Generic Lava Planet

[jdent02]

Hi,
First time posting an image here so please be gentle 

This image is of a planet I'm working on that will be in the background of a sci-fi type short animation.  Overall I'm fairly happy with it but I do have a question or two for the more experienced Terragen people out there:

The clouds are being lit by the underlying lava just fine, but they are very flat and show none of the detail and structure that is revealed whenever the sun hits them.  Is this a case where I should be using 'receive shadows from surface' in the cloud node, or is there something else I'm missing.  Or, is Terragen just incapable of doing this with it's current GI system?

[Dune]

Welcome firstly, good to have another TG guy on board!

You already said what's the problem; your clouds are too flat. For these global clouds I'd say a height of a few thousand meters would be a lot better. Takes more time to render though, but that would receive lighting alright. No need for receive shadows from surfaces; that's only if you need a mountain or tree throwing shadows into vapor.

[jdent02]

Thanks Dune.  I've already got the clouds at 3km in height.  I'll try doubling it just to see what happens.

Edit: I tried doubling the depth of the cumulus clouds.  It blocked a bit more of the light from below, but the actual clouds were still flat and featureless.

[Kadri]

Sometimes hard to say without seeing the TGD file itself.

It could be that the way the camera sees the sun (it looks postworked although) and planet light that the clouds are looking too dark
and maybe using a much lighter color on the clouds could be better for example.

If you can't sort it out posting here the TGD file would be the fastest way for help .

[jdent02]

I can post the TGD when I get home.

I can always bump up the GI resolution further (its set at 4 detail and 3 sample quality with supersampling right now), but I've seen stuff like this before (indirectly lit objects becoming flat and featureless, such as tree leaves being lit by skylight only) so I still wonder if it's just a limitation in the GI method Terragen uses.

Of course all of this is meant to be in the background of an animation so it probably doesn't even matter 

And yes, the sun was postoworked.  It is in the correct position though, as I used the Terragen sun disc as a guide for the flare

Edit: Sometimes I should really do more reading before posting.......  looking at the section for Global illumination on the wiki it would appear that my GI settings are probably too low to resolve the detail in the clouds that are being lit indirectly.