HI guys, im pretty new to houdini and need some direction.

Screenshots are attached.
Project files are external because of file size limit (File Size:35MB) LINK [u.pcloud.link]

Im trying to create Volumetric planet clouds which will be exported for later use in cinema 4d.

I did a POP setup based on a "attribute from map" node with a Nasa cloud picture in it.
Then i used the created point cloud to copy spheres on it. Next step was a "vdb from polygon" and a "volume vop" node.

Here are some things that bothering me:
- is there a better way to this?
- im not satisfied with the amount of detail ( weak volume vop setup?)
- if i tweak the voxel size to get more details, the cooking time of the vdb is going crazy which makes sense. Is there a kind of sparse vdb node to get better performance?

It would be great if somone could take a look.
Thank you.
Christian.