Planetside Software Forums

General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: RichTwo on February 13, 2007, 07:44:19 PM

Title: Planetary rings
Post by: RichTwo on February 13, 2007, 07:44:19 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 13, 2007, 07:48:27 PM
you just translate it down using the cords. here I set a ring up for you.

regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: dhavalmistry on February 13, 2007, 07:51:01 PM
I asked the same question some time ago...here is the link...

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=687.msg5505#msg5505
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 13, 2007, 07:54:13 PM
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
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: §ardine on February 13, 2007, 07:58:28 PM
I posted an example here (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=467.msg4025#msg4025)
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.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: old_blaggard on February 13, 2007, 08:05:53 PM
Very interesting.  Somehow I missed that.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: dhavalmistry on February 13, 2007, 08:08:30 PM
ya I missed that too.....very nice Sardine....
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 13, 2007, 08:10:03 PM
I remember that, didn't see the zip file though, playing with it now.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: RichTwo on February 13, 2007, 08:12:39 PM
Still looks a bit tricky, but I'll play with it & see what I get.  Thanks, Will & everyone!!
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: §ardine on February 13, 2007, 09:03:04 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 13, 2007, 09:07:58 PM
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
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: §ardine on February 13, 2007, 09:14:36 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Rob Allen on February 14, 2007, 03:36:15 PM
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?
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 14, 2007, 03:38:46 PM
Here what I've come up with so far.

regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: old_blaggard on February 14, 2007, 03:48:05 PM
Nice job.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 14, 2007, 03:49:07 PM
Thanks, I tryied to get a thicker band but terragen crashed when render so for now this is all you guys get.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Dark Fire on February 14, 2007, 04:02:43 PM
Nice rings...
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: §ardine on February 15, 2007, 09:19:24 PM
Quote from: Rob Allen on February 14, 2007, 03:36:15 PM
...I might like to use this in Terracell at some point, if I may?

Hey go for it! I was actually thinking of offering to do this part for you when you mentioned the possibility of adding rings to Terracell. However, I really don't have the time (haven't done a single render in almost a week :'()

Please use what I've posted, it's for everybody to use/learn.

~Sardine
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: sonshine777 on February 18, 2007, 01:48:39 AM
Here is my go at Planet Rings. There are two Populations and two Ring masks. I am however having trouble getting the image of Saturn to map correctly, it is currently through the camera.

Enjoy
[attachthumb=#]
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: sonshine777 on February 18, 2007, 01:55:15 AM
Here is the files I used to create the above scene.

It includes two ring mask images, the projection image of Saturn, the .tgd file and a .tgo file for the rock.  Thanks Sardine for the insight into this technique, I hope others will put their ideas into making this better.

Tom
[attach=#]
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: old_blaggard on February 18, 2007, 02:28:18 AM
Nice efforts and thanks for sharing.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Dark Fire on February 18, 2007, 09:55:49 AM
Wow...That's a wierd but nice picture. I especially like those layers in the rock on the planet that the camera is on.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 18, 2007, 09:57:36 AM
Nice picture only thing I would say is give the clouds a little bit more depth, right now they look almost completely flat.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: trailgirl on February 18, 2007, 11:23:49 AM
These are rings made out of discs, there are nine discs with a gap. The problem I ran into with the discs is that they are jagged at the edge, on the far left of the rings. It might not be too noticeable at this size.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Oshyan on February 18, 2007, 04:06:20 PM
Quote from: sonshine777 on February 18, 2007, 01:48:39 AM
Here is my go at Planet Rings. There are two Populations and two Ring masks. I am however having trouble getting the image of Saturn to map correctly, it is currently through the camera.

You will want to use Spherical Projection to wrap onto a planet. You will need to specify the position of the texture as the center point of the planet and the size to be equivalent to the planet size as well, I believe.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: sonshine777 on February 18, 2007, 05:14:11 PM
Thanks Oshyan I will givwe that a try, I hadn't tried scaling the image size. :)
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: old_blaggard on February 18, 2007, 08:58:49 PM
Wonderful render, Trail!
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: trailgirl on February 19, 2007, 09:29:26 AM
Thanks, old_blaggard!
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 19, 2007, 09:36:06 AM
great use of disks, I like the tiny moon too :)

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: sonshine777 on February 19, 2007, 09:51:06 AM
Where you able to get the disks to be partly transparent? I know that is why I like the population route, because I couldn't get the disks to be see through.
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Will on February 19, 2007, 10:05:26 AM
doesn't look like it, but at that distence from the ring a disk looks fine, a population is only nessary when you are close enough.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: sonshine777 on February 19, 2007, 10:18:06 AM
Your right on the distance part Just thought I would through out the question. :)
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: trailgirl on February 19, 2007, 10:33:11 AM
Sonshine777, I didn't do anything with transparency or opacity. I did try though! There may be ways to control this in the Node settings for those up to speed unlike me  :) I did put a gap in the discs to give an illusion of transparency.

I posted my tgd file awhile back, when I needed cloud help, here's the post, if you want to take a look at the discs:

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

Marcia
Title: Re: Planetary rings
Post by: Ogre on February 19, 2007, 02:18:56 PM
My solution was to make a 3-D ring object in Maya

http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-3744

It will look better when transparency works.