Request: Baking Planet Maps

[su_liam]

Is it possible to pre-render a planet's shaders and displacements to images? Also is it possible to import planetary texture images?

I understand that unless the resolution is ungodly high these won't look very good in closeup, but for a moon in the sky or as a gross basis with details added procedurally at render time it should be great. It would also probably speed things up to have the larger features pre-rendered.

I enjoy using LunarCell to create planet maps and would like to be able to see what those planets look like closeup. I would also love to create maps of TG2 planets.

Oh yeah, while I'm at it. Let's get backface culling please.

[Oshyan]

You can already load "planet maps" generated in other programs. Just use an Image Map Shader and set the texture projection method to Spherical and the position to the center of the planet object. You will want your source image map to be in spherical projection of course.

Baking of textures may be implemented at a later time but it's not a significant priority for now.

Backface culling is already implemented but it is conservative for now to try to avoid render errors. With a renderer that relies heavily on render-time displacement like TG2 culling is not as simple a procedure as it is with a static mesh renderer. Rendertime scene culling should improve in the future.

- Oshyan

[su_liam]

You can already load "planet maps" generated in other programs. Just use an Image Map Shader and set the texture projection method to Spherical and the position to the center of the planet object. You will want your source image map to be in spherical projection of course.

Cool. I had trouble getting this to work. Half the battle is knowing it's posible, and I'm just doing it wrong. Determination flags when I don't even know it's possible.

Baking of textures may be implemented at a later time but it's not a significant priority for now.

Cool. I understand that. Hopefully once you get those render times humming along, this may look more significant. Perhaps when the SDK is available this could be a possible third-party plugin. I may even look into doing it.

Backface culling is already implemented but it is conservative for now to try to avoid render errors. With a renderer that relies heavily on render-time displacement like TG2 culling is not as simple a procedure as it is with a static mesh renderer. Rendertime scene culling should improve in the future.

- Oshyan

Should have known. Without some culling those full-planet procedurals would bog down fast.

Thanks