Planetside Software Forums

Well, somehow, my Terragen folder got deleted without a trace (literally no event log for it being deleted or recycling bin being emptyies). I can only imagine someone manually used IOBit Unlocker I have installed to delete it without a event. I sure didn't. I found out by trying to save a project that was open windows complaining about no such location.

Because of this I had to restart my crater project as the backup I had was 2 days old. This is the THIRD time rebuilding this. First, first time rebuilding based on colour adjusts, which I didn't like, than rebuilding from merge shaders, and now rebuilding from scratch cause I lost everything but Hetzen's original WIP.

All the displacement in this scene is by craters from large to micro impact. There are complex craters, which are high speed impacts which create the center peaks in the crater floor, and than simple craters, from low speed impacts with no peaks in the crater. This version is even faster than my previous version (which was way faster than tons of merge shaders), so not too mad about rebuilding it again. Lol

Forgive the PNG, my screenshot tool was set to PNG from trying to troubleshoot a bitmap problem with someone. I forgot.

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Looks good. Maybe some more crispness and grey variation.

Pretty nice stuff already!

Very good start and a cool project!
Looking forward to see the moon more crisp and also mapped in true colours.
(Grey is boring... a subtle bluish gray looks much better, but this is just my opinion.)

STORMLORD

Hahaha thanks guys. This is just a solid sphere, no shading at that point I hadn't recreated the crater dist map or the ejecta map. Should have another test soon. Also divided smaller craters up so they weren't based on the huge craters heights and look better. Also masked out craters this time for better distribution and less overlays and crater walls just mixing together everywhere.

At MPD 0.6 AA 2 it took almot 2 and a half hours. This is likely though due to the addition of the crater distribution maps and ejecta maps which are a bunch more adds and mixes. Additionally the base colour texture is warped by the craters at high amplitude.

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I like where you're going with this Jordan, and condolences on yer data loss...that sucks...

That looks much better. But what are the kinda straight lines right in the center?

Quote from: Dune on August 11, 2019, 01:37:48 AMThat looks much better. But what are the kinda straight lines right in the center?

Absolutely no clue. The craters are masked on large scale to some degree so maybe edges of some of them masked out? But it's so straight. I actually vaguely remember this in other scenes with really high scale and soft Perlin noise so it could even be the base fractal terrain. Some sort of stretching on Y near the equator.

My new setup I am at 2e+006 radius (from default) for the planet for a better lunar/dead planetoid look and I don't think I see them. Though a new render is starting now so can't check.

Some more testing. One is just testing the planetoid faults shader (which I like that version better than the edits in the crater test).

Not happy with surface colour textures.

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The faults look pretty great! I like the one in the first image better myself, reminds me of Vales Marineres on Mars.

- Oshyan

Looks fantastic so far!

Big like here too!!

Good and interesting.
Are you going to try to work a way of making overlapping craters remove the preceding craters wall?
Also are you using a really long lens on the last two images, something odd about the perspective, the spheres look "flat" (could be just me).

Quote from: cyphyr on August 14, 2019, 03:19:27 PMGood and interesting.
Are you going to try to work a way of making overlapping craters remove the preceding craters wall?
Also are you using a really long lens on the last two images, something odd about the perspective, the spheres look "flat" (could be just me).

That is always incorporated to a degree. The issue I found there is once your distribution starts piling up, it's hard to actually control masking between preceeding layers.

This last test incorporates a Colour Adjust on each iteration of the mask to more control it so it doesn't mask out the entire layer due to piling up of scalar. Maybe I overdid it there.

Here is an example of the setup exaggerated (multiplied x10)

I'll admit, my original, slower setup was better, I spent a lot more time on, and I even increase scales and clamping, which increased the distance between craters, giving a better overall distribution. I should do that again. But I do like how it is now as well.

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Another iteration. Downscaled form 3k. Speaking of that, does anyone else try supersampling their renders manually? IE rendering at a higher resolution and downscaling to desired resolution? I wonder if you could save any resources doing that by lowering quality for scaling to compensate. 

Anyways. I am almost happy with the surface shader, but I"m having issues. While warping the shaders by the terrain gives the shaders nice flow and interesting shapes, it causes the weird distort by normal like patches where it just flips colours and looks weird. I wish there was a way to blend this better like noise and such. I tried extra colour adjustments like smaller patches of multiplied colours and hue adjustments but it still kinda shows throw pretty well.

I find that the small scale impacts are far too exaggerated. Their divider constant should be higher.

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Quote from: WASasquatch on August 16, 2019, 04:43:21 PMI find that the small scale impacts are far too exaggerated. Their divider constant should be higher.

Maybe, but all in all it looks fantastic!

Great work!
I know this forum is more about "how" to attain a certain result, but the result itself is also very impressive and realistic. I'm anyway fond of Space Art!

Looking good. I agree that some of the smaller displacement areas are too rough. And there's a glossyness (very visible near the top) that is a bit too much IMO. I would have thought planetoid surfaces would be pretty dusty and the macro/micro displacements of rocks, sand and crevices absorbing light and reflections. But maybe I'm wrong, and some have pretty reflective surfaces.

Quote from: Dune on August 17, 2019, 02:53:51 AMLooking good. I agree that some of the smaller displacement areas are too rough. And there's a glossyness (very visible near the top) that is a bit too much IMO. I would have thought planetoid surfaces would be pretty dusty and the macro/micro displacements of rocks, sand and crevices absorbing light and reflections. But maybe I'm wrong, and some have pretty reflective surfaces.

No reflections at all. That's the warping effect that happens in TG that I can't overcome I was tlaking about. Wish there was a noise shader almost. It's sorta why I don't like Distort by Normal in terrain shaders, makes it very weird looking where peaks cause colour inversions. One side is one tone, other side another tone.

Take a look at the craters. One side of the peak is one colour, the other another colour. Warping is just weird in TG. Need better methods.

I use warping to achieve all the interesting shapes, otherwise it's very flat, and uninteresting, and not very planet like.

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I guessed it would have been the distort by normal. I sometimes do a minus distort, which flips the colors.  But you have to be careful with the amount, as René also said a while ago.

Quote from: Dune on August 17, 2019, 03:20:57 AMI guessed it would have been the distort by normal. I sometimes do a minus distort, which flips the colors.  But you have to be careful with the amount, as René also said a while ago.

Unfortunately being careful just for the sake of the inversion doesn't help you achieve the desired effects though.

I do wonder if a noisy breakup between negative and positive warps or distorted PFs would look better. Gives me ideas.

Wow!!! This is great!

Much better !!!
The imporvement is maybe not realistic, but as Hannes said, overall it's convincing...

STORMLORD

That moon looks very good. The glossiness of 'distort by normal' is indeed strange, it even seems as if it reacts to the incidence of light. You can partly prevent that by applying distort by normal to a mask and use that to mask a power fractal that has no warping. A breakup between negative and positive warps is also a good idea, maybe even better. I think I'll try that myself. :)

Little upset I spent all night rendering this and messed up the whole reason I was rendering it. :P

Here I was testing my noise shader, but I accidentally fed it to the breakup and not child of the surface shader so it did little to nothing. There was some coverage so it applied a slight effect but not like I wanted. The point was to help vary/mask distort by normal effects.

No craters here, sorry. They were disabled for testing speed.

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