Nebulae

Started by Denis Sirenko, July 26, 2017, 07:40:59 AM

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Dune


bobbystahr

Brrrrrilliant...keep on tweakin' man!
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist


j meyer


Hannes

Holy cow, this look amazing!! I didn't know it's possible to create something like that in TG. It looks like a Krakatoa particle simulation with millions of particles. Hats off, brillant!

Denis Sirenko

#140
Thank you, guys!

Quote from: Hannes on March 03, 2018, 12:42:49 PM
I didn't know it's possible to create something like that in TG. It looks like a Krakatoa particle simulation with millions of particles.

Hannes, did not see Krakatoa simulation before. Right now just looked, looks cool, thanks for the information. I'm glad that something like real physical streams has turned out. Here I have three different cloud layers, which differ slightly in optical properties. But I'm still sure that Terragen can do much more. As far as I understand, in principle, Terragen can do almost anything, because it's just math. And mathematics can do anything :) It seems to me, that the question is more in the time resources for design and rendering.

And still there is a lot of work. This weekend I rendered several new pictures ... but it seems to have gotten a little worse. Tomorrow I'll take a closer look. If something is worthwhile, I will publish it.

Denis Sirenko

Guys, I have a problem. A simple scheme, warp one fractal through another.

[attachimg=1]

And I sometimes see too active vertical elements and I never see anything similar in the horizontal direction.

[attach=2]

The camera looks sideways, that is, the Y axis is directed vertically. I tried to switch on/ff and adjust the power of various parameters of PFSv3. I can not understand where the problem is. Is the warper not able to correctly warp in all three axes? I tried all day to solve it, I could not. Maybe someone already decided this?

Denis Sirenko

Duplicate it here, both ways work for me:

Quote from: j meyer on March 05, 2018, 02:59:57 PM
Don't know if it is a solution for your problem, but I would try to put a Vector Displacement Shader
between the Power Fractal(Warper) and the Warp Input Shader.
At least it allows control of the 3 axes.

Quote from: Matt on March 05, 2018, 03:22:18 PM
Warp is based on the displacement generated by the warper. Displacement usually happens in only one direction, which by default is vertical.

To create displacement along all 3 axes you can use the Redirect Shader and plug 3 displacement shaders into its X, Y and Z inputs. Alternatively, as J Meyer mentioned you can use a Vector Displacement Shader instead. This will do a similar thing but there's a very important difference. Vector Displacment Shader takes colour or scalar inputs (which can be the colour output from a fractal) and converts them to displacement, whereas the Redirect Shader takes displacement inputs and simply changes their direction. A Power Fractal can output both displacement and colour but be aware of the difference because they can look different and have different settings in the fractal.

You probably want to give different seeds to each of the 3 fractals. If you don't, you'll just produce a displacement that goes along a diagonal vector, not much more interesting than what you have now.

Matt

WAS

Thank you so much for revealing this technique. I've been doing nebulae in Photoshop exclusively for years and it's tiresome, and doesn't achieve the effects I want. This, this is what I am looking for. <3

Denis Sirenko

#144
WASasquatch, you are probably the most stress-resistant person in the world)) I did not even consider the option of making the nebula completely in Photoshop ... No, I'm lying! There was one attempt, but it was matte paint with NASA photos. But it quickly became clear that this was not the job I was dreaming about. Although with TG a satisfactory result is also not easy to get (if your apartment does not have a separate room for a supercomputer). In any case, it's good if it helps.

WAS

Quote from: Denis Sirenko on March 10, 2018, 03:36:06 AM
WASasquatch, you are probably the most stress-resistant person in the world)) I did not even consider the option of making the nebula completely in Photoshop ... No, I'm lying! There was one attempt, but it was matte paint with NASA photos. But it quickly became clear that this was not the job I was dreaming about. Although with TG a satisfactory result is also not easy to get (if your apartment does not have a separate room for a supercomputer). In any case, it's good if it helps.

I'm assuming render times are not the best? With clouds quality really is a factor, me being on the free version I'm not sure how I feel about tackling this. I gave a couple attempts but my hesitation in quality did not make me feel confident in spending money on it... even though it'd probably be under a dollar on current rates but I I'm so strapped for cash it's not even funny.

Denis Sirenko

#146
Now the final render time is much less than I wrote for all the nebulae that have already published here. The render time I was able to reduce almost 10 times, and with this improve the quality of the picture (almost fully removed the fine noise). That I rendered 60 hours, now I can render for 8 hours on the same computer. So this is not the worst thing. You just need to leave the computer turned on for the night and the picture is ready in the morning.

Much worse is how the settings are configured when the entire node network is connected and you need to see the result of a small adjustment of one parameter. As a result, you have to switch to an outlined node scheme or create test scenes and study the result after a few hours of rendering. Or you have to choose a small area (crop) and focus on it, but there is a possibility that the same parameter can have unpredictable influence on other sites that you have not looked at. Or it is simply good to know what and how it works and to foresee the result. The main thing for me now is precisely this.

As for the quality of the render on the free version. Is it different from the paid version? Judging by what is listed on this page http://planetside.co.uk/terragen-product-comparison/, the free version contains the same render-engine as the paid versions, and the differences are only in separate functional blocks, which are usually required for solid professional work with integration with other applications.

WAS

#147
Quote from: Denis Sirenko on March 10, 2018, 05:16:31 AM
Now the final render time is much less than I wrote for all the nebulae that have already published here. The render time I was able to reduce almost 10 times, and with this improve the quality of the picture (almost fully removed the fine noise). That I rendered 60 hours, now I can render for 8 hours on the same computer. So this is not the worst thing. You just need to leave the computer turned on for the night and the picture is ready in the morning.

Much worse is how the settings are configured when the entire node network is connected and you need to see the result of a small adjustment of one parameter. As a result, you have to switch to an outlined node scheme or create test scenes and study the result after a few hours of rendering. Or you have to choose a small area (crop) and focus on it, but there is a possibility that the same parameter can have unpredictable influence on other sites that you have not looked at. Or it is simply good to know what and how it works and to foresee the result. The main thing for me now is precisely this.

As for the quality of the render on the free version. Is it different from the paid version? Judging by what is listed on this page http://planetside.co.uk/terragen-product-comparison/, the free version contains the same render-engine as the paid versions, and the differences are only in separate functional blocks, which are usually required for solid professional work with integration with other applications.

The free version is limited to 0.6 micropolygon levels, and 0.6 anti-aliasing. This has a huge impact on atmosphere/clouds. Which is entirely understandable. I played around a bit last night and have something starting. Still making adjustments with a small preview but even then the noticeable loss in quality is a little puzzling for small details, have no clue how they will look full resolution. Still worth every moment of experimentation and knowledge.

Oshyan

As long as you're using Defer Atmo, AA 6 should be enough to get low noise in most cases. At the least certainly if you use Max Samples (non-adaptive). Remember you can always increase the cloud quality, even if you can't increase AA. Also if you're using v3 cloud layers, take a look at the newer Voxel Scattering Quality setting in the GI in Clouds tab of the Render GI Settings node. You can increase that when you've hit a ceiling on quality from AA.

- Oshyan

WAS

Quote from: Oshyan on March 10, 2018, 03:24:40 PM
As long as you're using Defer Atmo, AA 6 should be enough to get low noise in most cases. At the least certainly if you use Max Samples (non-adaptive). Remember you can always increase the cloud quality, even if you can't increase AA. Also if you're using v3 cloud layers, take a look at the newer Voxel Scattering Quality setting in the GI in Clouds tab of the Render GI Settings node. You can increase that when you've hit a ceiling on quality from AA.

- Oshyan

The fountains of knowledge that spring up around here. I'll tel ya. Thanks Oshyan, that's news to me, about cloud quality and AA limitations and also GI controls in v3 clouds. Going to try doing some testing tonight and leave one running tonight overnight.

Last planet I did with global clouds I gave up on. Mainly cause wasn't totally satisfied with the clouds in general, but boy, I spent two nights and half the planet rendered, while the planet itself can render at max TG (free) settings in less than an hour x.x LOL You can tell I don't Cloud well. Still learning all these optimization tricks.