VFX Post Production:Clouds and Dark Sky.

This was the hardest part because I couldn't just mask out the areas of the sky because it just didn't look right or feel like a dark storm approaching, sadly I could capture any footage due to there begin no storms, so I looked online and found some tutorials but sadly there where all basic and looked bad.

However in maya there is a built in particle system called fluids and that you could create decent clouds from.

http://vimeo.com/30189748  And http://vimeo.com/30191625
These are great examples of what I'm trying to achieve however after trying to creating something similar I got only this.

Sadly they don't look fluff at all, and not like a thunder cloud so I'm going to fiddle with the controls in the attributes of the cloud which is a pain because this is unknown area for me with very little guilds on it.

Here is my second attempt of creating the storm cloud with a slightly different tut which is to make fog. In this one I've managed to change the density of the cloud/fog to be more of it and less spread out to look like a dark cloud and changed the colour to a odd teal colour which is showing progress.

After a lot of figuring out and tweaking I manage to generate these clouds which are fluffy and look like a thunder storm is coming all I have to do now is create a back plate of a clear blue sky to show the transition of the clear day turning into a stormy day, to do this I put yellow point lights to flash to resemble lightning/thunder

This is the final dark cloud/ thunder storm. I am really proud of this since N Dynamics on  Maya is incredibly hard to achieve but this will look real good coming over the roof.

Overall I would love to do this again and have a play with the controls to see what I can create in the N Dynamics of Maya, however give myself enough time so this isn't rushed and could be more improved upon.