Starting out with Planet Surface Shader

[Arandil]

Hi folks, I just tried out the Planet surface shader (looking to get a high orbit shot) and I'm not sure how to use this shader to produce oceans, adjusting the Ocean level to 1 with no discernible effect.  I started out with a new file, disabled the heightfield shader, added a Power Fractal terrain to the scene, and then added a Planet surface shader.  In my Terrain node, I have the Power Fractal output into the Planet surface shader input and the Planet surface shader output into the Compute Terrain input.  From there the node connections are defaults.  Anyone know what I'm missing?

Thanks!

[Will]

Hey Arandil,
                  The way it works is by colorroring diffrent altitutes diffrent colors, that ocean is just a reflecting layer of that on the very bottom, if you want, say, and entire ocean planet you have to type a number instead of using the slider. you will start to see an effect then.
try 10,100,1000 you'll see what I mean.

regards,

Will

[Arandil]

Thanks!  I now have a Planet surface shader with an ocean level of 1000.  There's a discernible increase in feature altitude when I set this, so I know that it is increasing the altitude of the surface.  But none of it is blue.  What arrangement should I have in the Terrain node?  Or what's one arrangement that should work?  I can't see to get any arrangement I've tried (yet) to produce ocean colors anywhere.

[Will]

hmm, I do not think you need a fractal node connected to a planet shader, since the planet shader creats everything it self, including depth. So if you are trying to take a terrein you already like and create a plaet shader like ocean around it you could try using the default surface shader (under the shader menu) and give that water color and make it reflective.

Regards,

Will

[Oshyan]

The Planet Surface Shader will only provide color when put in the Shader group since otherwise it is covered by the Base Colors node below it. Simply move your Planet Shader to the Shaders group *below* the Base Colors node and you should get better results. Note however that the Planet Surface shader is experimental and not particularly robust or full-featured. It is not intended as a complete solution for realistic planet rendering and you will probably find it fairly limited beyond a basic level.

- Oshyan

[Arandil]

The Planet Surface Shader will only provide color when put in the Shader group since otherwise it is covered by the Base Colors node below it. Simply move your Planet Shader to the Shaders group *below* the Base Colors node and you should get better results. Note however that the Planet Surface shader is experimental and not particularly robust or full-featured. It is not intended as a complete solution for realistic planet rendering and you will probably find it fairly limited beyond a basic level.

- Oshyan

That did the trick!  Distance shots only then, gotcha.  Thanks all!

[pmetschan]

The Planet Surface Shader will only provide color when put in the Shader group since otherwise it is covered by the Base Colors node below it. Simply move your Planet Shader to the Shaders group *below* the Base Colors node and you should get better results. Note however that the Planet Surface shader is experimental and not particularly robust or full-featured. It is not intended as a complete solution for realistic planet rendering and you will probably find it fairly limited beyond a basic level.

- Oshyan

Oshyan,

I am having some particular trouble figuring out how the displacement portion of the shader works. At a planetary level (Earth radius) the initial "displacement" coming out of the shader appears to be far to high. Are you aware of any tutorial or in depth look at this shader?

[dandelO]

That shader has been discontinued, pmetschan. Although, it still loads in TG.

[pmetschan]

That shader has been discontinued, pmetschan. Although, it still loads in TG.

Well that certainly answers a lot of questions. Can anyone recommend a tutorial that would essentially replace what it does. I am starting to get the sense that there are two communities here. Those that need TG2 at planetary scale and those who use it Sea Level+. What i really need is a series of nodes that can produce continents and displacements within that accurately represent continental topology.

Most of what I have seen is not as encouraging as what the planet shader produced. I have run across quite a few that simply mask power fractal, ick. I need something smarter that differentiates between highland, lowlands, and coastal areas. The [planet_surface_shader] wrapped all of this up in a nice neat node?

[cyphyr]

Take a look at nvseals planet shader pack available at NWDA or I made a fully procedural planet shader available in the file shareing section.
Good luck

Richard

[pmetschan]

Take a look at nvseals planet shader pack available at NWDA or I made a fully procedural planet shader available in the file shareing section.
Good luck

Richard

NICE!! can't wait to take it for a spin, Thank you!!

[pmetschan]

Take a look at nvseals planet shader pack available at NWDA or I made a fully procedural planet shader available in the file shareing section.
Good luck

Richard

Two quick questions:

1.) If you instead wanted to use a image map instead of procedural for the continents where would be the best place in the tree to place that in order to retain all the other amazing downstream detail you have put in there? (image1)?

1a.) I may also want to include an elevation map as a starting point. It will certainly lack the resolution necessary for ground level but as starting point for displacement (similar to the continent image)

2.) I think I have placed it in an appropriate place but now it appears that all the other detail doesn't follow the image because of its dependency on that single warping function? (image2) So the question; is there a way to get all the region and morphology manipulation to warp still but do so starting within the constraints of that imported image?

In short I want to be specific about what and where the continental breakup and initial displacements occur but inside those large forms it can be procedural? Does that make sense?

thoughts, suggestions, and my eternal thanks...

Philip

[cyphyr]

Sorry I cant help further at the moment, rendering away as usual
I haven't played with the procedural planet for a while but one thing to be VERY clear about is to follow the pathing VERY carefully. THere are a LOT of internal links.
The difficulty with using bitmaps for your continental areas is there seems to be no way of adding extra detail to their coasts. once you get close enough (depends on the size of bitmap used) it all starts to undefined and blurry. This is why I stayed with a fully procedural approach.
I'll be able to take a closer look over the weekend.
Best of luck
Richard

[pmetschan]

Sorry I cant help further at the moment, rendering away as usual
I haven't played with the procedural planet for a while but one thing to be VERY clear about is to follow the pathing VERY carefully. THere are a LOT of internal links.
The difficulty with using bitmaps for your continental areas is there seems to be no way of adding extra detail to their coasts. once you get close enough (depends on the size of bitmap used) it all starts to undefined and blurry. This is why I stayed with a fully procedural approach.
I'll be able to take a closer look over the weekend.
Best of luck
Richard

Thank you Richard. My question is more process related as it relates to TG2. For example when I did the Energon Cube for Transformers we needed to use the actual set piece that the actors carried around for the base texture. This cube was less than a foot on a side and even a hires scan of the pattern on it wouldn't support a powers of ten shot as was required by Michael for the opening. So I went through a exhausting effort to convert the texture into a vector image in ILL so we could pull much higher res images from that. However as you would suspect even that lacked the detail that a shot like that needs.

So what I did was use that base map texture as "mask" if you will, which then fractals worked on. So instead of the texture softening as you suggest along the coastal areas the fractal would breakup that edge and actually give it procedural detail no matter how close we go to it.

Essentially what I am asking is how do you arrange the nodes within TG2 to accomplish something similar? I know your busy but when you have a chance, even if its not on this preset would you be able to explain to me how to execute this in TG2 and or where the proper place those textures would live in your doc (image)

[TheBlackHole]

Put a power fractal just below the image map shader. No color, just displacement. Use a large scale, a bit of extra displacement roughness, a large number of octaves, and a small displacement amplitude. Just enough displacement to roughen your coastline.