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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: cyphyr on October 18, 2010, 07:27:50 AM

Title: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 18, 2010, 07:27:50 AM
Well this one is entirely down to Avkhatri's question and Gom's answer. (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10955.msg112393#msg112393) Thank you very much guys. :) I just got intregued and ran away with the idea for a while. The scene has 19 light sources, 2 enviro lights (GI & AO) and no sunlight. The atmosphere is at 128 samples, could go higher but render times are getting quite high as it is. C&C welcome although I doubt I'll be persuing this one much further for the time being.
Enjoy
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on October 18, 2010, 08:01:52 AM
Very interesting project. I think this needs more vegetation. I like the shuttle car very much.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on October 18, 2010, 09:07:14 AM
i like this a lot, ring worlds have been on my mind for a week or so...

would be cool if we could get the populations to conform to the to the angle of the terrain so they wouldn't all be standing straight up.



Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Kadri on October 18, 2010, 09:32:08 AM

It has a nice refreshing feeling , Richard  :)
You say you doubt that you will pursuing it further but the only thing i would add is , that it feels a little incomplete !
Not much! Maybe 10-20 % if we can measure such things of course ! A little more plant , ground and ceiling variation and their texture
and a little more dirt on the metal texture too maybe ! It is good but it can be great ! You are almost there Richard come on  ;)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 18, 2010, 09:34:14 AM
Great!
it looks naturally grown (or dug out of some big asteroid or whatever. I like your lamps/atmosphere generators, thats what they look like for me.
I tried to make a Dyson-sphere some time ago, I used procedural vegetation because populating the inner side of a planet wasn´t easily possible.
When I look at your image, I think maybe looking along the perimeter is more interesting, I only wanted to have my central lightsource in view.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10796.0
Best Regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 18, 2010, 09:58:44 AM
Very intriguing, Richard! I really like this idea of an inner world. This reminds me of Myst again. Might do something of this myself...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: RArcher on October 18, 2010, 10:34:13 AM
Very cool! The lighting really makes it.  I hope you don't give up with this and take it a bit further.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: inkydigit on October 18, 2010, 01:37:10 PM
looks really impressive Rich...keep at this when you have time!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 18, 2010, 03:50:47 PM
Very cool, Richard. You must have had to place all those ceiling structures with the lights inside them manually, eh?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Tangled-Universe on October 18, 2010, 03:55:43 PM
Very creative and cool work Richard!

Quote from: dandelO on October 18, 2010, 03:50:47 PM
Very cool, Richard. You must have had to place all those ceiling structures with the lights inside them manually, eh?

I think so too (the lights for certain), although he could have used a population for the structures which has no variation in the spacing-settings.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 18, 2010, 04:27:51 PM
Thanks for the feedback guys:)

I see what you mean about "incomplete", an earlier version had a lake/river that followed about the long inner curve (a slightly altered version of Gom's file). It was a render hog and I had trouble getting the "shore" texture to flow along with the curve.

Images like this throw up all kinds of issues, the primary ones being that its trying to break almost all the rules upon which landscape rendering software work by.
For example atmospheres don't work this way! All the software I've ever come across assumes that the atmosphere thickness decays as you get further from the centre of the planet. Well in this image the planet is hidden and is above the bent planes that form the tunnel. So the atmosphere is decaying in the wrong direction! It's not that noticeable in this image. Another issue is that the light sources on an internally lit structure like this (its the same for a cylinder (Eon) or sphere (Dyson))create a very even shadowless light, quite flat and uninteresting with rays coming in from all directions but mostly above.

Populations will of course only work in the mid to near distance (close enough to not notice the curve)

I'm in London for a few days so I've set it to render a larger version, higher detail and AA and better quality, the vp has also been moved.

When I get back I'll  post the result.

:)

Richard

ps: Oh the light placement. I made a model of the Generator unit (in its final position, y=-137 km ish) and another model of where the light would be. The generator was imported and copied and pasted with a rotation of 0.3deg in the z? axis (the last one). This gave a curve of generator units. The same was done with the light model so I had a small bounding box where each light was going to be. I then simply moved individual lights sources too cover the modelled lights and then deleted the light models. Simples
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 18, 2010, 04:35:51 PM
You could always add an extra small sphere primitive to the model and give that 'part' extreme luminosity values to create the light sources, saves on the trouble of matching up 19 independent TG light sources, and will work just as well with the GI to provide the lighting. Although, I kind of like the graininess from the TG lights here, they look really electric.

Quoteps: Oh the light placement. I made a model of the Generator unit (in its final position, y=-137 km ish) and another model of where the light would be. The generator was imported and copied and pasted with a rotation of 0.3deg in the z? axis (the last one). This gave a curve of generator units. The same was done with the light model so I had a small bounding box where each light was going to be. I then simply moved individual lights sources too cover the modelled lights and then deleted the light models. Simples

Ah, right.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 18, 2010, 04:42:17 PM
Quote from: dandelO on October 18, 2010, 04:35:51 PM
You could always add an extra small sphere primitive to the model and give that 'part' extreme luminosity values to create the light sources, saves on the trouble of matching up 19 independent TG light sources, and will work just as well with the GI to provide the lighting. Although, I kind of like the graininess from the TG lights here, they look really electric.

I initially tried very high luminosity setting to light the scene (the pylons originally has a light emitting surface at the top before they became a mono rail). I dropped the idea as it was getting very grainy everywhere, not just about the light sources. I've learnt a few tricks on the way so I may try it again.

:)

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 19, 2010, 03:38:22 AM
As I said, intriguing, so I went for it. Not wanting to hijack your topic, though. I used 2 planets, elongated perlins, and each can be populated easily, just turn the objects 180 degrees. The light is a sun at 10 degrees right in front and only 0.2 atmo density at 32 quality. No grain, well hardly. 3 additional light sources somewhere in the 'tunnels'. The tunnels are not good enough, but ok, it's a quick setup. And some lightsources, which I did place manually.
I think using a crater shader + an inverted one for the other planet, plus some sinus function, some redirect, etc would give a better sloping tunnel perhaps.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 19, 2010, 04:17:16 AM
Intriguing indeed :)
And I'm laying the blame for this one firmly at Goms and avkhatri's feet, sorry guys! :)
So is this two planets just very close together, almost touching, or have you inverted one of them, possibly the lower one?
I'm asking because theres the age old issue of weather one should model an object exactly as it is (within reason) or if close enough is good enough. I certainly believe in this case since we have no referance we can get away with the latter. Did you also play wit hthe AO and GI light sources. I found getting a ballance between the two quite problamatic. Dramatically differant results depending which was the higher value even with settings in the 100's. Hmm I like the idea of using two crater shaders but what I'd realy like to do is find is a way to do a propper π (Pi) based function rather than a sine based one as I've used from Goms. What I have at the moment gives a bell curve an whereas a propper circle would be much more useful in this case.
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: N810 on October 19, 2010, 09:52:53 AM
Hmmm.....

Maybe some of the Tourus formulas here would be usefull for creating it with functions...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 19, 2010, 10:53:19 AM
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/5096961916_74889c4fd0_m.jpg)

Sorry. little time.
Two planets, one positive, one inverted.
First simple shape shader only cuts rendertime, second displaces with edge set to "radius", there is your donut.
No idea how it works with populations.
Best regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 19, 2010, 12:21:50 PM
Excelent :) The solutions to these kind of problems always seem to come from thinking out side the box.
Thank you, I'll be playing with this when I get home, so much for me leaving this one alone!
:)
Richard

ps: Had a quick(ish) play with Mahnmut's file and its looking very promising indeed:)
I'm on the laptop that is very slow compared to the Desktop so this is only a low res. For some reason I'm getting massive lateral displacements, they look quite interesting but I'm not sure where they come from. Lots to work with when I get home.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: rcallicotte on October 19, 2010, 04:07:47 PM
Cool work, cyphyr and Dune (and Mahnmut). What has Goms started?   :o
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 20, 2010, 02:55:40 AM
This is a much better method, as the two halves of the ring are now connected. When using just two planets, they're not. And I didn't invert any of them.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: nethskie on October 20, 2010, 06:08:04 AM
nice concept i like it!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: j meyer on October 20, 2010, 10:12:31 AM
Very promising!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 20, 2010, 04:10:58 PM
Great!
Glad  it works and you like it.
Your quickish play looks really promising.
I also played with my donut a little bit, but I get nothing like a landscape inside it.
And I don´t have the patience for detailwork at the moment, especially when every trestrender seems to take years on my old pc.
But I am really looking forward to see what you (and others maybe) will make of this.
Best regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on October 20, 2010, 04:38:34 PM
Very striking work here. I think you're starting a trend.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 21, 2010, 02:51:40 AM
Your method works fine, Mahnmut. I had a quick play as well yesterday. The only thing that needs more attention is the 'gap' between the two half rings. But with a 'line' of fake stones, or vegetation, it should be possible to hide it. I won't be using this, I guess, but it's fun playing with and great to see that for every 'problem' there is a solution. Thanks again, Mahnmut.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Hetzen on October 21, 2010, 06:40:43 AM
Loving this work. Well done guys. It would certainly help to have some sort of perpendicular to normal placement in the population, but I guess there would have to be some sort of 'average' sample so you didn't get trees growing sideways due to some small displacement.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 07:20:22 AM
I don't think the population placement is that much of an issue. If the "ring" was only a few km across you could easily see trees sticking up at odd angles in the distance but in these cases the curve of the ring is so slight that by the time its becoming a problem its too far away to see clearly anyway. There is a trap (which I constantly fall into) of trying to create a perfect world and looking for the equal perfect pov. Whilst this is all good fun its a very impractical way of working. In these ring world tests I cant see further than 5km to 20km and the shift away from vertical is (or almost is) imperceptible at that distance.
I wish I could devote more time to this at the moment but I will definitely come back to it soon.
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 21, 2010, 11:54:22 AM
I tried populating inside this setup on the roof as well. I covered the entire surface with grass and unchecked render surface on both planets. Quite a nice grass tube cylinder. It had to be entirely covered, though, to hide the vertical only objects but it worked. Some blending of small enough or, strategically shaped objects(rocks, I'd say) would disguise the seams a bit.
Great experiments!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 21, 2010, 12:29:11 PM
Show us the render, Martin! I imagine you have some floating grass then in the form of the roof? I'm rendering a second iteration right now, including more trees, gulls, a jetty, and clouds along the edges to hide the seams. It's indeed great fun! Will post it later...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: TheBlackHole on October 21, 2010, 12:33:57 PM
Why hide the seams? They look almost like strata to me. Just add some real strata and it might hide the seams better.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 12:39:44 PM
Quote from: TheBlackHole on October 21, 2010, 12:33:57 PM
Why hide the seams? They look almost like strata to me. Just add some real strata and it might hide the seams better.
"When you break eggs, make omlets!" and/or "When you have lemons, make lemonade :)
In other words use the screw-ups/features/limitations in the software to your advantage.
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 21, 2010, 01:24:10 PM
I don't have a render, Ulco, I was just testing it out trying to see which way the objects pointed when they are populated on the second planet's ceiling, I tried billboards to begin with, only to find that they still stand vertical in world-space(I already knew this but I was hoping for surprises! ;)), then I tried some TG grass clumps, I might have something in the temp files...

[attachimg=#]

Yes, just the default setup posted on page 1, with no surfaces and only grass on the walls. Horrible! But, something could be done with the idea, I'm sure. You can still see the seams but the objects are quite flat, entirely populating it with spheres(or near-spherical rocks), for instance, would stop the population rotation issue being a problem.
I might play with this again if I have any ideas.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 01:40:30 PM
Pretty sure this works, try using a seperate population for the "inner" or "upside down"  surface with the object scaled -1 in the y (or rotate through 180in th z (?) )
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 21, 2010, 01:56:18 PM
Yes, it works.
Still not perpendicular to the surface, but upside down is no problem.

A propos: Dune, you are standing on the inner side of your torus, so it is not by rotation that you get your gravity ;)

Another thing:
there seem to be two kinds of "seams":
The ones you see clearly in my example render, they are a result of the vertical generated by the radius- displacement and nearly disappear in high quality renders.
If you displace both "planets" by the same fractal but different directions, you get a broader seam or gap, because also the surface that is not displaced by the simple shape shader gets displaced by your powerfractal.
I think, this Problem should dissappear if you blend your displacements by the same simple-shape-shader that makes the torus.

Correction, when you displaca in the same direction (both positive or both negative) you get a ragged seam where the two planets meet.
When you use a positive displacement value on the inverted planet and a negative one on the normal one, you create a spherical cave running around the whole planet (visible as a more or less broad gap.)
The other way round the two planets intersect, leaving less of a seam as if they only met exactly.
this all assuming you use one powerfractal for both planets´displacements.
Best Regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 02:08:31 PM
Quote from: MahnmutIf you displace both "planets" by the same fractal but different directions, you get a broader seam or gap, because also the surface that is not displaced by the simple shape shader gets displaced by your powerfractal.
I find that if I displace them in the same direction the fractals seem to blend through from one planet to the next. Because the sercond planet is negitve in the first place its displacements dont need tobe  reversed. I've also offset the "cealing" planet by a few meters in the y axis.

I am finding it very counrter intuative all the way through this project. Everything is reversed, well almost everything, (which makes it worse).

:)

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 21, 2010, 02:20:25 PM
That´s true, it would be much easier with your feet on the inner side of the ring.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 03:19:16 PM
More experimenting with field placement and tree populations and lighting ...
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on October 21, 2010, 03:28:46 PM
This is very exciting Richard ...keep on!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: FrankB on October 21, 2010, 03:29:22 PM
Excellent!!!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on October 21, 2010, 03:45:09 PM
its the Cyphyr ring world colony, wish it was real, cos i wish i could go there.
Quote from: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 03:19:16 PM
More experimenting with field placement and tree populations and lighting ...
:)
Richard

Whoa. Awesome. this is getting more exciting... ;)
looks a lot better than the others (for now) :)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 21, 2010, 04:00:47 PM
Hehe Thanks (watch out for Dunes version though!). I'm stuck on the laptop for a couple of days yet so I expect my progress to be quite slow :(
Its not a competition though and the idea and inspiration are from avkhatri, Goms, Dune, Mahnmut, dandelO and plenty of others.
Depending on how far this continues I would hope to post the final TGD in file shareing.
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 21, 2010, 04:15:33 PM
Wow!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 22, 2010, 03:13:34 AM
Richard (PS: I really like your render) is right about the displacement:
QuoteBecause the sercond planet is negitve in the first place its displacements dont need tobe  reversed.
I also used a redirect in one direction (Z) and that worked the same way, just one Z shader to both planets.

Mahnmut is also right about me standing on the antigravity side of the ring. Let's say I'm inside a black hole  :P I'll turn the whole thing around for my next iteration.

And Martin, I have made some 3D grass a year ago or so. That works on all sides. Real 3D I mean.

here's one I did yesterday. Took ages (well, 4 hours) due to the clouds. It's more like a giant cave, but the mud highlights are not nice, the trees are not nice and the gulls fly in the wrong place.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: inkydigit on October 22, 2010, 05:38:20 AM
the concept is very interesting, and the results are fascinating!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 22, 2010, 08:17:10 AM
Another wow!
The low flying gulls don´t seem wrong to me, they just make the impression of being very interrested in something in the river.
Also no one said you have to stand on the outer side of the ring. it looks great as it is.
Best regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Kadri on October 22, 2010, 09:54:57 AM

Very nice concepts! Keep it up guys  :)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 24, 2010, 03:42:56 AM
I reversed the whole lot, but encountered problems to be solved. I'm now on the South Pole, and experienced what Richard wrote earlier; the atmosphere works 'upside down'. This morning I woke up with some ideas about how to make a road (leveled area), but have to see if that really works. Also the landscape is not good enough to my taste yet, and I'm already thinking of another 'dry' ring world, which I'd very much like to make.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 24, 2010, 10:10:51 AM
I like that one too.
Altough it looks smaller to me than the ruin suggests.
The reflection in the water is great, it gives us a look up the ring!
Is it the tube you want to flatten for the road or the fractal displacements?
I am curious to see your next versions!
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on October 24, 2010, 12:44:18 PM
I have an idea. It hit me looking at your last render here. You have the water/lake conforming to the circumference of the ring. Why not use this method to make you flat area for the roadway? Just change the shaders.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 24, 2010, 01:08:39 PM
That would work , njeneb, but if you only need a flat part in your otherwise round crosssection, it is easier than that.
Simply give the "displacement edge width" in your simple shape shader a value that is smaller than the displacement amplitude and it will leave a flat section in the middle.
In this example amplitude is 50, edge width 40, profile is set to "radius" in the floor, to "bevel" in the ceiling.
And I am standing on the inner side here.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on October 24, 2010, 01:13:02 PM
Crazy program... Just when I think, ah I finally have a good grasp of the program. Someone comes along and shows me more to explore.
That would work. It is also much more predictable.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 24, 2010, 01:19:03 PM
Don´t worry, I have been playing with this simple-shape tube for some days now, I won´t get a nice landscape inside it, but I get along with the basic plumbing quite well now.
And I think, the simple shape shader is way more useful than one might think.
By the way, Cyphir, if you would prefer it, I could open another thread for all this.
Best regards,
Jan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Goms on October 24, 2010, 01:32:22 PM
nice one!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 24, 2010, 02:58:12 PM
Please carry on here, its easier to find in the future :)
I'm still following with interest and have made some small progress my self.
Regarding the "upside down" atmosphere. At the moment I'm using NO atmosphere and a VERY thin (1.5625e-005) 3D Cloud layer, twice the thickness of my lowest to highest cross section and centred at ground level. It is giving the fade out at height that I was missing from the real atmosphere but its coming up short on some of the "real" atmospheres finer features. Still it's not as if I'm going to need to tweak a sunset in here! :)
I'm also working on a different scale, much larger. The tube is 5km wide, 1.5km high (x-section) and the entire "planet" is now 500km radius. Pics to follow soon :)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: freelancah on October 24, 2010, 04:13:04 PM
Wow. Some really exciting stuff here. Love the field version!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 25, 2010, 02:43:33 AM
@ Henry: flattening the center is easy, as Mahnmut pointed out. But I was thinking of a ridge, slightly higher up the slope. You'd have to work with another simple shape and somehow flatten that area by reversing the downward displacement.

But for now I have some other problems, still to do with the atmosphere. No atmo is too harsh, as you can see in this iteration. I also find it very frustrating to get the lights to give interesting strong shadows on ground and still not bleach the direct point of emission. I ditched my trees for the time being. South Pole is a tough area  >:( But I just got another idea, which I will pursue today...

I did make a special 'lantern' to light the tunnel, including a watch cubicle.

It is 'good' that our new government cuts spending in the business that I make a living of  >:( :( :-[ :-[ as I will have plenty of time to play...

edit: I also found that tapping the 'add cloud layer' didn't work anymore (it just didn't do anything), had to add cloudlayers manually, which weren't visible after all... aaarghh
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Oshyan on October 25, 2010, 04:17:15 AM
The creativity and cooperation shown in this thread is phenomenal. You guys are awesome! And the more recent images from Ulco and Richard are both looking great. I especially like the fields Richard!

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 25, 2010, 06:31:08 AM
Ok heres an update, had a powercut overnight so I think I lost the actual TGD file :( No matter this is all very experimental.
Still no atmosphere, I agree it does make everything slightly too harsh but I like the effect of seeing through from benieth the layer to above the layer (err. if you see what I mean!)
I'm using an Alpine PF for the mountain displacements, this avoids the negative displacements dropping below the lowest part of the ring and gives some nice ridge structures.  think I may have gone a little ott with the warping as can be seen in the "roof" where it meets the walls, some very twisty stuff happening there!! Currently theres 19 light sources @ 400000 (lumens/watts?) each and 2 enviro lights (one of each) @ 4/4.

Today I want to go back to texture basics and get that nailed down. Getting interesting lighting is a pain too. I guess you've tried making parts of the celing transparent too, Ulco. It don't work properly does it :( You can see through but the shadow is cast from the whole object rather than from just the opaque parts. This is an old "bug" and I think a dead end for the time being.

:)

Richard

Ps I dont actually like this image at all, its all part of the great experiment!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on October 25, 2010, 08:37:18 AM
Wow. Both of these latest renders from you guys are really cool.

Ulco, the lamp has a very new technology look to it.

Richard, I think your use of the Alpine fractal shader is quite inventive. The scale seems to be right for how I envision an orbiting habitat as well.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 25, 2010, 09:03:59 AM
Partial solution, partialy solving a partial problem :) Use a sphere instaed of a planet! Shadows work better ...
Having lunch, pic soon :)
Richard

ps of course this just throws up a new bunch of issues  ::) ::)
for example, populations dont seem to like using a sphere as a planet. looks at the moment as if the disabled plante will still work ...

pps horrible example
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 25, 2010, 10:49:49 AM
Yuck indeed, about as bad as mine  :D

I've tried a whole new approach, and it looks great so far. Coming up! And no atmo and light issues anymore, doesn't that sound promising? But I still have to render...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 25, 2010, 12:04:16 PM
Yuck version 2
Really just to test this was going to work with populations, it does, which is a step in the right direction. :)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: chris_x422 on October 25, 2010, 12:35:49 PM
Hope you guys keep this going, great thread with very nice shared ideas.
Sorry I've nothing to contribute  :(

Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 25, 2010, 03:21:21 PM
I've run into an issue.
The image below shows a line across the ring. Its not meant to be there. :(
We are at the south pole of the planet, we're on the inside of the sphere. (not a planet, they won't cast shadows when transparent)
The line is caused by a cloud layer with NO input to its density shader.
The line is NOT a shadow.
The cloud layer is 4000m thick so it extends both 2000m above and below its centre point (roughly where the river is).
If I make my cloud layer 6000m or more thick the line moves up to just outside the field of view, but I loose the reason for the cloud layer, to simulate an enclosed atmosphere.
If I attach the cloud layer to the "inside out Planet" it disappears altogether (not surprising) :-\

So is this a bug, a "feature" or am I pushing Terragen into places it was never designed to go?
Like driving a Lada across the Gobi. It might make it (it probably wont) but there's no warranty, guarantee or service for 1000km!!!

:)

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 25, 2010, 04:05:54 PM
Why not add another invisible planet, with a visible atmosphere. Use its height controls to limit its extents around the invisible planet. I've also been playing with this a bit, I'll post something later on, maybe I'm misunderstanding the atmosphere issues you're having but I think it's because your default atmosphere is inverted so it contracts instead of expanding, is this right? I don't know.
I have been using a hidden surface planet with a normally assigned atmosphere, seems to be working ok.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Mahnmut on October 25, 2010, 04:18:55 PM
You are surely driving a lada through the gobi,
but that only means when it falls apart, you will have to strap it together with tape and good hope.
Another question:
This white framework, is that an objekt or part of your shadowthrowing sphere?
Anyway, I like that latest version of it.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 25, 2010, 04:40:48 PM
The white framework is a stand-in object till I make something more interesting.
I wanted to find a way of getting better lighting as the completely enclosed versions were either totally over lit by AO/GI solutions or just had to have too many light sources which ended up with a very boring uniform light.
I think I'm going to simple ignore the blinking red light on the Lada dashboard for now, "it will be fine" ... .. .

cheers

Richard

thinks * where can I get a banged up Lada model from, TurboSquid, here I come *
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on October 25, 2010, 07:44:32 PM
Great project here Goms, Richard, Mahnmut, Ulco and others; I'm working on how to flatten the tunnel; and, add some terrain features within it. May take me awhile but hope to get there hopefully contributing something here.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on October 25, 2010, 10:24:20 PM
Quote from: Dune on October 24, 2010, 03:42:56 AM
I reversed the whole lot, but encountered problems to be solved. I'm now on the South Pole, and experienced what Richard wrote earlier; the atmosphere works 'upside down'. This morning I woke up with some ideas about how to make a road (leveled area), but have to see if that really works. Also the landscape is not good enough to my taste yet, and I'm already thinking of another 'dry' ring world, which I'd very much like to make.
This is so inspiring; looking forward to your future iterations.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Gannaingh on October 26, 2010, 12:38:27 AM
Awesome work here, by everybody! This is really going to turn into something special!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 26, 2010, 03:46:09 AM
Quotedefault atmosphere is inverted so it contracts instead of expanding, is this right?
Right, and therefore the whole lot darkens strangely, and mysteriously, like working in a black hole. The idea of a sphere instead of a planet is interesting, but I've completely changed and am on the North Pole again. No more atmo issues. I did, by the way, try to make another huge planet with atmo and hang it under the two planets (of which one was inverted), but that didn't work properly either. It could perhaps if using a sphere instead of a planet for the inverted one....

What I've done here is make a huge crater, and displaced that into a tunnel. The roof is a displaced plane (the sides are two more planes). Because the displacements on planet and plane give a different result (why?), it was hard to fit them together. Redirect didn't work as nicely as in the SouthPole-inverted-planet idea, so these are just PF displacements. Hence the side planes. Eventually I want to have one roof, maybe indeed an inverted sphere. Or make a series of living quarters into the side walls, with shiny windows and laundry hanging to dry  :D
I also had a nice idea to project a glass window onto the side wall, which works, but didn't fit here. I might make a glass roof though, like Richard's, hopefully procedural.
One other thing: the lights were puzzling me: I had them inside the lanterns, but no matter how large I made the source, they wouldn't shine. So the light is still emitted from a point I figured, and the light bulb inside the lantern (and maybe the glass) kept the light inside, as I had shadows ticked. I wanted shadows from the trees, so I had to. I finally put the light source a bit above the object, which of course also shines were it's not supposed to shine (on top of the lantern), but I don't know a solution to that (yet).

I don't know what this 'riverlike' thing is that is crawling away, probably something forgotten. And I made the towers in a rush, so the number plates are not textured right.

And another thing on light. The light sources soft shadows are not to be controlled, so it seems. They are very soft, so I kept them hard.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on October 26, 2010, 07:59:21 AM
I think the new lamps will work better for lighting. The other look cool, maybe some kind of control towers?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 26, 2010, 08:46:24 AM
Great lamps. As far as I know the only way to get lights to shine through glass materials is to not have them there in the first place. In my image with the pylons covering the roof I first made them with massive glass sheets between them. No matter how bright I made the lights or how transparent the "water Shader" the light would not penetrate properly. It works if I turn of shadow casting but then what's the point? I like your new tube construction, it has a very "hewn from the living rock" feel to it. Its still very dark but I guess that's the look your after :)

The Atmosphere :(
Well its kind of inverted. Its very difficult to properly tell. My biggest issue is with the cloud layers. I have now confirmed that there is a cut off point at which the clouds are no longer rendered. This is not a problem on "normal" planets. The effects of clouds cant be seen through the planetary body obviously but on an inverted planet (or even a planet the right way round with surfaces disabled) with the camera within the planet circumference then this "optimisation" actually don't help.
Oh well Lada in the Gobi time again ...  ::) ;D

Anyway here's last nights render which helpfully dose not show any of the feature I'm on about (that's what comes of starting a render at 4am!)

:)

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: j meyer on October 26, 2010, 10:44:08 AM
Could the light problems possibly be due to the reflectiveness of
the glass material?
Anyway,this is getting better and better,keep it going guys!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on October 26, 2010, 10:46:30 AM
exciting stuff!! :)
Richard, those last two renders look awesome, though the first is my favorite, reminds of a painting of a ring world i once saw somewhere :)

their not perfect, but its another improvement in this series. :)



Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 26, 2010, 11:03:31 AM
All very cool. I especially like Ulco's aeroplane race track. I scrapped most of what I was playing with but I have managed to get a working clouds/atmo solution to start again with. Here's some failures, some with working atmo, some without. I'm starting again, I've learned a bit here...

Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: TheBlackHole on October 26, 2010, 12:39:14 PM
You might need more samples in the atmosphere and clouds. I'm seeing a bit of grain.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 26, 2010, 12:54:21 PM
* A lot of grain. They're just muck-arounds, I paid no attention to render settings here, just set 0.5 quality and have been playing with various settings in this testing.tgd. Nothing more. I agree they're just nasty screenshots.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 26, 2010, 12:56:19 PM
Looking good !! :)
Have you noticed how you can't see the tops of the clouds once they start climbing the opposite curve of the ring?  I don't think there's a real solution to that (although it just occurred to me that 2d clouds might not have this "optimisation").
Are you working with planets, spheres or planes? I'm back on planes now as they cast propper shadows (well mostly!)
Keep em comin'
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 27, 2010, 03:40:25 AM
Very nice, Richard! I like the way it seems to float in 'space'. And the greenery is getting great.

I've rendered another version, but cut it off, as it was getting too late. I added a concrete living quarters' wall (just a projection on a plane). The inverted sphere works perfectly to complement the tunnel base, except for a tiny seam, which I still hid here behind a concrete wall. I'll try something light with glass roof as well. I added a car on the road, but due to the immense scale it's hardly visible (ah, and it wasn't rendered yet, here). It's title is now 'Perpetual Hot Pursuit' (the ring, you know). I'll also try a bending/curving ring  :o

I found that keeping the size of the light source very small (0.1) the soft shadows work good. But the 'glass' indeed stops all light from emitting. Too bad.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Tangled-Universe on October 27, 2010, 04:17:37 AM
Very creative work here :) Like that last one Ulco!

Martin
Title: Re: Ring World (You Got Boost Power!)
Post by: dandelO on October 27, 2010, 07:35:30 PM
Another play with Jan's method with 2 planets for ceiling/floor surfaces. A third invisible planet provides the atmospherics.
Racers from Google 3D Warehouse.

Frame 2 of 3 for the blur effect:

[attachimg=#]

[attachimg=#]

Great fun!

* Probably edit this for some contrails and such...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on October 27, 2010, 08:32:43 PM
F-zero rules.   8)
Quote from: dandelO on October 27, 2010, 07:35:30 PM
Another play with Jan's method with 2 planets for ceiling/floor surfaces. A third invisible planet provides the atmospherics.
Racers from Google 3D Warehouse.

Frame 2 of 3 for the blur effect:

[attachimg=#]

[attachimg=#]

Great fun!

* Probably edit this for some contrails and such...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 28, 2010, 03:38:19 AM
Nice one, Martin. Did you hang the invisible planet underneath the other two too?

Here's my next one, with a procedural roof (some blue nodes and a default shader). I wanted to have glass in it, but that didn't work as I wanted. The glass reflected the inside of the tunnel, so became very dark towards the top (only the sides were transparent). With less reflection it didn't look like glass anymore. When adding another roof, turned inside out, it wasn't visible... of course.
I did another interesting experiment, but TG went totally bazurk; when I made the refraction index a negative 2, some weird prism like colors were spread over the inside of the tunnel. But already the preview rendered it completely different each time I changed almost nothing in something else; sometimes resulting in some totally black areas, or dark blue, changing location. Very weird.
I'm getting a bit fed up with this now; I just got another idea for a free falling waterfall this morning, so here's probably my last. Unless I change my mind. Anyway, this is not really a ring world anymore.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on October 28, 2010, 02:41:39 PM
QuoteNice one, Martin. Did you hang the invisible planet underneath the other two too?

No, the planet is the same coord's as the ceiling/floor planets but it has only a 1m(if I remember correctly) radius. I suppose I could have just used the ceiling planet to add atmospherics to and just edited the heights of the cloud layer for that but I found it easier to make it a separate parameter. The ceiling/floor is 2x1000m radii planets, I used the third planet's cloud layer height fixed at about 900m and a thickness of (close to) half of that so, the atmosphere is like a band that fills the tube, this way the top of the cloud layer is well above the ceiling of the tube all the way around(it can't be clipped by that annoying bug this way) and can be expanded/contracted by using just the depth control. I scrapped using an actual atmosphere node in favour of a cloud layer because, it's easier to adjust and you don't have to invert the blue sky/haze parameters to make the atmo work 'correctly' at the south pole. A cloud layer with a subtly contrasted density fractal provided a nice and easy haze, better than any atmosphere I'd played with.

It's a fun idea to play with, I like the idea of using independent planet nodes as sculptable surface objects.

Richard, you mention using plane objects. How are you bending those into a curve, by using a displacement shape much bigger than the size of it before making it concave/convex with more shapes?

Great thread! Cheers to everyone here, especially Richard, Jan, Ulco and of course, Avkhatri for bringing it about in the first place.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 28, 2010, 04:50:12 PM
I think were exploring the outer reaches of the Terra-verse here, that would make us "Terranaughts" ? :)
I've really not been able to give this the attention I would like, I'm at my folks helping with hospitals and other equally tedious stuff :(

Yes the Planes are distorted by shape shaders, one for the basic curve of the ring and one for the cross section (I'm working on one now that uses three for the cross section). Of course being on the outer edge of terragen physics not everything works as one would expect. Altitude based shaders don't really work at all. No mater what flavour is used altitude based shaders always behave as if "use y for altitude " has been ticked. There's also the cut off of atmospherics (which is not a problem if you use an enclosed "roofed" ring.

The "up" side of using planes is that they can cast proper shadows since no fakery is being used with pseudo transparent surfaces.

I've certainly not finished with this but I still expect progress to be slow :(

Attached is a basic set up showing where I'm at at the moment. Maybe I'll get a render done on this ol' dog of a laptop some time soon !

:)

Richard

ps: By the way I spoke to my father who is a physicist (really) and he said that in order for a world like mine to work the gravity would have to be induced by centripetal motion, it would have to be spinning.
The formula to work out how fast is:
rΩ²=f
where
r=radius (measured in metres)
Ω=speed  of rotation
f=force (measured in m/sec/sec)
Therefore my 500km radius ring would be spinning at ... .. . ≈ 70.7 m/s or 158 mph!!

you can tell I waiting for a render to finish ...
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on October 28, 2010, 09:43:36 PM
Thank you Richard, this unknown territory (for me) is very intriguing; and, look forward to working with it. If I run across any new discoveries, you'll hear from me.   
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on October 29, 2010, 04:27:37 AM
QuoteAltitude based shaders don't really work at all.
Try this: locate a camera at the centre of your planet and use a distance shader... it works perfectly.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on October 29, 2010, 04:51:45 AM
It works perfectaly for planets, I've used it :)
Unfortunately it does not work for the plane system I'm using at the moment.

... .. .

The best solution I have found so far is a grey scale gradient projected in plan y.

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Seth on October 29, 2010, 05:14:57 PM
"Tunnelworld-5top-23-10-10.jpg" was great Dune !!!!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Gforce on October 29, 2010, 10:48:39 PM
Epic project ;D
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 02, 2010, 06:50:52 AM
Another Update.
Finally I'm able to get onto a more powerful PC.
A long way to go but the detailing stage is here now (that would be the long fiddly stage! lol)
C&C as always very appreciated :)
Enjoy
Richard
PS yes it does look very over saturated but I think that's a natural consequence of the atmospherics.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 02, 2010, 08:00:53 AM
Looks very good. The over saturated colors can be calmed down by reducing the saturation with the color picker. (State the obvious) ;)

Some more detail on the building would be great. It's been wonderful watching this develop.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on November 02, 2010, 08:15:58 AM
wow. this looks awesome.  :)

i also like the hexagonal roof you made for it too,
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: domdib on November 02, 2010, 08:48:33 AM
Exceedingly cool. I'm not sure about the actual details, but methinks because of the limited atmo height one would expect to see much less blue in the atmo, and the dark of space more evident through the roof?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 02, 2010, 09:11:05 AM
Your right about the "dark of space through the roof", I want it there for realism but I just don't like the effect. Searching for a compromise now :)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Blonderator on November 02, 2010, 09:23:36 AM
So is this thing a complete ring, or just a partial ring for your render? What would happen if you zoomed out and viewed the ring from the outside?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 02, 2010, 09:47:53 AM
Ah, yes and umm :) Unfortunately as the ring results in an inside out atmosphere Terragen was never written with this in mind. There's an atmosphere "cut-off"  about 15 to 20 degrees round from the camera vp. It looks to be cut off where the planet "would" be if its surface were enabled.
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on November 03, 2010, 04:17:42 AM
This is absolutely stunning, Richard. I very much appreciate your progress! There's something strange about the clouds, though, they don't follow the curvature of the ring. But why have clouds at all? They wouldn't be present in a Ring World, I'd expect. If this world is floating in space, you'd need a starry black 'sky', viewed through 'glass' in the hexagonal roof (which is very nice, but perhaps too clean?). Perhaps an occasional meteorite passing by  ;)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on November 03, 2010, 12:04:57 PM
Richard, this is absolutely stunning. The scale of things are right on the target. Just a few fine tweaks as Ulco suggests and I think it would be complete. I feel this is headed for a SciFi cover.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: JimB on November 04, 2010, 02:41:35 PM
For the atmosphere, what if you got rid of the Planet Atmosphere and used a solid cloud layer (unplugged Density Fractal) instead, with a depth that matches the height of the ringworld section (not to the local roof but the entire section). Then localise it using a side profile mask that matches the upward curving profile of the ringworld, and graduates out at the top (projected as a mask from the side). Also merge an additional mask to soften the sides, but that one projected from the front.

Just a thought. Really nice work so far.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 04, 2010, 03:12:48 PM
Quote from: JimB on November 04, 2010, 02:41:35 PM
For the atmosphere, what if you got rid of the Planet Atmosphere and used a solid cloud layer (unplugged Density Fractal) instead, with a depth that matches the height of the ringworld section (not to the local roof but the entire section). Then localise it using a side profile mask that matches the upward curving profile of the ringworld, and graduates out at the top (projected as a mask from the side). Also merge an additional mask to soften the sides, but that one projected from the front.

Just a thought. Really nice work so far.

Thats exactly what I'm doing, with the caviat that it only just works :) see the image posted 4 up about the cut off points. Actually I'm using an cloud layer centered on the lowest point of the x-section of the ring. In order to avoud the 20deg(ish) cut off I have had to make the cloud layer very thick (not dense), I think its about 15000 meters, invert its profile and set the base softness and wispyness to about 5 (I think, I'm away from the pc atm)
Another image tomorrow I hope. I also have some new ideas for the roof :)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on November 05, 2010, 12:52:38 AM
You could try sticking a cloud layer in the very centre of the planet and popping a second camera bang-on centre too to use for a spherical distance shader. Then, there will be no cut-off at the top. By the looks of it, though, this is a very large planet and the samples would be pretty immense, I'd imagine.
I didn't use a distance shader when I made the 'boost power' image but my planets were only 2000m radius in that image.
Looking forward to the next one, man! :)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 06, 2010, 12:22:27 PM
Still plodding along with this one. I've had a little more time this week so some progress is being made.
C&C welcome :) Its by no means finished.
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Tangled-Universe on November 06, 2010, 01:37:03 PM
Wow that's pretty awesome Richard ;D
Keep'm coming!

Martin
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: nvseal on November 06, 2010, 01:50:42 PM
This is amazing. Definitely one of the most original projects I've ever seen with Terragen 2.  8)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Oshyan on November 06, 2010, 03:06:20 PM
That latest one is really nice Richard. I suppose it's the little details you've had time to put in now, but it certainly looks like a more complete scene. The background still looks a bit barren, even just some more color variation back there might be good. But generally speaking it's looking like a pretty well fleshed out idea and scene.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Naoo on November 06, 2010, 03:14:13 PM
Hi

Absolutly amazing!!!


ciao
Naoo
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: FrankB on November 06, 2010, 03:14:38 PM
Quote from: nvseal on November 06, 2010, 01:50:42 PM
This is amazing. Definitely one of the most original projects I've ever seen with Terragen 2.  8)

I simply agree with that statement. This is looking just grand!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on November 06, 2010, 03:38:36 PM
This is an epic example and most original image I believe anyone has yet made ...congratulations Richard.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: domdib on November 06, 2010, 07:06:41 PM
Just saw your last one cyphyr - great work!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on November 07, 2010, 04:12:42 AM
You've pushed this to the limit, Richard. I really like this last one. The rings are great, as is the outer space, starry atmo.
Two things that bother me; the plants in front seem out of place, and the water is too 'wild'. The highlights too 'bloomed'. Also, the rocks on the left side seem to be like ice. It's nice, but maybe should not shine through that much? But I guess in this stage of a complex situation it is very hard to change just one aspect without getting trouble elsewhere... I know I did.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: N810 on November 08, 2010, 08:41:32 AM
Wow Richard  :o

Definately the best ringrorld render yet.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 08, 2010, 10:11:38 AM
I really want to go live there. Fantastic work!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on November 08, 2010, 01:21:32 PM
hell yeah, i wanna live there too. sign me up,
Quote from: njeneb on November 08, 2010, 10:11:38 AM
I really want to go live there. Fantastic work!
the last render looked totally awesome.

i kinda liked the reflections on the river.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Kadri on November 08, 2010, 02:55:21 PM
Nice , but this is too easy! What about a Moebius ring guys?




Just kidding  ;D This is really very nice  :)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 08, 2010, 04:12:36 PM
Quote from: Kadri on November 08, 2010, 02:55:21 PM
Nice , but this is too easy! What about a Moebius ring guys?

Yep, working on it (well I might whem I finish this project)

:)

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Kadri on November 08, 2010, 04:14:20 PM
Quote from: cyphyr on November 08, 2010, 04:12:36 PM
Quote from: Kadri on November 08, 2010, 02:55:21 PM
Nice , but this is too easy! What about a Moebius ring guys?
Yep, working on it (well I might when I finish this project)
:)
Richard

It wouldn't surprise me that much , really   :)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 08, 2010, 09:15:04 PM
And another iteration. Still got the funky reflections on the river, working on it :)
Enjoy
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Blonderator on November 08, 2010, 09:19:16 PM
This is definitely the most interesting topic in here. I love your updates
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Oshyan on November 08, 2010, 10:04:06 PM
Cool rays in the latest one. The mountains look less like ice now, but also have little on them texturally to give them scale. Not entirely sure how to fix that as in an artificial environment the "mountains" might very well just be piles of nondescript rock/dirt. ;)

Personally I like the sparkles on the water, they seem very realistic to me given the environment. You've got a bright sun outside, minimal atmosphere, but some haze. Seems like that would lead to some bright reflections off the river and some blooming IMHO. I say it's no kind of "problem".

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 08, 2010, 10:37:55 PM
I agree with Oshyan. The sparkles seem right. Consider the radiance of the sun without an atmosphere to 'tone' it down. This would reflect off the rings structure. This is the case with most photos I have seen of spaceflight anyway.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on November 09, 2010, 12:39:38 AM
I like this one and would like not to see the sun in it (as you did before). Also, the previous over-structure I think was a better choice (just a matter of taste I guess).
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on November 09, 2010, 03:59:12 AM
This one is a definite improvement, Richard. Great! I agree with Oshyan about the sparkles. Although they wouldn't be this bright in reality, it gives the image an unworldly feel and some focal point. They could be metal fishing cabins at the river edges. Speaking of edges; I would increase the density and object size of the field borders' bushes, so they'd be a closed 'fence' for keeping the 'extraterrestrial wildlife' out, and perhaps give one or two of the fields a ploughed or cultivated look.
The soft light, low cloud and rays are really cool!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 09, 2010, 05:01:27 PM
Thanks for the feed back guys :)
The sparkles are caused by the fact that I'm not using a water plane, its mapped directly onto the ring world surface (no rendered planet in this scene). I couldn't get the plane to properly conform to the whole length of the fov, in the distance it displaced slightly less and subsequently "lifted" the river plane away from its desired position. Your right about the lack of displacement on the mountains. I'm working on a solution involving using a distance shader/merge shader to blend between near a far solutions. As "min/max slope" will not work consistently across the circumference of the ring I've avoided using min/mak slope to delineate surfaces much at all.
Next main work will be on developing a village, town and I may end up with a massive city on the , err, vertical horizon. (Hey these guys have no horizon!)
Yes the "Hedge" density needs upping and maybe a little more variety.
I don't expect to update much in the next few days, back up in London looking after the folks :(
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 21, 2010, 07:57:49 AM
An Update, although not much change really. I've added some Alpine warped strata, fixed the river (at considerable render cost I may add :) ! ) This large render was mainly to see if I could get away with a "populated" town. I think the answer is a fairly clear "no" which means I'll have to model it (and the other larger one in the distance)
This scene is rendered at 6,5,2,1 so at higher settings its random nature will show up badly :( On this render the last two buckets (lower right over the river) took over 16 hours to render!! Something not quite right in there. Tweaks to the field bump, more trees, detailed roads and isolated buildings and a final replacement for the overhead "rings" to add next! Oh and I figured out how to get clouds in the distance past the "cut off" point. PLenty still to do.
C&C as always :)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Naoo on November 21, 2010, 08:22:31 AM
Hi

Getting better and better. This will be a masterpiece!


ciao
Naoo
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Kadri on November 21, 2010, 08:27:47 AM
Quote from: Kadri on October 18, 2010, 09:32:08 AM
It has a nice refreshing feeling , Richard  :)
You say you doubt that you will pursuing it further but the only thing i would add is , that it feels a little incomplete !
Not much! Maybe 10-20 % if we can measure such things of course ! A little more plant , ground and ceiling variation and their texture
and a little more dirt on the metal texture too maybe ! It is good but it can be great ! You are almost there Richard come on
 ;)

:)
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on November 21, 2010, 10:50:06 AM
Absolutely stunning, Richard. I have little to add. There's so much detail, you'd want to fly through the screen into your ringworld and have a close look. Perhaps add a spaceship coming overhead?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on November 21, 2010, 11:19:21 AM
The detail is the problem!! Since the vp is always going to be seeing more of the surface than in a normal world and since the "ring" is so obviously un-natural I'm having to create (or make the impression of) vast amounts of extra "constructed" detail, hedges, fields, towns and infrastructure.
Keeps me out of trouble mostly  ;D

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 21, 2010, 12:16:48 PM
This is still very impressive using the procedural buildings. Modeled ones will look better. Amazing work.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Oshyan on November 21, 2010, 04:26:59 PM
Awesome stuff! I think the populated town actually looks ok.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: freelancah on November 21, 2010, 04:56:37 PM
Just when you think it cant any better! Top notch work!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on November 21, 2010, 05:26:42 PM
Not a lot to add from me, very impressive render! The sense of scale is enormous and the fine detail is great.

Are you using a painted shader mask for the river? That might be where the excessive render time is coming from.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Matt on November 22, 2010, 02:24:53 AM
Quote from: cyphyr on October 28, 2010, 04:50:12 PM
ps: By the way I spoke to my father who is a physicist (really) and he said that in order for a world like mine to work the gravity would have to be induced by centripetal motion, it would have to be spinning.
The formula to work out how fast is:
rΩ²=f
where
r=radius (measured in metres)
Ω=speed  of rotation
f=force (measured in m/sec/sec)
Therefore my 500km radius ring would be spinning at ... .. . ≈ 70.7 m/s or 158 mph!!

you can tell I waiting for a render to finish ...

There's a mistake there. Instead of rΩ²=f, it should be Ω²/r=f. Rearranging to find Ω², we have Ω²=fr. In other words, the larger the radius, the larger the (square of the) velocity needs to be, which is what you'd expect if you think about it. For your 500km radius ring, in order to achieve a centripetal acceleration of 9.81 m/s/s you would therefore need a speed of 2215 m/s or 4954 mph!

Source: http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/physics/phys06/bcentrif/default.htm

Matt
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on November 22, 2010, 07:46:10 AM
Difficult docking... :o
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on November 22, 2010, 09:20:30 AM
FANTASTIC. :)

looks just as good as the last few. (really good)

still wishing it was real.
Title: Re: Ring World roof test (not realy right)
Post by: cyphyr on December 02, 2010, 06:31:21 PM
I'm stuck ???  ::)
I've been wrestling with getting the roof right and I'm not even that sure if the roof is needed. The look I'm going for is that the roof hasa always been there, its removed from life on the surface but the people who live here think nothing of it. To us, the visitors to the place, it is utterly incomprehensible. Created by means and to a purpose unknown. I've tried vairous grids, they kind of look like a green-house, I've tried great stone trees and gossamer dragon fly wings but each is too noisy, they intrude on the scene too much. The stand-in (opt 6) I like the most but it needs more and I kind of like the spirals.

Suggestions please :) I really am stumped as to where to take this and I would really like to finish this one :)

Cheers

Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: choronr on December 02, 2010, 06:40:13 PM
I am really hung on '5a' as being the best for its uniformity and color. It blends well with the mountains; and, the brace that you've put in at various intervals. Great work on this one! I do like the landscape of '3'.

A monorail would be nice - but, maybe I'm asking too much.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: dandelO on December 02, 2010, 06:41:34 PM
No.6 for sure! Although, they're all really cool. I like the last one immensely but I think you should lift the outer fractal from numbers 1, 2 and 4 and replace No.6 fractal with that.
Amazing workroof, man!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Henry Blewer on December 02, 2010, 07:21:00 PM
I like tests 3 and 6. 6 is the best one.  Excellent work Richard.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Gannaingh on December 02, 2010, 08:12:05 PM
For me its a tough choice between 5A and 6. I'd probably go with option 6 because it is the most unique and therefore most unlike any ring world before it.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Tangled-Universe on December 02, 2010, 08:19:14 PM
3 or 6.
I choose 6 over 3 because 6 has more feel of floating in space, while in 3 there's more feeling as being "captive".
I like the POV and hues of 3 though.
Fantastic work!

Martin
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Dune on December 03, 2010, 02:47:37 AM
Number 6, definitely! Not too eye catching and distracting from the superb surface, but immensely there. How did you make these grids? Lightwave? They're fantastic!
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: domdib on December 03, 2010, 05:52:28 AM
I'm just going to put in a vote for 5b because it's so unusual. 3 and 5a are also good.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on December 03, 2010, 06:31:09 AM
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I have an idea of a way forward now :)
Funny sometimes how you have go go on a long journey to come nearly back to where you started. No-one went for 4, which I thought had great potential. 6 has been the standin until I could come up with something better but it looks as if its almost right as it is ... .. .
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Hetzen on December 03, 2010, 07:12:02 AM
Richard, this is truly awesome, and I think you're right with 6. It suggests strength in structure without being invasive on the sky. Well done, this must be some of the best work I've see with TG.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: N810 on December 03, 2010, 09:51:22 AM
Perhaps #6 with a slightly more dense pettern ?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Seth on December 03, 2010, 11:00:43 AM
#6 is the best to my eyes too
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: MacGyver on December 03, 2010, 01:11:24 PM
My choice would be 3 with the hexagons. I really could imagine to live there :D
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Seth on July 12, 2012, 08:41:15 AM
http://m.io9.com/5925315/elysium-concept-art-shows-off-matt-damons-perfect-future-world-in-space


Looks familiar
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: cyphyr on July 12, 2012, 09:18:43 AM
:)
Indeed but I don't think it's a rip-off, some of them look slightly fimilar and I may have seen them during my research.
I plan to return to this once I finish the Green Deep animation (if I live that long!)
;)
Richard
Oh and Elysium is a film I'm very much looking forward to
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: TheBadger on July 13, 2012, 05:15:23 PM
Seth,
the link redirects to no where for me. What was the image?
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: Seth on July 14, 2012, 11:45:16 AM
strange it works perfectly here and it's pointing to io9 website.
A thread talking about new concept arts on Elysium. And some pics really llok like Richard's Ring World.
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: DannyG on July 15, 2012, 02:44:22 PM
Most excellent
Title: Re: Ring World
Post by: TheBadger on July 16, 2012, 02:33:43 AM
Ok, it works. Had to turn cookies on for the redirects to work. Thanks