Ring World

[Oshyan]

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

[Henry Blewer]

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.

[choronr]

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).

[Dune]

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!

[cyphyr]

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

[cyphyr]

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

[Naoo]

Hi

Getting better and better. This will be a masterpiece!


ciao
Naoo

[Kadri]

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  

[Dune]

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?

[cyphyr]

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 

Richard

[Henry Blewer]

This is still very impressive using the procedural buildings. Modeled ones will look better. Amazing work.

[Oshyan]

Awesome stuff! I think the populated town actually looks ok.

- Oshyan

[freelancah]

Just when you think it cant any better! Top notch work!

[dandelO]

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.

[Matt]

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