41. Now for the clouds. Switch the Lake Sky view back to realtime mode. Open the Plan view popup menu and select View > New Planimetric Camera.

42. The Plan Camera view will be replaced by the Planimetric Camera view.

43. Go to the Scene-At-A-Glance and double-click the empty Cloud Models category to add a new Component and open its Editor.

44. Rename it Nimbus Flat and leave the Base Elevation at 5000 meters.

45. Select Set Bounds in a View. The Set Cloud Model Bounds box reminds us that the next two points clicked will become the Cloud Model bounds.

46. Activate the Planimetric Camera view and zoom out once with the - key. To minimize render time, we only place clouds where we can see them in camera views. Left-click once behind the Lake Sky Camera southwest of the lake. Click again to the northeast. The view will refresh with a shaded box representing the Cloud Model.

47. Save the project and render a Lake Sky preview.

48. The clouds don't quite make it across the sky, so zoom back again in the planimetric view. Set Bounds in a View again and create a larger Cloud Model area.

49. Save the project and render a preview.

50. Go to the Aerial Attributes page. Here we can change the Cloud Presets and preview the cloud pattern. Evolve makes it easy to animate simple cloud patterns. Shading controls how dark the underside of the clouds get. They look a little dark, so let's decrease the Shading to 35%.

51. Open another Lake Sky view in place of the planimetric view. Save the project and render a right preview. The clouds look a little less threatening now.

52. Think of Coverage as Clouds per unit area. Decrease it to 50% to get a preview of the effect. The maximum value is 100%.

53. Density controls individual cloud density and size within the texture. Try a value of 500% to see the effect in the preview.

54. Edit the Density Pattern texture to see the texture generating the Nimbus clouds. Close the Texture Editor.

55. Profiles control how the parameters are changing vertically. Edit Coverage Profile to open its Vertical Coverage Profile. The horizontal axis goes from the bottom of the clouds to the top. The vertical axis is the percentage of Coverage on the Aerial Attributes page. 0 is no Coverage and 100 is full Coverage, in this case 100%.

56. The Shadows page controls the casting of shadows by Clouds.

57. Receiving of shadows by terrain and foliage is controlled by Shadow Components. Go to the lower Scene-At-A-Glance and double-click the Shadows category to open its only Component.

58. The Receive Shadows page sets what shadows the terrain receives.

59. New to VNS 2 is the addition of volumetric clouds. These are even easier to add then the non-volumetric ones. Go to the General page and disable the Nimbus Flat Cloud Model.

60. Add a new default Cloud Model.

61. Name it Nimbus 3D.

62. Go to the Vertical Profile page and select Volumetric.

63. Open the YNP Atmosphere from the Scene-At-A-Glance and drag it to the lower right quad. Select the 25X Speed Boost for fastest rendering. This is great for previewing cloud changes.

64. Save the project and render a left preview. For final renders, lower the Speed Boost settings until you get the cloud quality you want at the best render time price.

65. Go to the Aerial Attributes page and reduce the Shading to 25%. Save the project and render a preview.

66. If you were keeping track of render time, you may have noticed that it took less time to render the volumetric clouds than the layered clouds. Switch the Speed Boost to Normal and render another preview.

67. Open the right popup menu and select Render Options > Terrain > Terrain to enable terrain again for rendering.

68. Save the project and render a preview.

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