Rendering without sky?

Started by buzzzzz, February 22, 2007, 01:29:19 AM

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buzzzzz

I'm wondering if at some point if we will be able to render the terrain only by checking off render atmosphere without losing the atmospheric effects on the terrain. Unless I'm doing something wrong?

Volker Harun

Hi Jay,
I hope so, too  ;) ;) ;) Maybe as soon as the multi-layered-render-output will be implemented.

Till then:
I mostly turn off the cloud layers when finished with the sky. As long as you do not twist the contrast or gamma, the output will behave predictable - in TG.9 it was quite different.
Else I do my cropped renders.
Regards,
Volker Harun

3DGuy

Clouds cast shadows, turning them off will change the lighting.

old_blaggard

Note that in the cloud nodes there are three checkboxes: Enable, enable primary, and enable secondary.  Enable determines whether the clouds will be rendered, and the other two determine whether they will cast shadows and will be reflected (I don't remember which of them is which).  I'm pretty sure that you can have the "enable" box unchecked but still have them cast shadows and reflections.  Hope that helps.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

3DGuy

No, when you untick 'enable' the clouds are effectively not there. Thus rendering no shadows. See for yourself, default scene, add a low level cloud layer. Render with and without the enable checked.

gradient

Thanks for bringing this one up again Jay.  The inability to render terrain from sky separately is another TG2 drawback in my mind. 
As you know, I ALWAYS rendered the terrain and sky separately in TG 0.9xx...for many reasons as outlined in my Renderosity threads on this subject.
Cropped renders do NOT to my knowledge allow you to crop along the terrain/atmo interface.

3DGuy

If it's the exposure etc you're worried about, just save the .exr type of file. Then you can compite 2 exposures in photoshop. Why do you need to render then seperately?

Volker Harun

@Gradient: For this purpose you might want to use the alpha-mask, which is saved in the temp-folder (if not disabled).
Or you just use one single black surface shader to have this mask.
Anyhow, for postprocessing you did use masks (as long as I remember TG0.9 did not save alpha) so I do not see any drawback for this point.
@3DGuy: As I already wrote, turning off the clouds does not change the look and feel of the surfaces (except for the shadows, okay). In TG0.9 it was a major difference for the colours when using clouds or not, changing and twisting the atmospheres, etc.

So as mentioned above, I do not see a drawback in this point, as TG2TP gives you masks or is easy in making some. So the only advantage of turning off the sky would be rendertime (so crop it) in preview.

Regards,
Volker Harun

Oshyan

Turn off the Background node (select it in the Node Network and press D or uncheck "Enabled" in its settings). This will render *only* land and will keep cloud shadows and other atmospheric effects. I presume you already know about turning off Render Surface in the Planet settings, which will give you *only* atmosphere.

These two approaches will probably give you just what you want Gradient, although like the others I am not sure if the need is the same anymore with TG2. I understand you have many "tried and true" techniques from TG 0.9 that got you the results you wanted, but it may be best not to treat TG2 like TG 0.9 from the start as it really is fundamentally quite different. There may be different and in fact better ways to achieve what you are aiming for. So perhaps start by asking about how to achieve your *end result*, not necessarily about how to achieve any particular part of a specific workflow (e.g. turning off sky rendering, which is only a means to an end).

I certainly think it is good to know how to render sky and terrain separately though. This may also be made easier in the future when layered rendering output is provided.

- Oshyan

gradient

#9
Thanks once again Oshyan...I did not know about turning off the background node!!!
This will indeed now serve my needs....
You are also correct in that some of my reasoning to separate the renders is now not valid with TG2 vs TG0.9XX...but I still have several other reasons for separate renders, both from a render and post processing perspective that are currently, to my knowledge, not achievable ( or more difficult ) within TG2 itself by running a single render. 
I have outlined some of these reasons in the course of several threads over at Renderosity....some I have not revealed.  But suffice to say, that individual renders gives one much more flexibility without the sacrifice of the time to do 2 "complete" renders and then composite.
Again, Thanks for the tips!

Will

neat, thanks Oshyan!

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

buzzzzz

Quote from: Oshyan on February 23, 2007, 07:11:20 PM
Turn off the Background node (select it in the Node Network and press D or uncheck "Enabled" in its settings). This will render *only* land and will keep cloud shadows and other atmospheric effects. I presume you already know about turning off Render Surface in the Planet settings, which will give you *only* atmosphere.

- Oshyan

Thanks Oshyan, that's what I was looking for. You're smarter than the average bear!  ;D