I've been working on "that" photo taken from the ISS again, I'm sure you know the one
Camera height is 370km above the planets surface.
I'm pretty pleased with it so far but the render times are fairly horrendous at 23 hours+ but then the cloud quality settings were set to "2" and the render quality was at "0.8, 8". Unfortunately that was necessary to bring out the fine detail in the clouds. Lower settings seem to turn detail into noise.
The second image also has the X-37B dropped in for amusement ...
I'm working on a 720 x 1280 version with slightly lowered quality and AA settings all round. If I can get it down to a couple of hours then it could be animated. Fingers crossed!!
Looks awesome! :D
but that ship looks a bit weird no? The wing?
Looks like a photo. Great :)
Looks great! I guess the lensflare is not from Terragen?
Great work, Richard. Looks really believable, IMHO. Did you know there's a thin black line near the bottom?
Quote from: Dune on October 19, 2014, 10:55:24 AM
Great work, Richard. Looks really believable, IMHO. Did you know there's a thin black line near the bottom?
Thanks everyone. I don't see the black line on my setup ... Lens flare is from "Knoll Light Factory" ... maybe that's where the line comes from
I always tried to make a lensflare with GIMP but that did not work so well.
Breathtaking...
Looks quite nice I think, you're getting great variation in the cloud heights/shapes, and some beautiful lighting. I think at this height the dark/shadowed areas would probably be darker, there's nothing bouncing the light down there but atmosphere, but maybe that's enough. Personally I prefer with a simpler lens flare, the "dashed line" outer part is a bit funky IMO. The X-37B model is a cool idea, but somehow doesn't shade realistically IMO? Might have to do with the tonemapping or overall contrast of the image though. White would usually be whiter, black blacker (higher contrast). But perhaps it's a texture issue? I don't know. Also, I do see the black line at bottom, but *also* on the left side, but only in the version with the X-37B model. They're both 50-100 pixels from the left/bottom of the image.
Anyway, very promising stuff. Too bad about the render time, but I wonder if you're raytracing the atmosphere. I ask because even though it can sometimes result in higher render times, it *does* capture fine detail better than higher detail can except at really extreme levels (>1). So you might try a crop but reduce Detail to 0.5 or even less, and put cloud quality at 2. Be sure to adjust Atmosphere Samples as well, and try not to use AA above 4 (should not be necessary in the version without a model).
- Oshyan
Yes once again I am attempting the (nearly) impossible. To get the camera down from orbit and maintain realistic clouds all the way . Not so easy!!
Well now I'm down to about 2 hours a frame, I doubt I'll get much better without loss of detail. It's already a little grainy in the last image.
Looking at the render stats page for the new test scene I'm getting about 11 min whereas others with more modern processors can get nearly a third of that! (my test came in at 11min vs the fastest at just over 4min). This gives me hope that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time.
The X-37B is an old model I have been working on for a while as more images become available. It's pretty accurate!! :) Unfortunately I had to turn off TG's smoothing option on the model as it was over smoothing some areas. The texture is not great either! It is rendered in TG with the same camera position and lighting as the planetary image but as a separate pass without the planet. This may account for it's slightly out of place look.
Here is a question then. Has anyone any experience on the value of changing Atmospheric settings during an animation? Is there any value to say increasing the detail and quality levels in clouds as the camera gets closer?
EDIT: Or changing the exposure/sunlight/environmental lighting levels?
Cheers all :)
Cinema quality Richard
Ah, orbit-to-ground, the holy grail! Very nice. And it sounds like you brought the render time down quite a bit, so that's very encouraging.
I have done some animation of atmo parameters like red decay, lighting levels, etc. and it can work, but it needs to change quite slowly, and be treated carefully. If you can avoid having to do it, it's generally better. IMO better to get a single setup that works in a broad range of circumstances (for a given scene). Of course this is never easy, but sometimes possible...
Curious why you rendered the model in a separate pass btw. For maximum control? Did you render it with a GI cache the same as the main image?
- Oshyan
Awesome! :D
This will be freaking massive!
Yeah cant wait to see it... :D
Amazing!!
Very realistic Richard.
I prefer the one without the lens flare, although in cases like this it can add something.
I agree with Oshyan that the dashed thing is "funky".
The left 2/3rds of the image look pretty darn perfect to me and the only things I have my doubts about is the vortex on the right.
The vortices I have seen are with much thicker and densely covered cloud system. This one looks very sparse, sharp and too red for such a hurricane system.
Else, just splendid!
Are you seriously planning on an orbit to surface animation of this? :o
Cheers,
Martin
I'd love to animate this and yes this is a "holy grail" quest for me. As is often the case with such mythical quests, it is the journey rather than the completion that is important. At least that is what the sages who have still to complete a quest say!
Thus far the clouds are about right, I agree about the vortex being a little too sharp , tweeks are being applied.
The hardest part with any of these "from orbit to land" shots seems to be the camera animation. Getting that smooth curve is a bloody nightmare. TG's graph editor is a pain to use since it can't smooth curves properly yet (?!?). This means that the only way I have found so far that seems to work is to animate in reverse. Start where I want to finish the animation and move the camera backwards, doubling the distance each time (keeping the time between key-frames equal). So to continue I have to model the end environment, final tree, forest, local landscape and then get the camera to fly smoothly from tens of thousands of miles an hour at the start of the animation to a crawling pace at the end.
Easy !! I may be some time lol
Yeah this is going to take quite a while, with a proper sense of understatement ;)
I seem to remember you're quite handy with LightWave, right?
If so, why not animate your camera in LW?
Wonderful work Richard. I am working on a similar scene for a project, but I am really struggling to get the lighting right. I love how you got the orange decay showing up with highlights on the clouds. Could you shed some light on how you got those?
Thanks!
Looking very good so far.
Wow...started on my b day which is how I missed this before. Good call Ulco...had to zoom way in with Irfanview to see it, just below the large circle.
I'll smoke you a kipper!
Holy grail indeed,
Looks top notch already,
Salivates
:)
J
Absolute amazing... a "landing"-animation would be great!
Quote from: inkydigit on March 21, 2015, 06:55:06 AM
I'll smoke you a kipper!
Holy grail indeed,
Looks top notch already,
Salivates
:)
J
uh,echo...