Is there a way to warp the terrain to make it look like the Mass Effect Citadel?

[avkhatri]

Hi everyone,

I have been trying to figure out if the terrain or planet can be warped so it looks like the mass effect citadel? What I mean is that I want to know if I can have the terrain be on an incline as shown in this photo. Is there a "blend by shader" way of doing this? Or a specific option? I would expect that this is doable considering the amount of things that are capable with TG2

[Goms]

only with a bunch of functions, i guess.
try to not use a planet but two planes and displace them first by x to get a tube-like shape and them by z to bend it.
you could use functions also to get light through the upper plane (make windows with some sine functions).

[Dune]

Very intriguing image. My first idea was to use the inside of a planet... flip normals or something, make the cloud height negative, put a light source as sun inside, whatever. I don't know, just a guess. Good luck experimenting.

[cyphyr]

At the moment pretty much "no". I have been inspired to try exactly this on several occasions but Terragen can't really do this yet.
You may be able to "cheat" and only model and render the specific area you need. Populations will be an issue as they are projected from a flat plane and won't conform to the inner surface easily. Again you may be able to cheat with multiple populations. I'm liking the two planes idea.
Years ago I tried something similar for CGTalks Eon challenge, I'll see if I can dig out the files.
Good luck
Richard

[freelancah]

You could try to make a insanely big crater on a planet and build the stuff into that. You'd need to model the "roof" tho.

edit: ofcourse you'd have to warp the crater to resemble anything like that and still the edges would not be perfect, but perhaps its close enough?

[Goms]

well, i would say works fine... a more complex ceiling would be - well - more complex and a population for sure a little bit problematic, but the underlying idea works.

[cyphyr]

Very impressive indeed.

Richard

[N810]

Perhaps you could make a regular landscape and use the trick
there you set the camera to ortho and do a render straight down
from a great height to get a texture. you could then use this image
as a dispacemnt shader on your object as well as a color shader.

[avkhatri]

You could try to make a insanely big crater on a planet and build the stuff into that. You'd need to model the "roof" tho.

edit: ofcourse you'd have to warp the crater to resemble anything like that and still the edges would not be perfect, but perhaps its close enough?

Thanks for all of the quick replies! I'll get started and try some of your suggestions. GOMs test render is exactly what I'm looking for (besides mountains and what not) ill start experimenting with planes and such, and post back once i've got something

[Andrew March]

I would suggest this is more something for a 3d modelling program, which could then be rendered in TG2.

[Volker Harun]

I would suggest this is more something for a 3d modelling program, which could then be rendered in TG2.

I double this.

[Ogre]

Here is a quick tg2 only sample

[Volker Harun]

@Ogre: now you need a good distribution along the midway/rivermask for buildings or irrigation or both which does not look too artificial ... ,-) I tell you this could be hard work, but I like to be surprised

[Ogre]

The rest is up to you . I barely had time to throw that together.  Can't wait to see what you develop.

[Mahnmut]

Cyphir just showed that you found some good methods!

I don´t know if this helps, but I used a hollow planet recently (what a sentence!)
The main thing is to give it a negative radius. Placing populations is still strange then, but procedural surfaces render just fine.
The simple shape shader is also helpful.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10796.0