Moon testing *A bit of an Update*

[Will]

Hey everyone, I've been working with my moon .obj lately trying to see how effective it would be to use in Terragen 2 scenes. I'm still working on the texture as well as maybe upping the poly count a bit but I thought that I would share some of the renders I've been doing with it. Here are the first two mildly presentable ones. Tell me if it looks moonish.

[old_blaggard]

The first one looks more moonish to me than the second.  In both cases, though, I think you need a whole bunch of craters.

[EBAndrew]

Yeah, the first one is definitely the more moonish of the two. I wouldn't worry about the poly count though, it's nearly unnoticeable. I'd focus more on what Will said, and crater the bejesus out of it.

Better than what I have the patience to do!

[rcallicotte]

o_b got it right.  The first one has more definition.  It might be your lighting, too.  From hearing nvseal, many things affect the outcome.  Nice one to start with, Will.

[dhavalmistry]

If you manage to get "a lot" of craters on the first one....then I would love to buy a house on the dark side of that moon....

[NWsenior07]

My vote is for the first one and at the risk of being repetative, make lots and lots of craters!

[Will]

OK I get it more craters, I just to make more alphas that means. interestingly I found that terragen can't handle my higher poly count version which has 6 million or so polygons. which is kinda sad because I wanted to do moon walk renders.

[dhavalmistry]

OK I get it more craters, I just to make more alphas that means. interestingly I found that terragen can't handle my higher poly count version which has 6 million or so polygons. which is kinda sad because I wanted to do moon walk renders.

someday my friend......someday

[cyphyr]

This is looking very good but I think it would benefit with some large darker areas if your aiming to produce something similar (but not the same) as our moon.
Keep it commin'
Richard

[Oshyan]

It's a lot more efficient to do something like this as a displacement map rather than geometry. 6 million polys is pretty serious. What are you using to model?

- Oshyan

[moodflow]

As cyphyr stated... more darker areas are required.  You could add a power fractal shader (scaled to the moon's size) as a color function.

[Will]

Yea I'm still working on getting the material right, getting the right about of "glow" light reflection as well as dark areas is next on my list as soon as I get the model done. Oshyan I was originally planning on just making a displacement map but the weird think about Zbrushs slandered poly sphere is that they are really a really rounded square and that made it have two UV groups and Zmapper requires that it all is one UV per Normal or cavity map (which I was just going to make into a displacement map). If I can re do the topologies though I might be able to transfer the details ti sphere with one UV and get it to work. That and all my maps are coming up weird (in Zmapper) but I'm trying to figure that out as well. till then I'm using an imported .obj.

[Will]

Never mind that babble I found that Zbrush 3.1 has a nice little displacement exporter and I have my maps all ready to go I test it out.

Edit: Does Terragen 2 take TIFFs? because its not letting me use it.

[dhavalmistry]

Edit: Does Terragen 2 take TIFFs? because its not letting me use it.

yes TG2 does take TIFFS...some of the plants I have use TIFF images for opacity and leaves and barks...

[Will]

Its telling me that I need to convert it to SGI for non standard bit-depths.