Inspired by a recent image post elsewhere by Nethskie, I wanted to try and make a nice noctilucent layer in Terragen.
Here's image 1, no scene to put it in yet;
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Cheers! :)
Nice sky. It has a Tesla feel to it.
That must be some Voronoi right?
Cheers, Henry.
Jbest, no, it's pretty much just a default cloud density fractal, set to Perlin ridges and some other minor tweaks. The pattern isn't really the main feature, the lighting is what I'm trying to refine, the sun is below the horizon so, other measures have to be taken in the actual cloud layer for the luminous effects to show.
Work in progress, I'm still messing around with it.
Here's a much larger .png Noctiluce 1920x2000px (http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/279/6/1/noctiluce_by_dandel0-d307amj.png) 2.3mb
Hi DandelO,
nice image, I like the perlin ridges.
I just don´t understand what you are trying to do there.
When you put a cloud layer at the height of real noctilucent clouds (about 80k) then it will be lit until the sun is about 10 degrees below horizon. Terragens atmosphere/lighting model should handle that correctly, or are there any problems with that?
On the other hand, redsky decay seems to be a lot simpler than real physics, otherwise great sunsets would be easier to make.
Selfglowing clouds would be nice for a lot of other applications.
Best Regards,
Jan
I'd think so too, Jan but I can't seem to make it work as it should. I need to do some interesting things to the cloud node settings. Always ends up with flat clouds with little or no glow or highlighting, like this;
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I've tried this layer in a daylight setting as well and interestingly, they look pretty nice, not all blown out, as I'd have expected from their brightness in a night setting.
The layer's 'lighting' tab settings are pretty much default, the glow comes from somewhere else.
Plenty fun to be had yet...
Very nice, Martin. Good for aurora, if you stretch Y, set a certain height and maybe tighten the ridge contrast... then different colors.
looking real nice, I look forward to the progression...
I would like to see this with proper GI settings --- not this Ambient Oclusion stuff, you know ,-)
(I hope that you are too old for this 'jump through the screen stuff, too) :) ;) :D ;D
:D I'm reminded of a line from Goodfellas; "You really are a funny guy!"
In fact, there is no envirolight at all here so, I'm afraid that won't be possible, at least on the clouds. The noctilucent layer is purposely set NOT to receive any envirolight so, regardless of GI/AO for your scene setting, these clouds will remain the same. It's really easy to control as well. And, remember, no GI in a cloud will simply ignore 'scattering colour' = one less control to balance for your cloud lighting. ;)
BUT... ;)
What's really cool here is, if you render with GI on surfaces, your surfaces are GI-lit by the clouds, even when the atmosphere/clouds aren't. This is similar to image based lighting, only with fractals.
I have a lovely tester setup with similarly lit clouds that uses GI on surfaces, AO in atmosphere and none of the above on the clouds, works a treat. The cloud, if balanced correctly, is sufficient enough to light the entire scene(no need for sunlight) while the AO does it's thing on the atmo independently of the cloud lighting, which lights up the ground when you apply a little GI to surfaces.
For a long time I've wanted a way to make clouds really 'glow' from inside without blowing-out the features, now I've found that method. I will try to post some lovely lit clouds soon. It's really cool but I'm not posting the method, just yet...
Stay tuned!
Here's a dirty example of a quick cloud lighting comparison test I have just run. All examples are on a default layer, 2000m thick.
GI is on in the atmosphere and there are no fill lights, for all tests.
Firstly, no GI in the clouds;
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Secondly, GI in clouds(default settings);
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Finally, no GI in the clouds, edited layer.
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It isn't a perfect representation, you can notice the difference all over with these back to back comparisons but, it is a nice enough 'fake' GI in clouds without using fill lights that could easily blow-out many other scene features. It may be a little too much here as the horizon is a bit over-bright in the edited layer, I think, but, meh! Close enough for government work, as they say.
The effect is more useful in dark scenes, where you really have more control, this test just tries to approximate it in a daytime setting to satisfy my own curiosity, really.
Night is much better because the measures need to be less subtle and they can be ridiculously extreme(as they are in the noctilucents of this thread) than they are here, you can make a really nice cloud lighting without GI in a night scene.
It isn't a ground-breaking method, it's completely simple and obvious, I just never thought to do it before. More later, in the dark...
Hee Martin, you're teasing us:
QuoteIt's really cool but I'm not posting the method, just yet...
I have no idea what you're up to this time, but I'll follow this topic with interest. I've just been testing some light setup to get dark, soft shadows under objects to get more mystery in woods and under the eaves of old farms. Perhaps your enlightening clouds could serve a purpose there as well...
Can't wait to see what you are doing here. Here was my 5 minute play just moving the sun to -10. I call it Noctilucent Oil Slick ;D
Cool, man. It really could be an oil slick!
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It's really nothing funky and exotic that I'm doing with a cloud layer, you'll be disappointed when I say it pretty much comes down to one single setting and then adjusting another to match it.
I like to try and tidy things up and find any faults before posting a proper description(and still usually end up looking like a blethering fool! :D) and with the noctilucents and there's a couple of clauses to doing clouds this way; You can't really use GI in the atmosphere node, because the atmosphere comes out really blotchy, like in this image;
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Using AO in the atmosphere is fine, whilst you can still use GI on surfaces, I think. I need to test it on a diffuse, flat colour surface first to make sure of that, though...
You also can't use the scattering colour function of any clouds that have non-GI lighting, it's ignored completely.
'Fake internal scattering' still works so, it seems there are some good points to that parameter not using GI any more, like it used to when we could make the real oily-looking clouds in the olden days.
I'll sort it out.
Clouds have been a bit of a bain to me. I've wanted to get huge cumulous in the distance catching the low sunlight on it's edges, whilst blending into the haze.
Not sure if this has any relevance to what you're playing around with here. Probably not. But turnig off Darker Unresolved Scattering has helped achieve something close to that effect.
I haven't tried unchecking darker unresolved scattering with these yet, Hetzen, I will do now, cheers!
This highly exaggerated setup shows the envirolight problem I'm facing a bit better. The scene is only lit by the envirolight, there's no sun.
This is the GI lighting on surfaces only, it's perfectly smooth;
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Here with GI in atmosphere and surfaces, the GI is extremely grainy in the atmosphere. Closer surfaces that don't pass through much atmosphere are fine but 5km away in the distance, and the second boulder is in heavy light-snow;
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And with AO in the atmosphere/GI on surfaces, it's significantly smoother in thick atmosphere, but still a bit of a problem(a little light-snow ;));
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The settings are very extreme here, and of course, there's no sun so it is purely ambient lighting, it isn't nearly so bad at more sensible settings so, when I figure out a basic outline I'll be back, I know what's causing it, and where it happens now so, I can hopefully find the tipping point.
There must be another way to blur the distant atmo-snow when using low sample settings. Blur it indeed... perhaps. Procedurally or in the software itself. Just a thought.
Maybe rendering the sky separately? Then using the sky render as a backdrop image.
Cheers, folks. The GI grain isn't due to lower samples, there's 80 atmo samples in the snowy-light atmosphere and it's still a big problem, 32 should be more than efficient in a normal case, those settings were highly exaggerated. It comes from the GI sampling extremely too bright pixels in the sky. Just tidying up few bits and bobs and I'll be back with something soon.
The not-so-secret is one control in the tweaks tab. Ambient.
I've been using ridiculous levels in there for some interesting effects. The first 'noctilucent' image posted in this thread used white(1) for cloud colour and 25 for 'ambient'! ;)
When the GI gets used, sampling that extremely high value creates the grain in the atmosphere lighting.
It's easy to go over the top but also, easy to keep controlled. Here's a quick layer.tgd, it's an ugly fractal but I didn't spend much time on that, it's more just to show the cloud layer settings to show how the luminosity is applied. You can get funky with fractals and apply excessive ambience to any cloud layer.
The fake GI daytime image (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=10923.0;attach=27177;image) I posted yesterday, for example, had a very dark cloud colour(0.1, if I remember correctly, didn't save it) and about 3.5 for 'ambient. The dark cloud colour creates the detail in the formations and the excessive ambience makes it appear much brighter in colour than it actually is. Simple. :)
I'm finding I can easily light clouds of many different types this way, just balance cloud colour with ambience. My extreme 25 number was beginning to show the GI patchiness when it's used in the atmosphere, it isn't a necessary, or advised, level to use with a GI atmo.
Envirolight in the cloud layer is '0' so you can easily still use GI in the atmosphere if you need to for any reason. You can make the clouds easily bright enough to act like a lightsource for lighting GI surfaces nicely, although, obviously if your ambience is too bright, you'll overpower the shadows on surfaces, just balance that out too. It's all just a relative balance, there are not any exact settings I can say that will work in all scenes, play around.
I originally noticed this luminous cloud thing while cranking the 'scattering colour' but that easily blows out the GI at levels above 1 and creates the GI noise too easily. I didn't think until recently about doing it without GI and using the ambient colour instead, one of those famous TG face-palm moments we all have again and again. :D
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GI is switched off in the renderer because there are no surfaces visible here, re-enable it without fear of grain, envirolight is '0' for atmosphere, again, enable it without fear of grain.
Find the .tgd in this post in the Cloud Library (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3691.msg112276#msg112276).
Now I see some potential with this. I've not played too much with cloud lighting and ambience, although it seems to be an obvious place to look to try and tone down the shadow casting of thick skies.
I wrote this as you were posting the above....
QuoteI've always found atmos quality 64 being sufficient for most things, except some pretty dark scenes. 32 tends to not smooth out the atmos grain sufficiently for my liking.
When I've heavily modulated the inputs in a cloud node, I may need more in the atmos samples.
I'm not really sure what you are trying here Martin. We tend to use pure AO passes as a sort of 'dirt pass' in other packages to make 3d objects pop a little in compositing. Saying that, I've never tried to use the atmosphere to influence that pass before, but then I tend to us TG as background plates only. What's your aim here, if you don't mind me asking?
Quote from: Hetzen on October 09, 2010, 05:05:45 PM
I'm not really sure what you are trying here Martin.
Just trying to get a nice enough, self illuminating cloud layer which uses no atmospheric GI, for render quickness. I'm not keen on ambient occlusion on surfaces in TG, even when it's very weak. I sometimes just use a little in the atmosphere to make that pop a little when I'm using no GI in the atmosphere. Most times, I don't use any ambient light in the atmosphere at all and crank GI detail and samples for surfaces really high.
I don't have the best computer for rendering so, I cut as many corners as I can for speed. :D
Seriously fella, cutting corners makes the difference between an overnight render, and one that takes a few days. It's all good work.
Similarly, for an edge-glow effect, just do the opposite. Cloud colour exceeding '1' and you could use a little negative in the ambient.
Thanks, Martin. Interesting venue. While I was offline, I've been testing some clouds as well, and found the 'ambient way' indeed. And while I was at it, tried using this self-illuminating cloud to work as a soft light, to produce soft shadows. Localized a constant color cloud, brightened it considerably and .... but it doesn't work.
hello my friends! specially dandelO here is the TGD file i used for my Neon Twilight the node is confusing as it is just a quick one 2 days ago i did not arrange it properly i'm quite busy so i used RArcher's Fantasy Clouds (http://www.nwdanet.com/buy-packs/details/38/7/preset-packs/fantasy-clouds-by-rarcher) because it produces better results than most of my scraps here just some minor editing and you can create good Noctilucent Clouds. Enjoy and post some great scenes!
(http://th03.deviantart.net/fs71/150/i/2010/283/2/f/neon_clouds_by_nethskie-d30gohq.jpg) (http://nethskie.deviantart.com/art/Neon-Twilight-182176766)
So, post that other noctilucent pic, Nethskie! It's lovely. ;)
Cheers, man!
*EDIT: Done it myself... LINK (http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/268/5/4/noctilucent_cloud_by_nethskie-d2zhjdm.jpg) :P
thanks mate! the problem on that one is it's not pure TG2 it's mixed media while the TGD i have uploaded is the pure TG2 if i have the time i can play with it to produce close results than that one but i'm trying to compose something for a Halloween special :D. i hope you guys can play with it and i believe you can provide better and greater results :)
Pure TG2 (except for the water reflection)
(http://th03.deviantart.net/fs71/150/i/2010/283/2/f/neon_clouds_by_nethskie-d30gohq.jpg) (http://nethskie.deviantart.com/art/Neon-Twilight-182176766)
Mixed Media (more of like a Photomanipulation)
(http://th00.deviantart.net/fs70/150/f/2010/268/5/4/noctilucent_cloud_by_nethskie-d2zhjdm.jpg) (http://nethskie.deviantart.com/art/Noctilucent-Cloud-180537178)
Love it!
Pure TG? Pah! Whatever makes the image is what counts. TG was involved, regardless, so, that's why I'd have liked you to post it here when I saw it.
I haven't had a look at RArchers clouds before, seems I'm always at the back of the train!
Acht well, I get there in the end! :D
Nice work, Nethskie. More!
*EDIT: If 'enable secondary' is unchecked in the first image's cloud layer, that'll be why there was no reflections of it in the water. Or maybe it's another manip', dunno. :)