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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: dandelO on March 02, 2012, 05:06:33 PM

Title: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: dandelO on March 02, 2012, 05:06:33 PM
All the star/night backgrounds that I've seen made within Terragen have been essentially 2D star/nebular images or procedural shaders planned to the background sphere.

Here's a thing. http://youtu.be/lCjwKsEJsKM

So far in those short nasty tests there are 7 new star layers in the sky, all 3D at different points in the 3D sky. The movement has been quite exaggerated and some are even in colour, just so I could see how each new star layer works with the rest.
For a sense of scale, the last shot with the reddish planet is Earth sized and the camera is significantly moving past at a considerable speed, at a much more 'normal' scale the movement of the stars is more natural.
I'm suffering a bit more popping and star flicker than I'm happy with at the moment but I like the idea that the stars are now at varying depths and movement is now apparent in the sky. I'll keep plugging away until this either works, or it doesn't. :)

Not so handy for normal photography scales but for 'God-shots' I imagine this could be quite nice, if I can just tidy it up and get it solid enough to use.
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: choronr on March 02, 2012, 05:16:24 PM
Looking very good Martin. Maybe eventually through a Nebula? Looking forward to more.
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: TheBadger on March 02, 2012, 05:32:45 PM
AHHHHHHHHHH! I have been doing this in After effects, I really hope you get it working With-in TG2, it will be so much better to composite. It will be much easier to know how much to move a 3d background with those stars as markers! And if you are able to make a nebula as choronr suggested, OH MAN!

Go Baby GO!
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: Dune on March 03, 2012, 03:52:22 AM
Impressive new find, Martin. So, is it a bunch of semi opaque default shaders on inside-out enlarged planets?
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: dandelO on March 03, 2012, 06:59:08 AM
Nothing gets past you, Ulco! Of course it is. :) Well, they are planned over duplicate, resized bg spheres, not planets, but the very same idea, yes.

I had a mind to swap over to planets once the 'rotate with textures' button comes to the public(if it doesn't go public, I'll force it by editing the text so it'll work regardless) but it doesn't work right now like that.
I like the idea that I could make a celestial precession sequence from ground level but it doesn't work with spheres as you can't rotate them, I always wondered why a TG sphere has no rotation parameters, it's not like it wouldn't be extremely useful.

In fact, now I see these thoughts written down, I think it will be much better to just keep it as regular spheres and rotate the textures only. I think that's what I'll do, I'd rather one rotation control to drive the precession than how ever many final layers of stars will be in the finished 3D background, as they would need adjusting individually...
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: j meyer on March 03, 2012, 11:12:28 AM
Yea,cool,keep on rocking!
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: Kadri on March 03, 2012, 11:58:47 AM

Looks interesting Martin. Space warp  :)
Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: FrankB on March 03, 2012, 03:13:07 PM
creative thinking, Martin, as always!

Title: Re: 3D Night Background - wip
Post by: Dune on March 04, 2012, 03:51:55 AM
Quoteit doesn't work with spheres as you can't rotate them
How about superlarge rock objects?