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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: dandelO on August 30, 2012, 06:55:58 PM

Title: Luno
Post by: dandelO on August 30, 2012, 06:55:58 PM
Just hopping on the wagon to the Moon.

NASA's 32px/degree terrain (http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc/global_product/128_ppd_DEM).
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Dune on August 31, 2012, 03:55:04 AM
Very nice, Martin! I like the way you got the atmo restricted to the light side. If it is atmo? How about the slight glow on the stars... post?

Ah, and thanks for the link.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: TheBadger on August 31, 2012, 04:38:14 AM
Pretty sweet!

I bet it renders fast too. Animation on the way?

A Thanks for the link from me too.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Mahnmut on August 31, 2012, 07:25:37 AM
Nice Moon!
and these Nasa-maps make me want to terraform the moon...
Best Regards,
J
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on August 31, 2012, 07:49:15 AM
Cheers! :)

Ulco, yes, that's just an atmosphere on the actual Moon, not a real glow through the Earth's, cheating! Only the haze was used, no blue/red sky controls, I just zeroed them all. High 'fake dark power=8' restricts the haze lighting to appear as if it's only on the light side.

The Moon data is very nice indeed, there is from 4px - 64px/deg resolution to choose from(as a single image) to download depending on how much detail you need, the very good 32px version is around 63mb and the excellent 64px/deg is some 200mb in size, all in .tif format that TG will read without any work needing done. *Up to 256px/deg is available in separate tiles that can be used together!

* You'll likely need a transform shader(or, just lock the texture to the planet rotation) to orient the map to 'face' your camera, as it'll begin its TG life facing away from you.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on August 31, 2012, 09:05:41 AM
Fake atmosphere glow settings for Moon, radius = 1.738e+006(true scale)

Main tab;
Haze density = 0.01
Haze horizon colour = 8!
Rest = '0'

Height control;
Haze exp. height = 250000
Blue sky exp. height = 0 n/a
Floor/ceiling = will auto-adjust via the 'haze exp. height' to settings that I don't understand. I leave these alone, no idea! ;)

Lighting;
Haze glow amount/power = 1/1.25(default)
Blue sky glow amount/power = 0 n/a
Envirolight = 0

Tweaks;
Fake dark power = 8
Sharpness = 10(default)

Those ^^ should keep the glow appearing only where it's being directly lit.

* Ulco, sorry... The glow from the procedural stars was done in post, yes.
I've tried all sorts, from GI in the default home-planet's atmosphere, to 3D cloud layers round the inside of the background node to get real TG2 glow from the stars, none have worked, yet. I will keep trying with that as I think it really could, somehow...

Another thing I did was use two sunlights, one in atmo, one in surfaces. I kept the Sun elevation quite high(25) to get a nice crescent orientation but that lights the entire atmosphere up like day time. The 'atmo Sun' is exactly the same but I lowered the strength from default settings to '0.25'. This creates problems of its own!
The ground of the 'home-planet' will also be lit like day time and that's no good in a night scene. To get around that(not visible here, as there's no ground, but...) I've placed a new planet with its surface above any features on the home-planet but below the Moon/Suns. You can't see the inside-surface of a planet with a positive radius so, the outer-surface acts as a shadow caster on the terrain of the home-planet, which I am lighting by other means from below that shadow-planet's surface level. I'll post some more renders showing both Earth and Moon once they are done, it's looking pretty natural so far but, you lot will be the judge of that, I suppose... ;)
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Kadri on August 31, 2012, 10:14:49 AM
Martin are the stars only a image map or real 3D objects ?
(Procedural =fakestone etc?)
Edit : If they are not real objects it could be(maybe) the reason.
         Did you tried to populate the sky with planets (as stars) that have a atmosphere for the glow effect?
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on August 31, 2012, 11:08:35 AM
No, Kadri. They are 4 layers of merged star fractals using luminosity for brightness on the background shader. I thought that luminosity/atmospherics/GI would provide some glow but had no luck just yet. I think the cloud layer should work but once it's all centred to the size of the background node it becomes ridiculously large in depth just to be able to see any cloud effect at that level and then tens of thousands of samples can end up in the quality tab! Maybe a normal thin layer but more density could be an idea, dunno, I've tried a few things but I'll keep going. But I think the luminosity might also not be enough in the tiny stars to light it anyway. Loads of things to play with, though!
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: mhaze on August 31, 2012, 11:38:58 AM
Thanks for that, Dandelo. I have just modified my desert picture to give some haze to the moon, it's much better now!
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Dune on August 31, 2012, 12:24:41 PM
Thanks for your comprehensive explanation, Martin. I figured the moon's haze was like you said (I did that with my moon as well, kind of), but the fake dark power is a great idea and new to me.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Kadri on August 31, 2012, 05:11:40 PM
Thanks Martin  :)
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on September 02, 2012, 01:27:18 PM
Just one with some basic terrain details to test simulated lighting on the ground. Due to the way I've chosen to make the glow with a secondary atmosphere on the Moon(and the problems that I mentioned above with this), I've had to get tricksy with shadow and a separate lighting for the ground portion to mimic what it should look like.
I had a nice specular setting for the ground but on increased render detail, it hasn't came out as well as I'd hoped, specular roughness is too high and I think the patch size is maybe too small for the intersected black sand layer making lots of jaggies. :/

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on September 02, 2012, 06:09:32 PM
And one without the extra atmo' booster-light that I used above. Also, I didn't do any editing of the stars in this third one, that's why there are more here, I fixed the middle one up a bit but didn't have time to muck around on this one too.

[attachimg=1]
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: mhall on September 02, 2012, 09:36:00 PM
Wow - I really like that last one! I thought the glow was a bit much in the other, but this has a nice muted effect to it.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: masonspappy on September 02, 2012, 09:56:46 PM
Yeah, it doesn't overwhelm the sky!
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: choronr on September 03, 2012, 02:12:33 AM
A striking piece of work Martin.
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: dandelO on September 03, 2012, 06:59:05 AM
Thanks, everyone! :)
I'm still playing with it, more soon, and hopefully improvements...
Title: Re: Luno
Post by: Dune on September 03, 2012, 12:41:48 PM
Indeed, very very nice. By the way, I did some experimenting with glow and moon and used a very high 'cirrus' cloud behind the moon, plus a rather large (4) sun behind the moon, which kind of worked as well for a glow around the moon, but with a dark side as well. Perhaps 2 layers of thin cloud is even better.