Planetary rings

[RichTwo]

Got a question about creating planetary rings - the Disc object may be able to do it, so it seems, but I've yet to figure out how to position it or a planet so that the ring is at the planet's equator.  Or maybe that's not possible just yet?  No biggie, just curious.

[Will]

you just translate it down using the cords. here I set a ring up for you.

regards,

Will

[dhavalmistry]

I asked the same question some time ago...here is the link...

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=687.msg5505#msg5505

[Will]

I think he is dealing with putting rocks around a planet to create a more detailed ring, I know someone did it one of the alpha team and it looked nice in somewhere around these fourms.

Regards,

Will

[§ardine]

I posted an example here
It's more complex than just the disc idea, but I've been able to render over 1,000,000 rocks in a very minimal time.

[old_blaggard]

Very interesting.  Somehow I missed that.

[dhavalmistry]

ya I missed that too.....very nice Sardine....

[Will]

I remember that, didn't see the zip file though, playing with it now.

Regards,

Will

[RichTwo]

Still looks a bit tricky, but I'll play with it & see what I get.  Thanks, Will & everyone!!

[§ardine]

When rendering the full population in that pic I have a through camera mask set up to limit the population to just the visible aria. Also if you edit the image mask and color the non-visible arias black that will also optimize things a little as well.

[Will]

do you think if I changed the image to add a bit more noise around the disk it would create a more realistic disk population?

Regards,

Will

[§ardine]

I found that a fade in the image mask works great -the rocks will slowly get thinner as they approach the black arias of the mask. The image I used in the example is very basic, I've since added several gray>>black rings toward the center so the rocks are further apart and don't form such a hard line in my scene.

[Rob Allen]

I was doing my own experiments with rings about a week ago, using Fake Stones but had some problems with the space between the stones being solid.  Ultimately I canned the project so that I could focus on more important parts of Terracell, but I might like to use this in Terracell at some point, if I may?

[Will]

Here what I've come up with so far.

regards,

Will

[old_blaggard]

Nice job.