Planetside Software Forums

General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: rcallicotte on February 25, 2007, 03:02:54 PM

Title: The Sun
Post by: rcallicotte on February 25, 2007, 03:02:54 PM
Does the sun in TG2 have a location?  In others words, can I use it as a measuring stick as to where to put planets or space objects?
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: old_blaggard on February 25, 2007, 03:41:11 PM
Good question.  The answer is no.  The sun has an angle and can be positioned to come from any direction, but it is unreachable.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 25, 2007, 03:47:54 PM
but I wonder fi you deleted the sun and put ina light with a really really high intencity of you could do the same thing.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: rcallicotte on February 25, 2007, 03:49:49 PM
So...if I want to calculate a radius from the sun to a planet or a radius to any other object in space, is this possible?  It doesn't sound like it, but I'm trying to understand the possibilities.

What got my attention around this are two things - the background that can expand or shrink and the other is trying to calculate distances in TG2 space.

Thanks, old_[young]_blaggard.   :)

Will, that seems possible.  I wonder...
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 25, 2007, 03:52:03 PM
distence is all in scienfic notation I think.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Arandil on February 25, 2007, 03:56:29 PM
Quote from: Will on February 25, 2007, 03:52:03 PM
distence is all in scienfic notation I think.

Regards,

Will

Will, are you referring to the Distance parameter on the Angular Position tab of the Planet object properties?

Cheers
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 25, 2007, 03:58:36 PM
no, I was referring to the more genral aspect that all the large numbers are in scientfic notation, not sure whether it is in meters or kilometers at that point though.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: old_blaggard on February 25, 2007, 04:15:19 PM
All distances are in meters.  Calico - disabling the sun and adding a really really bright light source would be an interesting experiment.  Unfortunately, you can't calculate the distance between the sun and a planet - because the sun doesn't have a position, the distance simply doesn't exist.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 25, 2007, 04:17:20 PM
it defiys the laws of physics! dododo

Regards

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Arandil on February 25, 2007, 04:38:25 PM
I'm actually waiting for the inevitable "can we have two suns" question ... did I miss it already?  :P
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: old_blaggard on February 25, 2007, 04:39:19 PM
Arandil - yeah, you missed it :P and the answer is: you can have as many suns as you want.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Oshyan on February 25, 2007, 04:59:24 PM
The sun is currently handled as a "distant" light type, which means it has an undefinable, theoretically infinite distance. Given the huge scales involved this does not pose accuracy issues and eliminates the need to calculate certain large-scale problems that might be time-consuming otherwise. I do think a sphere of proper size with very high illumination numbers might work, but the system is not exactly designed to deal with that and it might take a very long time to render properly.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Angealus on February 25, 2007, 05:03:09 PM
So my question  would then be how does everybody get the beautiful sunset renders with the sun positioned just so over the water?????? ???
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 25, 2007, 05:04:49 PM
what do you mean? you can move the sun around.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Arandil on February 25, 2007, 06:13:59 PM
Quote from: old_blaggard on February 25, 2007, 04:39:19 PM
Arandil - yeah, you missed it :P and the answer is: you can have as many suns as you want.

REALLY!!   :o  8)
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: gradient on February 25, 2007, 06:24:56 PM
@angealus...just go the the sunlight tab and adjust your heading and elevation.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: MeltingIce on February 25, 2007, 08:27:05 PM
Put the elevation of the sun at 1-3 degrees and watch what happens  :P
If you have some high elevation clouds, try putting the sun at -1 to -3 degress for some strong cloud lighting.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: vissroid on February 26, 2007, 06:45:02 AM
Quote from: Will on February 25, 2007, 03:47:54 PM
but I wonder fi you deleted the sun and put ina light with a really really high intencity of you could do the same thing.

Regards,

Will

This would probably screw with the rnder time...I mean i think it would by my experiance with lights in comarison to something that just hits the planet from far away. but then I've used a light to make the dark side of a planet glow. not sure if there was a render time change tho.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 26, 2007, 05:38:05 PM
Well I've been playing around with it and it seems to work quite well and without adding any consiterable amount of render time. I'm now thinking of making en entire soler system for people to explore, well most ly me but I'll share it with you guys.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Arandil on February 26, 2007, 05:50:21 PM
Quote from: Will on February 26, 2007, 05:38:05 PM
Well I've been playing around with it and it seems to work quite well and without adding any consiterable amount of render time. I'm now thinking of making en entire soler system for people to explore, well most ly me but I'll share it with you guys.

Regards,

Will

If you get the gumption, render out some orthographic texture maps and build a solar system in Orbiter!   ;D
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 26, 2007, 05:51:02 PM
Thats a great idea, I should have though of that!


Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 26, 2007, 07:32:58 PM
OK so here is a sence of scale for the light I'm talking about here, the white thing is the lights the pink pixol is the default planet....yes I realize its quite small compaired to the sun, but it is the default size, only change was to make it pink.
Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Oshyan on February 26, 2007, 09:01:09 PM
I'd definitely expect it to be a lot bigger - about 1.3 million Earth's could fit inside the Sun. Or, put another way, the Sun is about 110 times bigger (diameter) than the Earth. The reason so many could fit inside is of course the ratio of diameter to volume. ;D

Cool experiment anyway.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 26, 2007, 09:09:06 PM
110 times you say, well I just just did the equvilent to the size of the defualt planet and well lets just say it is big...REALLY REALLY BIG!
so big infact that its radious is largers then the lights that its tranismits, so right now its just a gray sphere. :(

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 27, 2007, 06:32:51 AM
OK here is anouther example this time taking into account what Oshyan said. Just a note we are closer to the planet then to the sun.

light sourse radius: 7.0158e+008

strength: 4e+020

its pretty big.

P.S. you need to expand the image to see everything.

Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: rcallicotte on February 27, 2007, 08:58:15 AM
Will, you're still onto something.  Cool.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: old_blaggard on February 27, 2007, 09:37:19 AM
This is going pretty well.  Now all we need is a realistic sun object to place over the light source, and we've got ourselves one fine looking space render :D.
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: rcallicotte on February 27, 2007, 09:46:44 AM
I saw a place somewhere this last week that had a sun object...spherical, too.  If I can find it...
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 27, 2007, 03:22:40 PM
What would be crazy is if one day the stars in our images where acualy places. But for right now I'm justing making a solar system ;)


Regards,

Will
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Oshyan on February 27, 2007, 03:44:44 PM
You can probably find a spherically projected sun texture image to put over that sun object and make it luminous. Of course technically the sun is so bright it would just be a big bright area in any image actually taken in space, so you'd never be able to see such detail unless your exposure is *extremely* reduced. But hey, realism isn't always the best way. ;D

- Oshyan
Title: Re: The Sun
Post by: Will on February 27, 2007, 03:51:55 PM
what I need is a way to simulate photosphere and the cornoa and it sould be fine, it would seem that in terragen the sun is a white object not a yellow one so I'll make it slightly yellowish. Also I'm working on anouther plant with a ring around it (a gas planet) but its not populating any idea why?

Regards,

Will