Planetary City Night Lights Inquiry

[nethskie]

is this even possible in Terragen 2? i would love to learn this i hope someone can enlighten us

[RArcher]

The easiest way would be to use an image map like the ones here:  http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earthnight.php

[TheBlackHole]

But what if they don't match your planetary terrain?

[RArcher]

Obviously using a real earth light map isn't going to work for non-earth planets.  You would need to either draw your own map based on your landforms, or create a procedural solution.  Here is a simple very unrefined example.

The surface layer has luminance enabled, The fractal breakup makes the little dots and the powerfractal gives you the overall coverage pattern.

[nethskie]

thanks for some inputs Ryan actually i already tried the luminance however it doesnt look good when i render it at high quality it just looks like pixelated dots / noise. I tried an image map on my deviation Unimatrix 25 and a night scene overlay(using luminance) for Destination Romulus still not that good (i will reupload these when i figure this out). Doing it on 3DS max is easier however i'll have to draw the entire planetary surface and bumps which is time consuming a harder approach. Here is an example i would like to accomplish in TG2 if possible http://hoevelkamp.deviantart.com/art/3ds-Max-Planets-The-End-151649843 if this can be done please let me know

[rcallicotte]

I took lights from a night map of Earth and just brought it in through Photoshop using Screen mode.  It's possible that way, too...for still images (of course).   

[borparo]

Hello,

I'm quite new on TG2, and would like to know if it is any way to connect the luminosity function with the light source of the scene. I'm also trying to mimic the night lights on the renders. As far as i read in the nodes help, is possible to use a painted shader, but that will limit us to the camera point of view for the final render.

Thanks,

Borja

[Oshyan]

If you use Luminosity at a high enough value in any texture shader that is visible in the scene, and you are using Global Illumination, you should get light coming from the luminous surfaces. It may take quite high values, remember you can type in larger values than the maximum on a slider. You may also need higher GI settings to accurately capture the light contribution.

Painted Shaders can work in 3D space and, depending on how you paint a feature, it should work for any viewpoint. Moving around a partly painted mask to fill in areas of it is a totally legitimate way to work.

- Oshyan

[borparo]

Hi Oshyan,

Thanks for the answer. Still have one doubt. Although i'm going to check the results in the next render. The doubt is if the Luminosity will appear on the bright side of the planet. In the last tries i was playing around with some conditional and get nodes to see if i could get the effect, but didn't have global illumination.

Thanks again, for pointing in the right direction.

Borja

[JimB]

Oshyan's right about upping GI quality settings. I had to do this for a job last year (not released yet so I can't show anything). Check out the video linked to at this thread for the real deal.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=13849.0

TG2 does a beautiful job of illuminating clouds from underneath using texture maps on the planet surface to uplight with, but your GI settings really do have to be quite high for the best effect. To hide the texture maps themselves so all you're seeing is the clouds, add a high rez black sphere that matches the dimensions and placement of the planet but a tiny bit larger, and switch off its secondary rays (Visible to Other Rays) so that the texture lighting reaches the clouds. You can then use that render to comp on top of a normal default render using a screen or additive blend.

The cities themselves were a lot of very high-rez masking work in Photoshop with some procedural help using various TG2 shaders.