Exporting clouds as a texture/image?

Started by Xeedee, September 28, 2014, 12:42:55 PM

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Xeedee

Hey,

Long time registered user here, but I've only really delved into Terragen briefly over the years.

I've got a question on exporting the various cloud layers as a standard image.

What I'm trying to end up with is something like this: http://naturalearth.springercarto.com/ne3_data/8192/clouds/europe_clouds_8k.jpg

That's a NASA derived texture of the various clouds across the planet, taken through stitching together a bunch of satellite photographs into an equirectangular projection.

Since Terragen works with having a proper spherical planet, with the clouds and terrain applied to this, I was wondering if its at all possible to export to cloud layers in a similar manner to the above? Sort of "unwrapping" the image from the sphere.

Likewise, is it possible to render a scene like this, with the entire planet unwrapped into a projection?

Hope that makes sense,

Thanks!


dandelO

Cover the planet with your clouds, disable the atmosphere node(the entire node, not just 'render atmosphere' boxes, those checkboxes found in various places would take away the clouds from the render as well.)
Go to the Planet node and un-check 'Render Surface', copy the planet coordinates, with the little box menu selection to their right and paste those coordinates into the camera position. Reset your camera's rotation values to xyz=000 and, if using TG3, do a spherical render. If using TG2, there are various tutorials here about cube rendering for panoramas(I'm sure you'll know but that's just 6 different renders, each facing in different directions, that map seamlessly onto the faces of a cube). :)

bigben

hmmmm... disable planet surface, remove haze and atmosphere density, turn off shadows, move camera to centre of planet, use  spherical camera and a couple of other tweaks...  Take either the render or the alpha. Attached TGD is a quick attempt, should be a reasonable starting point.

As this is rendered from the inside of the planet you just need to flip it horizontally to correct it for wrapping to a sphere

Essentially the same as DandelO's post "while I was tpying"  ;)