How to get Craters on moon

rubydancingmoon · February 03, 2007, 05:54:55 PM

Hi. New here and looking for some plain english, non mathmatical help here please?

After much trying [and hair pulling] I have finally managed to get a 'moon' shot that I am happy with. I found that when making a planet it appears more like a moon if you delete the planet atmosphere. Also bought it a lot closer in distance to the camera so the features are clearer.

However, I cannot for the life of me make the surface appear to have those lovely huge craters that we see in real photographs.
Can anybody please tell me how, if it is possible?

I am new to and still relatively lost using this node based program so the plainer the answer the better for me!
Many thanks

mrwho · February 03, 2007, 06:00:54 PM

People have been using Image maps (wit ha picture of the moon's surface) but i can't seem to get it to work. I was about to post a thread asking the same question, so let's see what happens

old_blaggard · February 03, 2007, 06:51:37 PM

Welcome to the Terragen fold

. Somewhere on this forum is a script that allows you to get multiple craters on a terrain without using a whole bunch of crater shaders. If you don't want to mess with that, you can always apply a dozen crater shaders to the moon with really big diameters, and then use power fractals or something to simulate the rest. Finally, someone recently posted a tgd file of a cratered moon that he made over in the Shared Files forum.

Will · February 03, 2007, 08:20:22 PM

old blaggard is talking about 3Dguy's script HERE: http://www.theglasseye.nl/terragen/

Regards,

Will

oh and welcome

rubydancingmoon · February 04, 2007, 09:36:56 AM

Thanks for the welcome!

Ok I followed the link to 3Dguys script and followed the instructions but it wont load. I keep getting a parse error message. I did as he said and copied the generated script into a new document and 'thought' I had saved it correctly. However, he says not to use the browsers save as feature... I used both notepad and then word and saved each as craters.tgc but when i tried to load it the notepad had .tgc.txt and the word one had .tgc.doc I think maybe that is my error... so please could you explain HOW to save them so that I can hopefully learn how to do this?

Also, I then tried the long way to have multiple crater surfaces but couldn't actually see any of them on my 'moon'. Grrr so frustrating. I know it is probably me making the errors but for the life of me can't see why?

Thanks for the help.... any tips, please?

Will · February 04, 2007, 10:22:23 AM

hmm well saving it as ****.tgc worked for me. ill look into it though, as for using the slow way I have had troubel as well it you could try copy and pasting the base color shader from the defualt set up and but it after the compute terrian in your moon.

Regards,

Will

Sengin · February 04, 2007, 04:02:54 PM

Quote from: rubydancingmoon on February 04, 2007, 09:36:56 AM
when i tried to load it the notepad had .tgc.txt and the word one had .tgc.doc I think maybe that is my error... so please could you explain HOW to save them so that I can hopefully learn how to do this?

.txt is notepad's extension and .doc is Word's extension. In order to save it with those extensions, open it up in notepad and File | Save As... . In the dropdown box, select "All files" instead of .txt. Then, in the save text area, save it as craters.tgc .

rcallicotte · February 04, 2007, 04:09:45 PM

When you first Save Target As with a TGC file, in the Save As dialogue box select File Type as All Files rather than text document.

Mohawk20 · February 05, 2007, 02:32:55 PM

Another way to get the extension right is this:

Create a new notepad .txt file, let's say on the desktop, just for ease.
Open it and paste the text from the website.
Save and close.
The document is shown as "New document.txt" on your desktop.
Click it once it turnes grey, then click the text a second time you can edit the name of the document.
Change it to "Craters.tgc" (for example), and press enter. A dialog pops up asking if you are sure you want to change the extension, click "yes".

Place the document in the directory of your liking, and open in Terragen.
That should work.

rubydancingmoon · February 05, 2007, 05:43:55 PM

Oooh thank you all for those tips. They all work! I found it easier to just alter the txt file to 'all files'.
I still dont seem to have craters yet though! This is so frustrating! I used the file>insert clip file to upload that generated text and could see it all in the node box and all was connected as it should be according to 3dGuy explanation so where did i go wrong? Was that the right place to load it?
I am sorry for being so dim here. The moon is special to me for many personal reasons [my name should give you a hint!

] and I waited a long time for TG2 just so that I could do this.

Any further thoughts much appreciated.
Thanks for being patient with me!

Mohawk20 · February 05, 2007, 06:06:03 PM

If you show us your nodes, we could brainstorm from there...

rubydancingmoon · February 06, 2007, 02:30:36 PM

Thanks Mohawk20!
No sure if this is what you were asking for but i have attached the node screenshot and also a picture of how I got it to look so far. One thing you will see is that planet 2 [moon] is not connected to anything...maybe this is the error? But I really dont know what to connect it too!
Also included the tgd file.
Hope this helps to figure this out.
Many thanks

§ardine · February 11, 2007, 09:15:15 PM

Not sure if you got this working or not, but the way I would get this done would be with a image map shader to either create the craters by displacement or by color. I've attached two example .tgd of each. To get these working you will need to download the last 2 4k images from this site here

You should end up with moonmap4k.jpg and moonbump4k.jpg. Place these in the same folder as the tgd's

[attachurl=#1]
[attachurl=#2]
[attach=#3]

the above render is using the apply color option which seemed to work best as there wasn't enough shadow contrast to bring out the displacement on the other.

~§ardine

rubydancingmoon · February 12, 2007, 07:05:32 PM

Thank you!
No I hadn't managed to get any further with this so far. Am downloading those files now. I will let you know!
Thanks very much.

rubydancingmoon · February 15, 2007, 06:54:07 AM

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you... had to get a new cpu this one gave up on me!
I see what you have done here, although I am not sure that I understand it all. Not yet. I did try ticking and unticking the color option and when I unticked it no moon showed at all! Not sure why but I am slowly beginning to understand.
I have 2 more questions if you don't mind?

1. How can I save all the settings from the render just for the moon? That way if I want to use the same again all I have to do is load it, or type it, all back in to get the same result on a different landscape.

2. How do I go about making those images to apply to the moon like the 2 files you sent the link for?

I do like the results that those files gave...thank you