Atmosphere shadow problem

Started by Hannes, August 12, 2019, 08:17:44 AM

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Hannes

At the moment I'm creating a space scene with a planet that has rings. I want the ring cast a shadow onto the atmosphere of the planet (using an opacity image), so I enabled "receive shadows from surfaces" in the atmosphere's quality tab.
No matter what I do, I get a nasty bright area on the dark side of the planet, which drives me crazy! >:( >:( >:(
(Disabling the opacity image creates a correct shadow of the plane, but that's not what I want of course!)

Does anyone have an idea to get rid of this?

I attached a simplified version of the scene to explore it.

cyphyr

I had exactly the same issue last year. The only solution I found was to model the rings.
It's also worth asking if you REALLY need an atmosphere. Although technically accurate a gas giant would not necessarily have a perceivable haze on its atmosphere. It will look pretty solid.

Also remember that Saturn has a quite noticeable equatorial bulge (something like 10% if I remember) and whilst the planet can be easily squashed the atmosphere can not so easily.
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Hannes

Thanks a lot, Richard!! Yes, I thought of modeling the rings, but still I wonder, why the shadow of an object is displayed correctly, but leaves this bright area when using an image map in the opacity slot.

And I really like the planet with its atmosphere (I mean the final one in my project. I uploaded only a very simple version)

By the way, in an older thread by you I found a way to use clouds for a planetary ring, but unfortunately the download link is dead. Could you maybe upload it again? I'd love to see, how you managed to use clouds for that.

Hetzen

Maybe do a shadow pass with the atmosphere off and all surfaces/background white, then multiply it over in post?

Hannes

Thanks Jon, this is of course a solution. Nevertheless I'd love to see it fixed. Still fighting.... ;)

Hannes

Btw, the RTP displays it correctly!!

Tangled-Universe

I wonder if it might be due to the atmosphere ceiling settings causing the renderer to disobey to calculate the shadows cast by an "out of atmosphere object" correctly.

cyphyr

Quote from: Hannes on August 12, 2019, 09:56:33 AMBtw, the RTP displays it correctly!!
It's actually not that correct, if you make the rings plane invisible (in it's render properties) you can see that where the shadow area is it actually gets brighter!
Weird bug
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cyphyr

I don't think I would have uploaded to anywhere other than the planetside forum ...
The cloud setup (which is seriously NOT ideal lol) is just a huge thick cloud layer (v2) extending to the limit of the rings and a y projection "Ring" image map.

Ah found it
I had to strip out the images but I'm sure you can supply your own :)
Ring-03-simple.tgd
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Hannes

Quote from: cyphyr on August 12, 2019, 10:49:46 AMIt's actually not that correct, if you make the rings plane invisible (in it's render properties) you can see that where the shadow area is it actually gets brighter!
Weird bug
Indeed!!

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on August 12, 2019, 10:15:37 AMI wonder if it might be due to the atmosphere ceiling settings causing the renderer to disobey to calculate the shadows cast by an "out of atmosphere object" correctly.

Playing around with the settings didn't make the bright area go away...

Anyway, thanks, guys!!

Hannes

Quote from: cyphyr on August 12, 2019, 10:59:26 AMI don't think I would have uploaded to anywhere other than the planetside forum ...
The cloud setup (which is seriously NOT ideal lol) is just a huge thick cloud layer (v2) extending to the limit of the rings and a y projection "Ring" image map.

Ah found it
I had to strip out the images but I'm sure you can supply your own :)
Ring-03-simple.tgd

Cool!!! Thanks, Richard!

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: Hannes on August 12, 2019, 11:07:35 AM
Quote from: cyphyr on August 12, 2019, 10:49:46 AMIt's actually not that correct, if you make the rings plane invisible (in it's render properties) you can see that where the shadow area is it actually gets brighter!
Weird bug
Indeed!!

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on August 12, 2019, 10:15:37 AMI wonder if it might be due to the atmosphere ceiling settings causing the renderer to disobey to calculate the shadows cast by an "out of atmosphere object" correctly.

Playing around with the settings didn't make the bright area go away...

Anyway, thanks, guys!!
Ok, that's interesting, since it seems to work with a very thick cloud layer extending from the planet all the way up to the ring, which to me sounds similar to increasing the atmosphere ceiling all the way up to the ring. Oh well, it probably has a different way of things, I guess.

Matt

I wasn't aware of this bug until now. I'll fix it.
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

WAS

Was this bug introduced somewhere recently? I used shadows from surfaces I believe in my reflective ring with transparency and don't remember the effect.

I do know the angles of reflections at that scale were wrong. Literally couldn't get the planet to reflect on the rings at direct angles (from memory).

Hannes

Actually it happens only with shadows onto the atmosphere, when the opacity of the shadow casting object's default shader is either less than 1, or if an image is used for opacity.