Quote from: MakeurMARK on September 20, 2018, 09:03:22 AM
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I have a couple of questions following my journey, before I pop over to the planetside website to upgrade to version 4.
How on earth does one reach the conclusion that two cloud layers need to be located inside an object node? Is it to avoid the two cloud layers being applied to all planets in the work space?
This was almost certainly a choice made by the creator simply for keeping the "sun" setup neat and tidy. Putting nodes inside other nodes mostly does not affect how the nodes work, it's just an organizational method. That being said, secondary planets do always start out with their atmosphere and shading nodes internal to the Planet Object. Again this is just an organizational difference, it doesn't fundamentally affect how the rendering or other settings for the planet actually work. The intention in making this the default for additional planets was just to keep the main planet's network as the focus, on the assumption that additional planets are secondary and will have less detail, fewer nodes, etc.
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What does the e+ or e- in location and scale represent?
This is one way of representing very large (or very small) numbers in scientific notation. The more common approach you may be familiar with is 1 x 10
4, where the 4 indicates the number of decimal places, i.e. 0s, so that would be 10,000. Since we can't easily do superscript in a text entry field, we use the less common but still valid E notation. So in E notation 10,000 would be 1e+004.
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Noticed that adjusting settings also changed the structure of Planet 01. Is it through the node system that you would isolate setting for individual planets? Got a happy accident from it though, but as I need to create 5 planets and a sun I need to control settings for each planet.
It really depends on what settings you're adjusting for the planet. I am guessing you changed the *position* though (or rotation), and got an unexpected change in the shape. This would be because the shape is being generated by a 3D noise function, and the displacement (i.e. mountains) on the planet show the shapes that are present at the intersection between the planet's surface and the noise generator *at that precise point in 3D space*. If you move the planet, the noise generator does not move with it by default, so what you are effectively doing is moving the surface of the planet relative to the noise generator, and thus you get different shapes as the planet surface now intersects the noise function in a different place where there are *different shapes*. If you want to avoid this, just enable Translate Textures With Planet and Rotate Textures With Planet in the Planet Object's settings.
If it was some other setting you changed that caused an unexpected effect, you'll need to provide more detail (what setting(s) you changed).
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I'm struggling to work out how the light system works. Surely if you create a sun you want the light source to come from the sun. I still have the following lights enabled - Enviro light and Sunlight, as well as the light source 01 which has been located in the same co-ordinates as the sun planet (object).
The"sun" that was created *using a planet* is not actually a "sun" as far as Terragen is concerned. It's just named "sun". The names of nodes have no functional effect, they're just names. What you are doing is using a planet to make a visible and customizable sun, because the *actual* Terragen sun doesn't have those capabilities. Since you're not actually using the sun (light source) that is built-in to Terragen, you need to create and modify a separate light source along with any movement of the "sun" (planet) object. Basically it's a workaround.
The actual sun light source provides a specific type of "distance" (parallel) light source, but it does not have a specific position in 3D space, only a rotation and and altitude. You can still use this to line up with your "sun" planet, simply by eye, and it's the most appropriate light source to use for a sun anyway.
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Would the procedure of creating this sun be made any easier by using Terragen version 4.0?
Not that I can think of. Except that there are new post process effects like glow and "starburst" that might make it look more realistic.
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Finally - is there any way I can save my adjusted settings as personal presets, so i could perhaps load into Terragen 4.0?
luvsmusic covers this pretty well, except how to actually create clip files.
From the main page of the Wiki documentation:
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Working_with_Clip_FilesAnd:
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Create_Clip_File_DialogI hope that helps.
- Oshyan