TG2 and Vue 10.5 For planetary renderings. Which one?

[jofs3d]

I work for a small film company called Iachod Visuals. We are creating a tv children's series on space exploration and I need to re-create our solar system's planets. I use primarily LW to do this, and it does a fine job at that, but I would like to improve our FXs.

I have been trying Vue 10.5 xStream PLE edition and have been learning its features using the resource manuals and tutorials. *I think* I've learned how to apply textures to planetary terrains using color and displacement maps but it has been one of the hardest things to do so far, and I am still not quite satisfied with the results.

Unfortunately upon loading my Venus displacement maps on a spherical infinite terrain mesh,  the terrain looks distorted and pixelated upon close inspection. I have tried increasing the render quality settings, then mapping the textures using World-Parametric mapping, or World Standard mapping, UV mapping, or projected Textured map in node functions, and tried different settings with those options to no avail.

My question is, if you are familiar with Vue, what am I doing wrong? Does Vue support the creation of realistic planets or is it more of an app for random generated terrain?  If you have succesfully created an accurate planet like Mars or earth what steps did you take to do it? Because I don't know what else to try before I switch platform or give up this software.

Now, if I use my displacement map combined with Vue's infinite terrain, instead of applying it to a flat mesh, then it renders fine, but its terrain features "randomizes" the displacement map in such a way that it looks fake. It simply adds features that are not there in real life.

The only reason I like Vue is because it easily integrates inside LW and facilitates a faster workflow, as I can place my cameras and objects any where I want in the comfort of my favorite 3D app.

Now TG2 showed me it can render a realistic planet of Mars using MOLA files and it just looked beautiful. But does it integrate directly in LW? Can TG2 import animated cameras from LW so I could composite them?

Also how hard would it be to import MOLA or DEM tiles directly in TG2 so it could render an entire planet, like Mars or the moon? 

I am new here and also relatively new to this type of terraing generator programs, so excuse me so many questions. I would really appreciate any advice you may have. Thanks in advance!

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi and welcome to the forums...

The pixelated/low detail of your maps are certainly due to low resolution.
Imagine how high the resolution of the texture would need to be to make it hold up on close-up, many gigapixels, likely.
So only for orbital shots those textures hold up, since their resolution is higher than the screenspace resolution.

I'm not familiar with the mapping possibilities/difficulties of Vue besides that I've read here and there that it still has problems with planetwide infinite procedural terrains.
Maybe there are some Vue users here, but after all we're mostly TG2 users here

One user here, Richard Fraser (Cyphyr) uses LW together with TG2 and has pretty much figured out the workflow.
What I know is that he uses 2 scripts to match camera data between LW/TG2:

.chan export from Lightwave to Terragen
lw_to_tg2_exporter.lsc download from http://www.carlocestra.com/ccdpmainpage.php?lang=en

.chan import to Lightwave from Terragens camera export
MFImportChan.ls download from http://mentalfish.com/2010/06/chan-import/

For further use of these scripts you'd need to ask him or wait for him to chime in here, he's pretty active.
Be aware that the .chan export from TG2 is not yet available.

You can load the Mars MOLA data straight into TG2 using the MOLA map shader, here's some stuff to read:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=1496.msg68487#msg68487
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=6364.msg67209#msg67209

For Lunar data (LOLA) you'd need a similar approach, by converting the .img files to .bmp/.png and load those into heightfieldshaders.
That's what I know of it, but haven't done it myself.

Good luck!

Martin

[Oshyan]

I can't speak for Vue but TG2 does handle planet-wide procedural and image-based terrain quite well, in fact it was designed from the ground up to handle planet-scale terrain. Martin is probably right that, at least in the case of the example image above, the issue is a low resolution planet texture more than anything. There are reasonably high resolution Mars (and other planet) textures available, e.g. here:
http://www.mars.asu.edu/data/
or here:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/mars.php
but none of them will hold up to anything below close orbital, so you'll need to fill in with procedurals.

The reality, unfortunately, is that trying to create believable procedural detail and blend it in with real-world displacement and color info will be challenging. Depending on how much detail range you need (e.g. from orbit to low orbit, vs. from orbit to ground-level), you may be able to get away with the highest resolution color maps and high resolution MOLA 128 data. For ground or near-ground shots you'll need to do a fair amount of work carefully balancing procedural vs. real detail, and especially with color data. The highest resolution Mars color data could actually hold up to a fairly close ground approach but I believe it's only available in image tiles, which I don't think can be easily loaded into TG2 at this time.

For LOLA data you would ideally convert to 16 bit TIFF to maintain accuracy. TG 2.5, which won't be out for a while unfortunately, should load LOLA data natively I believe.

- Oshyan

[jofs3d]

Martin and Oshyan, thanks a lot  for your great advice!

Martin, I am going to try loading my 8+GB set of MOLA files in TG2 and follow the steps provided in your links and then hopefully render away! The MOLA shader node sounds fascinating with its automated tile features.

And you are right. The Venus color map that I have is fairly low res and pixelated, it seems that Vue is less forgiving of low res images than LW is.

I tried a high res map of Mars for a different test scene, and detail didn't improve by much, though I am still tweaking things here and there finding a proper balance. I have a 30+ megapixel disp map that I will try loading next and see if it improves some things.

Oshyan, good thoughts. I am interested in an orbit to ground level animation sequence, something very similar to what TG2 did on the Mars animation but at different angles, speed, et cetera. I really liked the level of detail shown in that terrain and I would be satisfied if I get a similar effect.

For ground level shots I am planning to use matte painted scenes, they could provide in extra detail.

I have polar and entire planet MOLA files in 64 and 128 pixels. They are stored in their respective folders. According to the links Martin provided, the MOLA shader should automatically group the tiles and apply them directly to a planetary terrain mesh from the coordinates provided in the lbl files I believe.

Sounds like TG2 maps the entire planet without much input at all. Great job!
If I stumble again I hope you all don't mind more questions.

Thanks again!


Joao Fandino
www.iachod.com

[Oshyan]

For MOLA data, yes the MOLA loader grabs all tiles it sees and maps them to the planet correctly. We don't support any other tiled data sets automatically yet, though we do have GeoTIFF georeferenced DEM support. The current GeoTIFF functionality does not load adjacent tiles; you must load each georeferenced terrain individually.

One other thing you should be aware of if you're going to be loading image-based textures to cover your planet, you'll use an Image Map shader and Spherical projection. The most important bit is to set the position of the image map the same as your Planet center (you can find and copy the planet's coordinates in the Planet node settings; use the clipboard button to the right of the coordinate set to copy/paste).

- Oshyan

[jofs3d]

Fantastic, thanks!

I am loading MOLA models as I write. I loaded some 64 pixel files and it gave me some errors not being able to load the file. Then I selected the 128 pixel data and seems to be loading it, but it's taking a lot of time to preview it.

I understand this to be normal due to the high level of detail TG2 has to generate. But usually, how much time does it take to prepare such an scene? We have a dual Xeon e5405, 2.0GHz, 8 cores total, and 4GB RAM.

[Oshyan]

With only 4GB of RAM you may end up with issues loading the full 128 data set, along with other memory use of TG2 and your operating system. Surprising that a dual workstation only has 4GB though!

On my machine, TG starts out with about 120MB of memory use, then after loading the 128 data set (which takes less than 10 seconds), it's using about 2GB more (so ~2.1GB).

- Oshyan

[jofs3d]

  It's a no brand workstation. I built it years ago and had planned to install 8GB, but our ECC memory had compatibility problems so I ended up using 4GB sticks only out of 8. It really needs an upgrade with these newer memory hungry apps. But I have another workstation with more RAM and an i7 oc@4.7GHz when things don't want to cooperate. 

I found out that my 64 data folder was missing important IMG files and libraries so I am re-downloading everything and will try these lower res files instead. It should load faster hopefully. Will update tomorrow.

[Oshyan]

Sounds good. I imagine working on your i7 will allow you to use the 128 data set if you want to. Even with the 64 data set you could easily run into memory constraints on the 4GB machine unfortunately.

- Oshyan

[jofs3d]

Got the 64 pixel files loaded into TG2 and worked great. It's so easy to map Mars!

Next thing is to color map the planet using a color texture from Mars and will follow your instructions provided earlier. 

It's not a nice render or angle, I am trying to get used to the camera controls. Much stuff to learn still!

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