The Sun (no not the newspaper)

[reck]

The atmosphere rendering in TG2 is simply amazing, the clouds that you can make are the best around..but.. there is something up there in the sky that isn't quite up to the standard of the rest of the sky. Yes i'm talking about the sun. Sometimes it looks ok but at lower altitudes especially it can look a bit flat. Sure you can do a bit of post pro and make it glow and dazzle but I think this is one area where TG needs some work. I guess i'm talking about the sun having a corona, something to make it bright and glowing.

Just as a quick test I rendered a sun in TG and one in the free PLE version of vue to compare. Now the atmosphere in vue is not up to TG standards in general, especially the clouds, but I do think that the vue sun looks better, compare how flat the TG sun looks next to the  vue sun. I think i've mentioned this before a while ago.

So planetside, any plans to look at the sun for the final version, or maybe for a 2.x update?

[PG]

lol. yeah it's a good comparison between the two. I've always prefered Terragen over Vue and especially now with transparency. But Vue is aimed at a more generalised advertising and occasional artist demographic. Terragen's higher quality allows it to be used in movies and tv.

The sun newspaper

[rcallicotte]

Vue has been used in quite a few movies, PG.  http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/spotlights/?page=0

But, the sun could use something to give us what we're seeing in Vue.  Not sure why not, unless there's some computations in the math that we'd be messing with that Matt would rather spend elsewhere.

[PG]

Yes but only ever for fantastical settings and in the case of a few of those on that page, adding an overlay to a real world image.

[reck]

Well I only used vue to give a quick idea of what I meant, I could have used a photograph for instance. I think the vue sun could be improved as well but at the moment it's better than the TG disk sun.

[JimB]

Vue has been used in quite a few movies, PG.  http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/spotlights/?page=0

My own list of TG (O.x and v2) use in film and commercials almost equals that list (and will probably equal it at the end of the year). Vue's list isn't impressive at all, sorry. Especially when you consider the cost and resources, and the renderer being far crappier than TG2.

[dandelO]

An hour ago, I was watching the National Geographic channel and 'Megavolcano' was on. I was saying to myself: 'That looks very Vue-ey'

I came online after it was finished and perfunctoraly scanned the threads in here, to unwittingly find the link to the very show I was watching...
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/spotlights/?page=6
It's the Vue palm trees that give it away, everytime.

[reck]

Talking of vue I see that version 7 is going to be released in the next few months.

It includes the 3rd generation of their ecosystem and 2nd generation spectral 2 atmosphere engine. I can't wait to see what they have come up with. I wonder if the spectral2 engine can match TG2's?

[jo]

Hi,

I thought I should mention that at some point, past TG2 final release at this point, when we have the renderer behaving nicely and all that, we will be looking into much better tools for placing vegetation etc. At the moment, as with quite a bit of stuff, the Populator is really just at a basic level of functionality. It allows you to place a lot of objects quickly and easily, with some control over their appearance and location, but it definitely is not the pinnacle of what we envisage for this. We've had ideas about this for a long time, but haven't been able to implement as of yet. This is essentially just to say we realise that the vegetation placement system needs to do more and better, and that the intention is to improve this in the future. Obviously Vue has better tools in this respect for now.

Regards,

Jo

[reck]

Thats good to hear Jo. Any comments about the sun?

[buzzzzz1]

Jo's reply would tell me that the corona is not on top of the list for improvement anytime soon.   

[lightning]

there are easy ways to fix that problem with the sun
you can set the haze brigtness to 4,1.5 then dim the sun to arounf .5 that makes the sun look more realistic by the looks of the picture you have shown us you have changed very little of the default settings so thats why the sun looks like it does
Jo thats great to hear about better population systems would it be similar to vues ecosytems? it wouldbe great if you could add a paint tool as well where we could paint the vegetation models on where we want like you can in vue

[reck]

Lightning, I just used the default scenes in both vue and terragen, I didn't want other settings within the software to affect the suns look. Changing the haze values and/or dimming the sun has an impact for the whole scene, not just the appearance of the sun, therefore its not always an option. Having some kind of corona setting would get the desired effect without affecting the rest of the scene.

[Cyber-Angel]

As many of you know the reddening of the sun at sunrise and sun set is due to Mie Scattering due to red been longer in wavelength than blue due to the light having a shorter distance to travel due to the low angle of the sum in the sky. For Terragen to be more realistic (If not implemented already) Mie Scattering (In Nature this is multiple scattering in the forward and backward direction [If Memory serves]).

Regards to you.

Cybet-Angel     

[buzzzzz1]

I believe Mie Scattering has more to do with why the clouds look white and the sky looks blue. And I believe   the reddening of the sun when low to the horizon is caused by Rayleigh scattering.  Besides coloring isn't what reck is looking for, I guess we need a temperature dial to turn up the heat of the sun (not the light) to give the corona effect. LOL