Planetside Software Forums

I do imagine and plane before i go to TG2 most of the time.
Recently when i wanted to make some images they didn't come out as i wanted .
But some little renders that i did for fun did look better!

In the thread with AndyWelder (thanks :)) ( http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=12040.0 )
i made a water surface with an image map on the clouds.
As i played with that technique i begun to think where i could use it.
So  the picture idea was driven by this basic technique to use clouds as hard surfaces .



[attachimg=#]



It isn't much good as i wanted . But with the restriction of the free version of TG2 (No complains here , thanks Planetside  8))
it is enough i think. Wonder how the clouds would look with more antialiasing and so!

It is made in two parts. The lower part is full TG2 .
Upper part is from various 3d and 2d programs comped together.
The Background image is a heavily manipulated real photo .

The images below are some of the test renders that brought me to the above image.

---

Wow this is I think the most unique use of TG2 ive ever seen!! thats some amazing stuff right there!

Very intriguing image and method. I'd love to know how long it took to render and what the cloud settings, samples, quality etc you've used. And how big an imagemap did you end up using?
Keep pushing the boundaries
:)
Richard

This is really crazy. Great idea! I really love it when things are used in a different way so that they look completely different from what they were initially intended. I wonder how clouds could be used to create other strange things.

Stunning use of TG2, Kadri. Indeed, did it take long to render with so many clouds?
Just an additional idea; What if you add another (slightly larger) planet, use a default shader (colored black) as it's base color input, then feed something (PF or image map) into the opacity tab, and you might have a semi visible shell as well. I might want to try that...

impressive job !!!

Thanks guys  :)

But i remember one old thread with procedurals (not sure) here . I couldn't find it .
That thread was very impressive. But i do not remember who and how they were made.
A link would be nice if you remember the link .

The settings are very basic. And maybe you could get away with less .
The image map do most of the work. I used 3 images . 10 000 x 10 000 all of them .
They were slightly different for the layered look . The image took nearly 1 h to render.
But with 1 detail (probably not needed so much) and 3 AA.

Have to go to work now. Will be back later !

Just to let you know; the default shader method works, but you'd need a sphere with no shadows.

---

Ingenious!!

great stuff, love the earth egg!

Magnificent work!! Most impressive

wow... this is incredible, really cool idea kadri!  :)
some of the first things i thought when i saw the comp image was- "i wonder what the actual poly count on that thing is?" thinking it was a object.  ;)
i didn't even read the whole description, i was just scrolling down through the images.

keep them going :)

One of the coolest things I've seen here! That entire structure is made from cloud?
I'd like to see this huge to admire the layers of detail. Brilliant job!

Very nice!

QuoteBut i remember one old thread with procedurals (not sure) here . I couldn't find it .
That thread was very impressive. But i do not remember who and how they were made.
A link would be nice if you remember the link .

Are you talking about the structures here or about the clouds or the technique (image as
a mask/blend shader)?

Quote from: j meyer on April 15, 2011, 10:50:29 AM
...
Are you talking about the structures here or about the clouds or the technique (image as
a mask/blend shader)?

If i could remember  :)
There were images like ornaments made from clouds.
But what kind of technique they used and if they were from clouds or not i really don't know.
I wasn't active here at those times and only read superficially (?) .
Maybe it wasn't at all related to the image here. 

Guys i was going to reply to all of you with the settings , but this is much easier for me  ;)

[attachurl=#]

For the new TG2 users : You will get some warnings because of the absent image maps.
                                   They are to big to put here. You have to use your own maps after you open the TGD file.
                                   The 3 maps i used were 10 000 x 10 000 .
                                    Edit:Look at my other posts below.

Some settings can be (not sure) a little different from the one i posted here.
I said 1h render time before but this was with 3 cores.
So please change this or the other settings for your liking.

DandelO please make a really big render , if it was not the free version i surely would made one :D
I think clouds are not so good for big or near renders (when used like here) . But i would love to be wrong about this!
Dune i will try your method too  ;)

Well,there were some experiments with geometrically shaped clouds done by
Mr.Lamppost and others and a thread where we played with clouds from colored
clouds to abstract structures and even a knot that was done with the help of
a depth grab.Maybe it was one of these.
Let me know if you'd like me to look for them.

Quote from: j meyer on April 15, 2011, 12:18:02 PM
Well,there were some experiments with geometrically shaped clouds done by
Mr.Lamppost and others and a thread where we played with clouds from colored
clouds to abstract structures and even a knot that was done with the help of
a depth grab.Maybe it was one of these.
Let me know if you'd like me to look for them.

I think that was it J meyer . It would be nice to read and see all of them now , if you can find it .
I didn't understand then most of the written things...Well...it may have not changed much :D

Here is the upper image layer map that i used , if someone want to make a closer looking image .

[attachthumb=#]

It is 15 % of the original size and has very much jpg compression ( 30% in XnView) .
The other 2 maps were different especially in the black section (the transparent section in the hard cloud layer).

---

The geometrical shapes are in this thread:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3227.0
the other stuff is in this one:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2648.0

Quote from: j meyer on April 15, 2011, 01:03:40 PM
The geometrical shapes are in this thread:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3227.0
the other stuff is in this one:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2648.0

You crazy guy-s  :)
I couldn't say anything at the time . I was too forum shy !
But now...You and the others there did many crazy things !
Those links should maybe sticky ones.
There are many interesting images but this one was the one i remembered when i said ornament :
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2648.msg44036#msg44036
It was yours! I think you knew it when i said ornament , j meyer  ;)

Many ,Thanks!

Kadri, hats off, you surprised me with this one. Out of the box, ingenious thinking here!

:)



I tried to go much closer with a bigger image map. 20 000 x 20 000 (grayscale of course) this time.
just for fun  :) There is no need for such big maps for all projects of course.


[attachimg=#]


It holds better as i thought .
An image just for the right usage size without aliased edges (depends on your needs of course ) would be better .
This is the same map. Only a little sharpened , contrast etc. adjusted and then up sized.

I tried it on the planet object with the same map . Didn't liked the displacements .
Dune did you tried closer renders on the sphere object?



It would be good to had textures on this fake structures when you get so close to them.
But as much as i tried i couldn't get real textures on the clouds.
It could be useful for normal cloud usage too i think.

With different textures , mask and clouds you could make kind of fake (!) colored looking clouds but obviously this is not the same.
I searched here but couldn't find anything directly about this .
Do you know anything about this ? Is this possible at all possible ?

I used a RGB method. Red , Green and Blue clouds for this.
But as i said this has it limitations and is not what i am after.
You can see some test renders here below.
Don't want to make this a family kind of blog post but this is my son and me (a little awkward because it is a self shot). Hello :)

I hope there is another way for this.
In fact it would be nice to made ground (planet) objects , cloud objects and others behave the same way maybe.

---

That's some very interesting experimentation, Kadri. I don't think I'll use it in any of my line of renders, but it's pushing the boundaries once again.
And to answer your question; I just quickly grabbed one of my image maps (a harsh city grid), but never checked it up close. I guess with the default opacity method there might be ragged edges where the opacity stops.
About texturing/adding colors, can it not be done by adding some color fractals after the cloud, and blending them by a distribution shader for slopes and heights? Or multiplying the cloud by a colored PF? I didn't open your tgd yet, so I don't know your setup.

Yeah,keep them coming Kadri!

As far as i'm aware no one has found a way to color/texture clouds with
PFs or any other of the regular methods yet.
Maybe by camera projection?

Thanks guys!

I tried projection camera but couldn't get it to work before.

Now it works! Don't know if it was me or the settings.
Anyway!

It works but it needs tweaking.
There is only one cloud and one original picture projected on this cloud.
The colors are off. You guys can make this work i think ;)

My own way of texturing is easier to control for me but it has it drawbacks.
I use the same Red , Green and Blue pixel method as in monitors etc. as you can clearly  see above , on the last test images.
There is moire too  :) There are 3 clouds for the 3 channels of the image and 3 projectors .
The red channel image is projected (or in any other way) on the red cloud and so on.
(CMYK joke anyone :) )

You can make crazy looking clouds or maybe more controlled 2-3-4 colored ones.

I don't know if i can use these for cloud texturing (for fake hard cloud objects) .
Edit: There is one very basic way it seems. But Colors...hmm! Later. Have no time!
It would be good for cities and so , but i have enough of clouds for now !

Cheers!

---

reminds of the death star.  :)

Quote from: Kadri on April 17, 2011, 12:16:35 AM
I tried to go much closer with a bigger image map. 20 000 x 20 000 (grayscale of course) this time.
just for fun  :) There is no need for such big maps for all projects of course.

20,000x20,000!!!!!!  :o
jeeze... that's *%#)*% massive, did TG2 have any trouble with a image map of that size?

Quote from: zaai999 on April 18, 2011, 09:08:30 AM
reminds of the death star.  :)
...

Me too , Zaai999 ! So i made a hallow inner core to make it a little different.
And this isn't original too unfortunately :)

Quote from: zaai999 on April 18, 2011, 09:08:30 AM
...
20,000x20,000!!!!!!  :o
jeeze... that's *%#)*% massive, did TG2 have any trouble with a image map of that size?

It is a 382 MB gray scale TGA file. And no there was no problem.
But it takes a while to load :)
It is the biggest image map i used until today.
The  3 files i used before where 32 bit (should be 8 doh!) 10 000 x 10 0000 PNG files and there wasn't a problem either .
When the software handles so many things without a problem i begin to be lazy  ;)
TG2 is so far i use very stable !
Edit: I have 4 GB ram and Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate.

When I used some of the Blue Marble images I managed to easily load four 21,600x10,800px image maps to the planet surface. Terragen just loves to load large objects, better than any other application I know.

Quote from: dandelO on April 18, 2011, 12:58:38 PM
When I used some of the Blue Marble images I managed to easily load four 21,600x10,800px image maps to the planet surface. Terragen just loves to load large objects, better than any other application I know.

Yes, Dandelo ! Matt knows his work :)

Quote from: j meyer on April 17, 2011, 10:10:14 AM
Yeah,keep them coming Kadri!

As far as i'm aware no one has found a way to color/texture clouds with
PFs or any other of the regular methods yet.
Maybe by camera projection?

The colour of a fractal can be passed directly from the density fractal shader to the cloud(just delete the cloud fractal shader and replace it with a power fractal). The Black Hole posted this a while back in another cloud thread. You could then mask out that density shader using your greyscale cloud images, or any other blending shaders you liked.

Thinking on that a bit more, instead of using just a power fractal, different sized functional noise patterns could be converted to colour before feeding the density fractal of the layer. Then you could have one layer of cloud-bars, another of Voronoi, the next one a different noise... OOHHH! 8)

LOL !
Thanks ,DandelO!
With my last setup it was easy to get color on the hard cloud object.
And easier as i thought . But as i said in the "Edit" . The colors looked off.
I will look after to TheBlackHole's file later.
My brain is melting now! Didn't get much sleep these days!
I am not sure how your setup will look like.
But it should work. Thanks :)
I will make another image with (hopefully) new settings.
Today i had an idea how to use it .
I hope it will be as good as in my imagination.

Good night everybody!

Yep,martinO,i remember that thread,but you don't get anywhere near the results
you get on terrain,at least i didn't.

Quote from: dandelO on April 18, 2011, 12:58:38 PM
When I used some of the Blue Marble images I managed to easily load four 21,600x10,800px image maps to the planet surface. Terragen just loves to load large objects, better than any other application I know.

...

Nice find TheBlackHole :) I remember now that thread.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=11615.msg118746#msg118746
But i didn't thought that i would use such a method at that time! Doh!

One of the test pictures is below.
Ones again the 3 channel 3 cloud RGB method.
Nothing major . Just playing.
Bringing color on clouds and over one cloud (for example y axis) as in my earlier test is not so hard.
But so far no luck with mapping a real texture in 3d cloud space.
It might work on power fractals.Have to try.

I would love to hear from Matt if i am wasting my time with this or not!
There is so much more potential lying beyond the surface in TG2.

---

Wow,I was just thinking of making a home but you built the whole city out of clouds :).This is very impressive and very helpful indeed.
Thanks

It is possible now. Guys if you read until here please look about color on clouds here :

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=14242.0