> Or real clouds instead of a picture of them :)

<begin soapbox>
There have been many admirable efforts to get good-looking clouds purely through
media, and a few have been quite successful.  But even if I skipped all the
testing and retesting (...and retesting...and retesting...and retesting...) and
just cut and pasted their code, there's no guarantee that the clouds would look
even half-decent in my scene, with a different scale, different light and
radiosity settings, etc.  Even the very best media-cloud results don't look as
good as actual pictures of clouds, although they do have the distinct advantage
of actual 3D placement within your scene and interaction with your light
sources.

By using real pictures, however, I can easily choose clouds that look precisely
like I want without waiting hours for it to render (and make adjustments and
render again, and again, and again) so I can see if it even looks like I want.
So, very often, unless you need a cloud to serve a very particular purpose in
your scene, image-clouds can usually provide just as good or even better
results with much less frustration and time.  I therefore argue that POVers
should not be ashamed or afraid to use simple pictures for their skies.  :)
</end soapbox>

....

....

....well, I write all that, and now I am feeling tempted to try those blasted
media-clouds again...

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