Animating Clouds

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Animating clouds and their reflections on high rise buildings

Start by opening an image of a high rise building.

Create selection of the building using polygon lasso tool. Press Ctrl+J to copy paste the selection in a new layer.

Insert a big image of clouds. It should be much bigger then the actual dimensions of the file because we need to pan it to create an illusion of moving clouds.

Duplicate the layer. Press Ctrl+T. Right click and select Flip Vertical and place it as shown.

Place them as if the bottom of original layer touches the top of it's duplicate. this step is important to create a seamless loop. Select and merge both layers.

Move this layer below the building cutout layer in layer order in layer palette. Using pen tool create rectangular shapes exactly like the shape of glass panes on building.

Select and merge all the glass pane layers. Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.

Duplicate the clouds layers. Move this layer right above the glass pane layer in layer order in layer palette. Press Ctrl+Alt+G to create a clipping mask.

Reduce the opacity to 40%.

Create a new layer above all the layers. Fill it with black color.

From filter menu select Render>>Lens Flare. Apply settings as shown.

Change the layer mode to overlay.

Open animation window. For the first frame keep the clouds layer in such a position so that it's bottom coincide with the bottom of the file and we have layer content above to pan. Oppositely the masked cloud layer should have it's top at building's top and it has content below to pan in opposite direction to the clouds layer.