Lee Grigs shows how you can quickly create clouds using Arnold’s Volume Shader and Maya’s Cloud texture.

Arnold Rendering Specialist Lee Griggs shows a fast and easy way to create clouds with Arnold in Maya. Griggs shows how to make a volume shader and connect Maya’s cloud texture to the transparency attribute. That’s pretty much it.

Maya’s cloud texture is a 3D one and is a bit of an old throwback in terms of noise shaders. It

s still quite helpful in working with volumes and offers a cloud-like look nearly without any changes to the settings.

Griggs notes that it is possible to achieve a wide range of cloudy skies using this setup. 

Lee didn’t mention that increasing the number of volume rays in the ray depth section of Arnold will make the clouds look more white and fluffy.