Hi! I'm working on a little comic animation. there i need some comic shaped clouds.
the most important fact, beside the quality: RENDERTIME!
it should render as fast as possible, so i decided to try tricks to get the effect i want
to, and didnt use fluids.
I think of a nurbs sphere, verticles changed & assigned a 3d-shader.
but maybe there are easier ways to get to?? tricks, tipps?
thanks alot!
StingRay
you mean like little cotton balls?
how about having blobbies, or even spheres attached to particles, with the particle fog material to colour them?
It might even be an idea (if they're cartoony) to simply birth some without having them move around, and then parent them to something to animate them where you want them to go.
hey sun-
I would also try when your borad, making a small fluid puff with an alpha channel and then applying that image to sprite particles. make sure you check the depth sort thing. this would give you a realistic cloud with the appearance of alot of depth. but it is a flat still image and will render faster, cuz there is only like 1poly per particle. cuz its a plane. anyways you get the idea. and then if you really want to get that cartoon thing, you could create a layer shader with the fluid tiff (image) and then put on the cartoon shader. I haven't done this but it should be logical.
Hope the way you did it worked well! later
am 
use mental ray
try using partciles cloud that you place with the particle tool
here's tutorial that shows how to do it : http://www.3dtreat.com/pages/tutorials/Clo...Page/index.html