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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: AlexPorter on August 22, 2008, 03:22:58 AM

Title: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: AlexPorter on August 22, 2008, 03:22:58 AM
Terragen2 Community,
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Regarding Skyboxes:
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I have previously created a skybox in terragen 1 demo prior to purchasing tg2.  When I made it, I had used the infamous skybox script.  Now i am aware that the script is not longer existing which doesn't really bother me.  I rendered my first 1024x1024 6 piece skybox over the last few days.  I am having one problem which hopefully someone can help me with.  I am ending up with seams in the box, because for some reason the renders don't match up on a light and dark scale.

I have set FOV horizontal to 90.  I render the panorama view at 0,90, 180,270.  then i render the top view from the zero perspective.

Right now it is doable but tedious.  I am making a seamless panorama and blurring the front, back, left, and right tiles together:

(http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/4567/quarry1234xc6.jpg)

Then I split the pieces apart in their 1024x1024 sizes and arranging them in this layout:

(http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/5351/dicefz3.jpg)

then once the sky is blended i will move them to their sections for the scene:

Is there a way for me to have the skyboxes/panoramas blend initially without post render touch ups? Am I missing a zoom feature or something?

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Regarding Moonlight
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As you can see above i have a darkened sun as my moon light source.  I intend to seperately render a moon and then blend the two images because I can not seem to create a moon that is bright on the scene.  Normal pictures you could put a sun behind the camera but in a skybox it is all seen at once.  Is there a method to retaining the light in the scene and putting the moon at the suns position?  Currently, why i position the moon at the sun's coordinates all i get is a black screen.  Can anyone advise me on a way to do this more professionally that separate renders?

-Alex Porter
Title: Re: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: FrankB on August 22, 2008, 05:18:04 AM
I have experimented with moonligh a while back. Because a planet, used as a moon, is no lightsource as such, all the lighting calculations can only come from Global Illumination.
What you would need to do is to create a planet (moon) that is lit by the sun, just like in the real world.

Then, you have to pump up the exposure significantly, and set the GI to values such as 3/5 or 3/6. With that, your scene will indeed be "lit" by the moon".

[EDIT] it helps to create another enviro light with ambient occlusion, but then use very small values such as 0.1 for effect on terrain and even less for the atmosphere.[/EDIT]

Another possibility is to create a moon with a sun behind it, and tell the sun not to cast shadows. That way, the sun will shine through the moon, while the "real sun", that is lighting the moon's camera facing side, ensures that you can see the moon's surface.

Regards,
Frank
Title: Re: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: AlexPorter on August 22, 2008, 10:27:25 AM
wow, i did not realize that the light reflections would "bounce" onto my landscape
Title: Re: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: Jahhur on August 22, 2008, 01:55:06 PM
I had the same problem with seams when I started creating skyboxes with Terragen 2. Global Illumination seems to be the source of all evil. Disable it on renders tab and all the images should be same brightness.
Title: Re: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: AlexPorter on August 22, 2008, 03:48:16 PM
Quote from: Jahhur on August 22, 2008, 01:55:06 PM
I had the same problem with seams when I started creating skyboxes with Terragen 2. Global Illumination seems to be the source of all evil. Disable it on renders tab and all the images should be same brightness.

i will try this. ty
Title: Re: Regarding Skyboxes & Moonlight
Post by: Oshyan on August 27, 2008, 10:29:40 PM
You might still be able to use GI with skyboxes if you increase the GI Blur Radius in the render settings to something very high, like 100-300.

- Oshyan