planetary image map shader

skarlath · July 13, 2009, 04:53:24 AM

thx that worked purfectly

but i need a higher res picture for the terrain color wich is the only problem

Henry Blewer · July 13, 2009, 08:06:12 AM

I think this picture was originally posted on the NASA web site about 1994. If I remember correctly, there were four types which worked together to make the Earth. They came in 800 x 600, up to 2500 (something) x 1700 (something). I can't remember the exact sizes. I have also seen the same images for sale. Somewhere there are free versions of this. Aminet had them on a CD. That's where I first saw them.

dwilson · July 13, 2009, 12:56:59 PM

Use the blue marble imagery. You can download up to 86400x43200.

Blue Marble Next Generation

skarlath · July 14, 2009, 04:56:43 AM

thx dwilson those images are perfect but tg2 crashes most of the time when i try to open the high res images

Henry Blewer · July 14, 2009, 08:29:54 AM

Try changing the image format. I have not had any issues using large PNG's.

skarlath · July 17, 2009, 05:41:36 AM

this is my earth so far(dont look at the clouds they suck at the moment)
tell me what you think and suggest away

domdib · July 17, 2009, 06:32:24 AM

Looks pretty good. I guess it would be nice if the bright sunlit spot on the right could be calmed down, as that doesn't look realistic. Not sure about the best way to do that.

Henry Blewer · July 17, 2009, 08:07:59 AM

The specular channel of the landmasses needs to be almost zero. I've seen water with the specular highlight like this; but it was broken up by the waves noise. It also was not this pronounced.
The clouds are not too bad. They have a good scale. I would use an alpha channel image, spherically mapped to mask the cloud layer. This would give you lots of control where the clouds are.

skarlath · July 17, 2009, 08:47:14 PM

ive replaced the reflecticve shader for the water with a water shader and used a image map shader with
a real cloud layer into the cloud desity shader.

Henry Blewer · July 17, 2009, 10:27:48 PM

The water is much better. There should be a cloud image available at the NASA site where the earth image is posted. A different wat would be to use a fractal program to generate clouds, then spherically map the fractal image onto the planet. ChaosPro may be able to do this, but getting an useful image might be hard. I have done this, using a plasma generator with a lyapunov noise on the inside.

skarlath · July 20, 2009, 11:43:06 PM

sounds very complicated.
i used a real image of earth clouds and used it as the density shader but its not very good
quality. the clouds seem to stick to the areas that are white but they dont go out side it.
this makes it look very bad quality on a close up render.