Harvest Moon

Started by ares2101, October 23, 2013, 05:13:27 PM

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ares2101

Working on a Fall/Halloween-inspired image and have come across a something I've not been able to figure out in the past.  I learned long ago that you can give moons and the air around them a nice glow by sticking a sun behind them and turning off its shadows.  Problem is, it can make lighting look a bit flat and clouds don't look quite right.  Anyone come across a good way to give moons realistic lighting?  Something to mimic sunlight reflecting off them and actually lighting things up?

I'm also trying to give this moon a prominent glow right next to it, like in this thread here http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,15027.0.html, but it's not coming out.

ares2101

Still drawing a blank and how to make the moon a light source while keeping shadows, but in the meantime tried seeing how yellowing the light would look.  I also shifted the POV to put the nearest tree's branches across it a bit.  I think that looks pretty interesting.  I haven't tried doing a yellow moon before.

cyphyr

A good start but I think you may have to use two images and comp them together. One with the moon object and another without.
Richard
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kaedorg

Nice start indeed.
Would try not to center the moon and place it at 1/3. and reduce the size a bit

David

Dune

You can stick a second moon behind your moon with a glowing very high 'bluesky' (but not blue). If you shove it slightly to the lighted side of the moon, it'll give a glowing effect on that side. Then if you stick a sunlight right behind those, without shadows, it'll illuminate the landscape. If you want shadows you'd have to compromise a little and let it shine across the top of the 2 moons (1 for map, 1 for atmo behind it), so move it upward until the moon is not casting its shadow anymore.
And if you want one side of your moon to be illuminated, place a sun to one side, but below horizon.

dandelO

#5
Hi, Ares. Noticed you had linked to one of my threads so here's a few ideas that might help.
Because you are viewing a full Moon, you'll get away with using the cheat of luminosity, without any tricky masking work to stop it showing on the dark side.
For that glow, I also cheat. The glow from our real Moon obviously happens in our own atmosphere but in TG that's quite difficult to achieve, probably possible with high GI in atmo' but this way doesn't need any GI at all, much quicker.
Make a new atmosphere node, connect it to the Moon. Drop all bluesky/redsky values to '0'. Make the haze density white and very small(0.01, maybe lower), go to the height control tab and stick an extra couple of zeros to the end of 'haze exp height' for starters. All other height values can be left alone. You don't need to zero the bluesky glows but I usually do to keep it easy to see what I'm using.
Now the haze should be visible around the Moon. Adjust the haze exp' height and density until the 'Moon glow' looks right.
The only values you should need to touch are these, a quick test with the following settings work well on a Moon that's scaled to the right size(larger planet radius like your one might need some different values but the idea is the same, the exp' height just controls the distance the haze reaches round the surface) for me; haze density=0.01, horizon colour=1, haze exp height=300000.
If there's still problems, I'll check back and see if I can help any more. :)

ares2101

Quote from: cyphyr on October 23, 2013, 08:24:46 PM
A good start but I think you may have to use two images and comp them together. One with the moon object and another without.
Richard

Hm, that had occurred to me, but postwork is something I've not done much of.  How would I go about doing this?  Could I have any clouds in front of the moon, would it be seamless?  I've noticed auto-saving renders produces an alpha. 

Dune

Interesting, Martin, that's just what I did with the settings, but to a shifted separate 'moon' behind the actual moon, for a 'half moon glow'.

ares2101

I had a new idea of where to go with this image and renamed it, Harvest Moon Rising.  I really like how this turned out, very creepy. 

http://aresjohnson.deviantart.com/art/Harvest-Moon-Rising-410491243