Create a Sun with texture

[Gordon]

Hi I am a Terragen 3 noob so this might be a stupid  question...

How can I create a  sun that  is  an actual lightsource (or  make it seem like a lightsource) where  the sun has surface textures.  I have tried to apply warp + shear textures to the Sunlight object but Terragen just keeps crashing and  closing every time I try that.

Any ideas or suggestions for how to get my sun lightsource to look like the image below and not just a flat uniformly colored disk would be greatly appreciated

[yossam]

Try this...............


http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,8504.msg90881.html#msg90881

[Gordon]

thanks so much!  I will try downloading the zip files. 

Don't know anything about exr files, etc  at this point but I guess I will have to learn! 

[Oshyan]

That one isn't going to act as a good light source though. The reality is that anything that is a sufficient light source at that distance is going to be too bright to discern detail on the surface of. So what you want to do, while artistically reasonable, isn't realistic. You'll need to figure out some kind of hack. You could use the "sun" in that post along with an actual Sunlight node light source behind or adjacent to it, for example.

- Oshyan

[Gordon]

hhmmm, ok.  I am trying to have a Huge dim sun reflect off of  dark water.  If i put the sun object  mentioned  in the thread above and then a sunlight source behind it, will that weirdly affect the reflections in the water?  Or block them altogether?  Maybe I could put in  a Sun but not make the disk visible?

[Dune]

When I see that image,and start thinking TG, then I would try a planet, where the (huge) fractals are leading through the opacity tab of a default shader, so all except the voronoi crasks is visible. Then add a huge lightsource inside and the cracks should emit light. Then make the surface glowing red/orange in a surface shader. And then add a cloud layer (or two where one is masked by the inverse of the voronoi, so only the cracks have clouds 'bursting out'. Other cloud node for overall cloud. Something like that, theoretically. 

[Oshyan]

Dune's idea sounds cool, but would have a *really* hard time rendering nicely and lighting the surface naturally. Frankly this may be a situation where a little post processing would be the best and easiest approach. Render an image with a *visible disk* the size that you want your visible sun to appear, then just select it in an image editor and put whatever sun texture onto it that you want. If you render out with layers and to EXR then you can even blend the atmosphere over it and whatnot.

- Oshyan

[Upon Infinity]

If you render out with layers and to EXR then you can even blend the atmosphere over it and whatnot.

- Oshyan

Any links on to how this is done?