The Coolest Clouds

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Cool Clouds - 3

The Coolest Clouds - 3

Part 3: Learning from the Winners (1)

In order to make this tutorial more efficient for you, I have asked people who have won various 1st places at Terragen Contests, to share with us examples from their winning pictures. The many parameters we are able to control in Terragen are difficult to cope with on their own, but it gets even more complex when you need to have these parameters playing in concert to better support your scenery.
Let’s start with Force Majeur, from Peter Kleiner, a giftet TG Artist. This was his winning picture:

I was petrified when I first saw this. So I asked Peter how he did this. Rather than sending over the worldfile, he provided me with the complete settings he used, and I’m gonna share these with you in a moment. Many artists do not want others to exactly copy their artwork and after all claim it as their own. So in this case, we only have the settings to discuss, but I promise that most instantaneously you will get similar result once you set the parameters. Here we go:

Clouds Dialog Box:

Sky size	10000
Altitude	350
3D	checked
Depth/Thickness	8
Cloud color	56, 62, 56
Darkening	55%
Density Contrast	30
Density Shift	41
Persistence	50
Largest Cloud Size	2^nd largest setting

Atmosphere Dialog Box:

Haze	55%, 803m
Atmospheric Blue	20%, 2048
Color of Atmospheric Blue	104, 169, 256
Decay	33%, 1305m
Decay Color	218, 171, 71

Lighting Conditions:

Terrain Casts Shadows	checked
Clouds Cast Shadows	checked
Shadows in Atmosphere	checked

Direct Sunlight Tab:
sunlight Strengh	650%
Effect of Atmosphere	100%
Realistic Sunlight P. System	checked

Background Light Tab:
Multi-directional Shadow Lighting	checked
Shadow Lightness	14.44
Diffuse Sunlight	55, 56, 44
Light from Above	62, 72, 56
Reverse Light	32, 32, 24

Sun’s Appearance Tab	unchanged

Lighting of Atmosphere Tab
Glow Amount	56%
Glow Power	14%

So, have you put it in? Go generate clouds until you find a good position and you’ll be very satisfied with your results. And you will want to have a nice terrain supporting your new creation. The following picture is a quickshot with the new ‘Force Majeur’ settings: