WIP: Procedural clouds from space

Started by nvseal, April 30, 2007, 10:21:26 PM

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Oshyan

I'd be glad to render it at higher resolution. My machine is sitting idle at home right now. ;)

- Oshyan

nvseal

Thanks Oshyan. Here are the files. Everything should be ready to go (feel free to turn the GI down to 2  ;)). If you have any questions just PM me.

old_blaggard

http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Oshyan

I'm rendering it now, largely as you sent it, although the moon image wasn't attached (I presume it's not needed). I don't usually recommend GI for space scenes and GI Surface Details is definitely not necessary, but I left 'em on just for kicks and will do multiple renders (at 800x600) to show the differences for later reference. I'll do the final at 1600x1200 for you.

- Oshyan

nvseal

Thanks Oshyan, yeah, I forgot to turn GI surface details off. And the moon file isn't need so you can just delete. I should have cleaned it up a bit.  ::)

nvseal

I hope that's not still rendering Oshyan.  :D

Will

Really intresting man, I can't wait to see where this goes.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Oshyan

Sorry about the delay. I went away for the weekend. ;D

Turns out the file really doesn't like rendering at higher resolutions - it seems to run into some kind of odd memory limitation. It doesn't appear to be scaling linearly in terms of render time - by far. We're looking at the file as a test case for some fixes and optimizations at any rate.

I'll be reattemping it now (after cancelling the previous try still rendering at 50 hours) at a lower resolution and with lower GI. We'll see how it goes...

- Oshyan

nvseal

50 hours! Hmm, that's quite strange indeed. I hope it can get fixed. I just tried to render a newer version of the file last night and my computer crashed.  ??? That has happened before with other files (I'm working on a laptop so I think it is more hardware issues on my end) so I'm going to try to re-render it tonight. But strange nonetheless.

Oshyan

Got the 1024x768 version done and it looks fine. Only took 7 hours and 43 minutes, so clearly there's a huge jump when you move up to 1600x1200. I'll post the finished render later today.

- Oshyan

Will

cool can't wait. Its great to see more and more people doing Orbital renders, it makes me feel less lonely.


Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

ProjectX

ha ha, I tried em, but couldn't get anywhere near to matching your images Will. You are truly a master at them.

nvseal

I'll be looking forward to that Oshayn. In the mean time, I've done some more work on the file. While it is not done, I do think I have made some progress. What I am mainly working on right now is trying to balance the larger patches of clouds with the smaller patches while maintaining a look of depth without increasing the cloud depth to the extremes. I also want to maintain the wispy, wind affect of the cloud formations such as in this image so that they seem more logical.

Try to ignore the banding.  ::)

Will

Just keeps getting better :)

By the way thanks ProjectX but I'm not a master, they are just the only things I'm good at in Terragen. Most of my landscapes are pretty sad.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Oshyan

Looks good nvseal, although I'm honestly not sure it's an improvement over previous images. Most notably I see less of the cool scattered clouds.

Also in regards to cloud height, remember that a large cumulus storm cloud can be in excess of 12,000 meters tall. So realistically some layers should have that level of depth to them, though this should be scattered as it's true most clouds are not that tall.

- Oshyan