ahead and hit F12 on
your keyboard to
see what you have created! If you have duplicated all my settings
perfectly, your results should look very similar to
the image below.
Step 8: The rest is up to
you. Go back and change settings to see what they do,
and make changes where you think they are
appropriate.
Also, if you want the clouds to move, you must turn
off the Static button that we clicked at the very
beginning of Section 2. After that you can go into
the Animation Setup (At the very top where it says
“SR:2-Model" click the scroll down menu and select
Animation) and you can see the particles come out
of the plane as you move down the timeline.
That’s all for now! If you have any comments or
suggestions
feel free to
E-Mail me.
- Tutorial written by IrascibleOne
| 
