Cloud rendering in 3D games, esp. flight simulators, is not easy. Upcoming Microsoft FlightX does a brilliant job for its clouds (amongst many other brillant things) and I assume there has been more than one developer working on it for ... hours at least.

For the FlyingGuns project there are so many things to do that I never even started to think about cloud rendering. Fortunately, IndieTechnologies offers its famous particle system GenesisFX. Using genesisfx.jar, a couple of lines of code are sufficient to create clouds that look quite impressive.



There still is long way towards true clouds, but the ratio of effect/lines_of_code makes the value.
Additionally I used GenesisFX to replace some of my own fire/smoke effects for burning planes. Again, very few lines of code - very impressive result.



Now if someone out there feels inspired to create cool graphical effects in a rich environment, just drop me a line. The FlyingGuns project is constantly looking for support. All other sources can be found in the projects CVS.

/*
 * Clouds.java
 */

package de.hardcode.threed.terrain;

import com.indie.genesis.j3d.CloudPuff;
import javax.media.j3d.Transform3D;
import javax.media.j3d.TransformGroup;
import javax.vecmath.Color3f;
import javax.vecmath.Vector3d;
import javax.vecmath.Vector3f;

/**
 *
 * @author Herkules
 */
public class Clouds extends TransformGroup
{
	private final static double		RADIUS			= 250.0;
	private final static double		GROUPRADIUS		= RADIUS*12.0;
	private final static float		MIN_BRIGHTNESS	= 0.5f;
	private final static float		MAX_BRIGHTNESS	= 0.8f;
	private final static int		NUM_PUFFS		= 40;
	
	private class Cloud extends TransformGroup
	{
		Cloud()
		{
			CloudPuff cloud = new CloudPuff( (float)RADIUS, getCloudColor() );
			cloud.setAlignmentMode( CloudPuff.ROTATE_ABOUT_AXIS );
			cloud.setAlignmentAxis( 0,1,0 );

			Transform3D tx = new Transform3D();
			tx.setTranslation( new Vector3d(	(Math.random()-0.5)*GROUPRADIUS,
												Math.random()*RADIUS, 
												(Math.random()-0.5)*GROUPRADIUS ) );
			setTransform(tx);
			
			addChild(cloud);
		}
		
		Color3f getCloudColor()
		{
			float c = ((float)Math.random() * (MAX_BRIGHTNESS - MIN_BRIGHTNESS)) + MIN_BRIGHTNESS;
			return new Color3f( c,c,c );
		}
	}
	
	/**
	 * Creates a new instance of Clouds
	 */
	public Clouds( float x, float z, float baseheight )
	{
		Transform3D tx = new Transform3D();
		tx.setTranslation(new Vector3f(x, baseheight + (float)RADIUS/2.0f, z));
		setTransform(tx);
		
		for( int i =0; i


Links


FlyingGuns
Distributed  realtime simulation - FlyingGuns' parent project
Indie Technologies