Here’s an old-school simulation of flying into clouds.
This is resource-heavy due to all the PNGs, but it demonstrates the concept. To more easily make out the different layers and how they scale and change positions, move the time cursor manually to speed things up.
A variation that I’ve used in AE video projects is to simulate a moving landscape below. For that I would take a high-resolution high-alititude photo of the ground, select a long swatch, place it inside a mask to create a horizon, rotate it along the X and then animate it along the Y. For depth, I created a haze layer with an opacity gradient from zero at the halfway point to around 20% white at the top. To complete the illusion, add a strip of blurry clouds on the horizon. As for the blue background, use a gradient that gets darker towards the top.
The original AE file was a self-running video (for a TV commercial). This was a test to see if I could do something similar in Hype – also, self-running. The small degree of change in positions and sizes makes it problematic for a Hype animation because of the lack of motion blur,
Small recommendation: if you use the scale width/height instead of the placement width/height, you’ll get smoother animations since it can render on fractional size values.
