Skydome and clouds

Started by
5 comments, last by Yann L 13 years, 11 months ago
Hi, what's better? a) 2d procedural clouds (e.g. generating it with perlin noise) b) 3d procedural clouds c) 2d and 3d procedural clouds ?
Advertisement
d) it depends.

We can't tell you what's best for you. All of these techniques have their drawbacks and advantages, and each technique is the "best" in its own optimal usage scenario. Since you give absolutely no information about what you would like to achieve, that's about as precise as one can get.
If you intend to do a graphics demo and spend years on the Sky its up to you.

If you are doing a game unless you are looking 90% of the time at the Sky they might as well be nice crafted billboards.
ok and i have a question about skydome. What's more popular/easier, skydome with texture or skydome with vertex colors?
Same answer as the one Yann gave to the other question. It depends.

If you just want a "mostly blue" sky backdrop, vertex colours are probably easier. If you want it somewhat realistic without too much hassle, a texture map as described for example by Abad is easiest.
If you want it really realistic, you can make it as complicated as you want, many people have written a thesis on realistic sky dome rendering.
It really depends...

If your are marking a 1st or 3rd person game where you stay on the ground, maybe a skybox with photo texture may be a better bet. Does it have to by dynamic? You can buy a set (6) of high res textures for 10 bucks or google soem free ones...

Of course you can implement the cloud rendering algorithm detailed don this page:

http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Eric.Bruneton/

The question is it worth the effort...
Rioki - http://www.rioki.org
Quote:Original post by arwi234
ok and i have a question about skydome. What's more popular/easier, skydome with texture or skydome with vertex colors?

Dude, almost your entire forum history consists of questions like this. "What is better, technology 1 or totally unrelated technology 2 ?" Or like that other guy said in one of your other threads: "What is better, French toast or the color red?"

There is no answer to these questions, because they don't make sense. You're not doing yourself a favour by asking like this, and you will never get any real help. You should probably start by explaining what exactly you're trying to do. We need context in order to answer your questions.
Quote:Original post by samoth
If you want it really realistic, you can make it as complicated as you want, many people have written a thesis on realistic sky dome rendering.

There is a nice and easy pixel-shader implementation of the well known paper by Nishita as polynomial approximations in GPU gems 2 (article here). No idea if it fits the "popular/easier" category of the OP, but it's a great and simple basis for a procedural atmosphere.

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement