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I am creating a nebula-like environment. This is my workflow: I create a simple mesh with displace modifier applied to it. I then create a volume empty, apply mesh to volume modifier to it using the mesh I created and then simply do volume displace with a cloud texture.

This is easy to do and not excessively demanding on computing resources. The problem I’m facing is that the clouds in the distance seem blurred / unfocused for some reason. I would like them to be sharper/crisper if that makes sense. Is there anything I could do?

No depth of field is used in the camera settings. The clouds in the scene are not made by a single mesh/volume, there are 4 of those, with practically identical settings. The UI screenshots are from the purple-ish one in the middle with torus-like shape.

The setup The render

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Obligatory warning that anything you do to increase volume precision will also increase render times, perhaps massively.

Volumes are highly probabilistic, and any rendering shortcuts tend to decrease detail. Turn off Adaptive Sampling/Noise Threshold, you may also consider turning off Denoising and running more samples but that one probably doesn't hurt as much.

More volume density at the edges (ColorRamp) and more density in general (Math -> Multiply) helps some.

Step Rate is analogous to the number of volume slices in Eevee. The ray will march a shorter distance before checking for a probabilistic collision event.

enter image description here

Max Steps may need increased in conjunction, if your volume is deep and the end of it can't be reached in that number of steps.

Here's a noise volume going from a step rate of 1 to a step rate of .1

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Many thanks for the response. I have disabled noise threshold and denoising, set step rate to 0.1 and max steps to 2048. I have also decreased voxel size in the more distant clouds, which helped a lot as well. The details are definitely more pronounced, which I like. You mentioned I could get more density at the edges using a color ramp. I think this is what I'm missing. How should I do that? $\endgroup$
    – Ondrej
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 20:47
  • $\begingroup$ Well I looked closer and you're generating your volume outside of the shader graph, so I don't think that part is relevant to you, sorry $\endgroup$
    – Allen Simpson
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 20:48
  • $\begingroup$ True, I'm not using any nodes, but I have nothing against switching to using them. Out of curiosity - if I would do that, I would have a principled volume node, and the color ramp connected to the density? Or did you mean something else? $\endgroup$
    – Ondrej
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 21:00
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, color ramp and then probably multiply the density $\endgroup$
    – Allen Simpson
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 21:02
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you. It is getting late here so I will try it sometime tomorrow, but I think you got me on the right track. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Ondrej
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 21:15

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