Fully procedural planet

Started by Denis Sirenko, July 23, 2017, 09:50:34 AM

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Denis Sirenko

Hi all! I'm new here, and I want to share with all my experience in the difficult task of creating fully procedural planets. This planet was created for the 4X PC-game developed by us. It will have to hang out statically somewhere in the background and, I hope, to please the player's eye.

[attachimg=1]

Yes, and a special thanks to NVSeal for his wonderful clouds. Although one type of layered clouds (stratus), which I did not have, I did myself. Like everything else.

I hope you enjoy it!

PS: I'm from Russia, and English is not my best skill, so I hope that the Google-translator does not distort the meaning of my messages too much :)

Kadri


Welcome to the forum. The image looks great.

Oshyan

That's a really beautiful and pretty realistic result! Very nice work. Lots of great detail, wonderful colors, etc.

Was it only made to be used for views from orbit?

- Oshyan

Dune

Yeah, welcome, Denis. Cool work. I hope to see more renders by you from now on!

Denis Sirenko

Thank you, Kadri, Oshyan and Dune! It's really nice to see positive responses. But I am also open to criticism.

By the way, Dune indirectly helped us - we turned to him for help. We needed to understand how to superimpose the crater rims on each other (for the less prosperous types of planets) and he helped us in this. True, I have slightly improved the scheme. I can show you later. Well, I've read quite a lot of Oshyan's and Matt's comments. Thank you for them.

Quote from: Oshyan on July 23, 2017, 04:22:39 PM
Lots of great detail, wonderful colors, etc.

- Oshyan

After I learned to look for real shots of the planet and use a pipette in Photoshop - I do not give up anymore. The colors are real.

To be honest, there are too many parts somewhere. I have not been able to get rid of them yet. This is due to some peculiarity of the warper's work. He very much tore into small pieces of small-sized details. At the same time, the same warper can not hardly touch large elements or distort them insignificantly. All this requires very careful handling of the settings of the warper.

Quote from: Oshyan on July 23, 2017, 04:22:39 PM
Was it only made to be used for views from orbit?

- Oshyan

Yes, this is only for a glance from afar. Near everything is not so good. For example, there are problems with the coastline, if you use water:

[attachimg=1]

The picture shows that in places where the water is close to the surface, it is painted pure black. The problem gradually disappears if the render quality is increased, but a new problem arises - the render time that we can not afford. And anyway, the problem does not go away completely. Therefore, I do not use water at all now, but I simply apply a water planet in a photoshop with a mask of land, specially rendered for this purpose. By the way, here I must say that because of this problem the planet is not fully procedural. But all geometry - procedural.

Another reason why now it is better to look at the planet from a distance is not the best relief. But it just takes more time to set up and experiment. In the very first picture, the relief is barely noticeable and this is enough for us now. Planets are rendered in the size of 2048x2048px. Here's her piece near in originally size:

[attachimg=2]

Quote from: Dune on July 24, 2017, 01:50:01 AM
I hope to see more renders by you from now on!

- Dune

Dune, I think that I will spread the process gradually, as well as periodically post the old developments. I also work with nebulae and also plan to upload them gradually. Maybe it's useful to someone.

bobbystahr

Agree with the others comments and welcome to the forum...keep up the good work.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

Thanks for your explanations. For distant views like this I would indeed not work with transparent water (I know the black shallows issue), but with a sphere that takes the same colors as land, but with a height dependent overlay of 'ocean colors' and a reflective shader.

Denis Sirenko

#7
Bobbystahr, thanks!

Dune, did you do a single render in one scene?

Dune

How do you mean, Denis? The sphere and planet are rendered in one go, yes, if that's what you mean. You have to get the altitude from the terrain (displacement to scalar) and make a gradual mask out of that to mix in the 'watercolors' in the deeper parts on the sphere.

Denis Sirenko

Quote from: Dune on July 25, 2017, 11:51:46 AM
You have to get the altitude from the terrain (displacement to scalar) and make a gradual mask out of that to mix in the 'watercolors' in the deeper parts on the sphere.

Yes, you understood me correctly. It seems that your variant is faster and easier for us. Although it will take a little bit to change my node network.

The fact is that my relief and colors almost do not depend on each other. I can make colors that follow the relief. But I can also make the colors different from the terrain. I have the same color and relief now. But to get oceanic reflection I did three renderings. One render - of colors and the relief. The second render - only monochrome and spherical ocean. And the third render was a black and white mask for separating the ocean and ground, which was then simply used in Photoshop.

The version that you proposed (with the second sphere), I did not implement, but it seems more convenient. I have to try. Thank you!

cyphyr

Very good work you've done here.
Well done. Planets althjoiugh simple to startget much harder once you get into the details.
One trick I have used to get round the water lakes/islands issue (too many of each along the coast lines) is to make the continents up from simple shape shaders. These provide a much clearer line betwene the coast and water even after multiple warps and distortions. Not trying to take away from your great work. Just you may find this a uesful trick.
Very simple version attached.
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
/|\

Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)

Denis Sirenko

#11
One of the first options was just this. I did not start from simple shape shaders, but from a fractal, adjusted so that it would give out the simplest basic form. Approximately so it looked.

[attachimg=1]

And then warping created such Ragged edges in some places. Here a few warpers in a row.

[attachimg=2]

So I do not think that a simple form or simple form of basic PFS will help to avoid this.


Denis Sirenko

In the end I came to the conclusion that too much splitting in some places is a feature of the warper's work. Warper needs to somehow apply the texture to the surface, the area of which has been increased. If I were a warper, I also just increased the number of islands. So you just need to carefully configure the settings. Now I want to try a new smoothing filter, maybe it will help.

eapilot

I just found this thread.  Excellent Planet.  I am trying to learn how to make planets in space as well, and still very much a beginner in Terragen.  @Denis, can you go more in depth how you built this planet?  Especially to a noob like myself?  Do you have any templates or working files you can upload?

Denis Sirenko

#14
Hi, Eapilot! I, unfortunately, can not publish working files, since this work was done for the studio in which I work. And to create it took a lot of time. We tried different ways. It was necessary to get the drawing of the continents, colors and relief. I used the clouds by NVSeal. He is a member of this forum and you can buy these clouds.

I can say that in the end we came to a fairly simple and natural scheme. I can describe it with several words. The essence of the principle is to first create a round billet for the continent (as shown above, but there is a slightly more complicated form), which is painted in the right colors. On the edges of this billet are the colors of the coastlines. In the center of it is the color of the highest point. And then several power fractal shaders distort this billet into a shape of the continent. For that, only warp shaders are needed with the power fractal shaders connected to them. And this power fractal shader can give you relief.

By the way, I do not have any water as material. I made it a separate renderer. To get a reflection from the Sun, I just rendered the whole water planet and put a glare from it through the continent mask in Photoshop.

If something remains incomprehensible, ask, I'll try to tell.