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So I wanna make an Atmosphere for my Earth..
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So I wanna make an Atmosphere for my Earth.. // New Users
Post by om1nous // Jun 18, 2007, 11:01am
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om1nous
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Being I'm working in after effects, I'll be initially adding my atmosphere effects using AE.. I wish there was just simple 'glow'/etc filters for 3d objects.. Perhaps there is? I'll have to look later when I get some free time but thanks for the insights ;) |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 3:43am
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om1nous
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Wow.. I spent about 2 hours last night mucking around with the link editor and managed to get nothing at all done.
First trueSpace crashed half a dozen times and started running extremely poorly (even after a fresh reboot). After I installed 7.5.1 I looked and noticed it didn't remove the old TS75. So I uninstalled it all (both) and reinstalled 7.5.1 and it ran much better :banana:. So if any of you still have 7.5 installed...
Anyhow there's just some basic fundamentals I don't understand about the materials in link editor. How can I find out which libraries are to be used with which render engines? I drag a material from the library onto somthing (a cube.. a sphere, whatever) and examine the texture in link editor but I can't find some of the components they used to 'create' these materials initially in my library. So I find stuff in the library with similar outputs (such as color shader output-> ) and try to put it into the color shader input of a LW material and it will never accept the output of the color shader... :confused:
I even drag a stock texture to something, bring up the link editor for it and disconnect some things, such as color shaders, and when I try to reconnect them, they can't be reconnected! Once I break the connection in the link editor it won't work anymore :confused:. Is there some kind of dependency that's being broken permanently that I'm not aware of? Why are the materials so picky about what library component feeds them, even to the point they won't re-accept inputs/outputs if you disconnect anything inside themselves?
The only materials that worked fine was DX9. I just used the Shaders library to fuel them and it was all fine. Nothing gave me trouble.. LW and VRay I can't seem to do much with.
What libraries should I use to create LW or VRay materials? I used the LW shaders (of course) to try to add to LW materials and I couldn't find anything that would work. I tried the VRay shaders with a VRay material and couldn't get anything I tried to hook up. Call me extremely confused? :confused:
edit: example
For example if I drag a stock VRay texture onto a sphere:
http://www.ertp.com/files/mat1.jpg
And then I disconnect the color texture shader and try to reconnect it, it won't accept it! Also I can't seem to change the color shader.
http://www.ertp.com/files/mat2.jpg
I grabbed another (plain) color shader from the VRay library and tried dragging it into the Link Editor but it won't drop in.. All it does is affect the material editor instead?
http://www.ertp.com/files/mat3.jpg
I have to 'apply' this material to the sphere to get the link editor to accept the color shader? I don't understand why I can't just drag the shader from the library (like other areas of the library seem to work) to put it on the sphere. What am I doing wrong? |
Post by weaveribm // Jun 19, 2007, 4:15am
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weaveribm
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What a coincidence I've installed and been trying 7.51 in work this morning and I'm really impressed. Making a photoframe so subtracting a cube from a cube and so on. Usually when I switch from Workspace to Model it's very clunky and that's on a powerful machine at home. This time things were very different on a very low-spec machine
And I needed the frame to be silver perhaps (trying it out) so I opened the Library Browser and double-clicked on all the Vray library items and found the new (to me) Vray Materials, skin and Soft Fruit and there's Orange Juice, Milk :) - and Brass and Silver and all sorts and they look great
Just drag the Vray Materials on to the objects and that's it. Very nice. Then I suppose we can adjust the er, (Dele help! lol) Bricks - no rather Chunks. Material Chunks down inside the Cube's hierarchy. Hierarchy of properties I mean not hierarchy of objects and sub-objects. Have a look at my fumbling attempts to work with these unfamiliar properties in my working with Dele's Animated Textures for Vray (scripting) tutorial nearby - and refuse to suffer in silence :)
LW and VRay I can't seem to do much with
Down in the hierarchies are LW shaders that (if i'm remembering correctly) use LW shaders to create the Vray textures on-the-fly
Material List/Material/LW Material
LW to me is Luftwaffe so I was expecting black crosses for a week :)
extremely confused
Nothing that can't be fixed, most of us are in the same boat we're looking at the Stone but it's all Greek. Demotic :)
But there are so many helpful people in here and you'll learn lots if you're not afraid to ask the most basic of questions. As long as you don't have a deadline I mean...
Peter |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 4:38am
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Who doesn't have a deadline? Haha.. For me it's not too soon so I'm not stressed on that. I wouldn't set a deadline on a new product I don't know and can't predict an estimate on anyhow ;). I've learned..
Anyhow it just has some strange behaviour in the material editor. And I tried just about all of the LW libraries in trying to hook it up to the LW material (seemed appropriate) and I absolutely cannot get anything I tried to hook up.
I will post a more elaborate example of what I'm doing when I get more time later tonight when I will be working on my earth again. For now, any insights on how the link editor works or what libraries to stick to would be great! Hopefully the info in here will be useful to others.
And did the link editor exist in older versions of trueSpace and are there any good tutorials anyone has used on the editor? Or is this new to 7.5.x? |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 19, 2007, 5:13am
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SteveBe
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The LE is really designed to work with DX shaders, the LW and Vray materials
can be viewed in the LE. All functionality is accessable through the Material Editor,
LW materials through Modeler side of bridge and Vray in Modeler and
workSpace ME. |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 5:26am
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So you're sayin this whole time I can't seem to edit vray/LW materials in LE is because it doesn't even support this? Is this why once I break a LW/vray material in LE it won't let me connect it back together and such?
And was this information in the manual but I skipped over it?
My last post in my other thread (just on this subject here (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=3437)) was basicly me asking this very same thing.. Is it even possible to edit LW/vray in the LE or am I supposed to use the material editor..
It's all starting to make sense now but I don't recall this vital info in the workspace surfacing manual. It explains why they only went over DX9 editing in the LE and why I had no trouble editing my DX9 textures..
Though it makes DX9 a pointless thing to me, and a non-selling point in TS.. Does anyone really need DX9 real-time simulation for anything? I figured I could texture it all in DX9 and then render it. All the jazz about using the realtime shaders and making modeling look easy was just misleading, because you can't render some of it if you use DX9.. Also makes the LE fairly pointless for materials outside DX9. |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 19, 2007, 5:32am
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SteveBe
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What I'm saying is, why would you need to use the LE when everything you need
for LW and Vray materials is accessable through the ME? |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 5:36am
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om1nous
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I don't need to use the LE to edit it.. I'm fine with using ME. I just needed to be told I should be using that exclusively, as I was trying to get my feet wet in the new LE, because I thought you should be editing everything with it.
:confused:
I will use all ME from now on and I hope this answers some questions for some other new users incase they've delved deep into LE thinking the same, that it could edit any material..
Thanks for the info! |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 19, 2007, 5:45am
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SteveBe
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You're welcome!:)
The DX shaders are the complex materials, keep exploring them.
BTW, here's a short capture of a partial earth rotation, a little jerky because
it is a screen capture. |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 5:56am
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om1nous
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Nifty Earth, where did that come from? Looks similar to the texture I grabbed but the phong shading looks a little off as there's a very flat shine on the upper left. Is that you taking the textures linked and making your own Earth? I can see the depth of the clouds in that movie which is nice, and the speed of rotation is nice and slow to give the earth some respect on size (makes it feel bigger). Light setup is good too, a single direction light (though the light looks white instead of yellow like the sun?)
Is that your rendition in DX9 being frapsed (or techsmith or something) capped? Or is that a LW/vray material?
BTW why should I explore DX9 materials if I can't export them using vray or lw renderers? |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 19, 2007, 6:16am
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SteveBe
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Thanks, far from complete, and yes it's DX real-time screen capture. I set it up for truePlay, the rotation is done using Dele's :cool: scripts. All DX materials.
WorkSpace can create animation very quickly, check out Render to File.
I didn't use it for this but will probably re-work with the Animation Editor(AE). |
Post by om1nous // Jun 19, 2007, 7:13am
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So there IS a way to render DX9 materials to a movie?
Hmm.. Well I purchased the Vray rendering engine so it seemed like it was the premier rendering engine to use. If I were to use the DX9 workspace render to file, am I taking any chances on output quality based upon the video card I have or any hardware factors?
I currently use a x1900xt and I think it supports the full DX9 feature set. Though it's been my experience that a DX9 card is designed to optimize and display low poly scenes and doesn't handle huge poly counts very smoothly. But DX9 render to file will work like a traditional renderer, where it will let the card complete each frame and save each frame to file ya? In other words, it won't require my video card to keep up with the output spec I desire (such as 1280x1024 @ 30fps), right? |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 19, 2007, 9:41am
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SteveBe
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Yes, you can use it in combination with Animation Editor. It renders individual frames
which you can assemble with 3rd party programs, Premier, ImageReady, VirtualDub, PS3 Ext. works too.
Anything that can read a folder of numbered files.
Your video card means everything, and the x1900xt is more than capable. I'm
running an x800xt.
Vray still has more to offer as far as render options, DOF, GI etc. |
Post by om1nous // Jun 20, 2007, 3:22am
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I wish it exported to an AVI or QT or something but I have premiere and after effects and such to compile the sequence. It just seems a little dated to need to use an image sequence haha. Thanks for the info!
Well.. I tried all night to play with lights and I wish I uploaded some of the things I tried but all you'd see is miserable failed attempts to create the gradient-esque atmosphere.
I'm very open to suggestions if anyone knows a way in TS to create this kind of effect!
http://chemistry.org/portal/resources/ACS/ACSContent/wondernet/images/moonrise_sts35.jpg
Needs to start at earth at a bit of a bluish glow and then linearly fall off to fully transparent at the outskirts. Does anyone have any ideas on how to pull this effect off?
edit:
Also for this little project I wanted to zoom down into a part of california from space. To do this will require what I imagine is fading in several screenshots over the whole zoom, each screenshot containing a high res satellite photo of the area I'm zooming into until I reach the ground. Think of using something like using mapquest and centering the map on your desired area while zoomed all the way out, then taking screenshots as you click zoom..
Though what I wonder is how good of a texture can I use on the earth so some of the zoom effect can happen in TS. I currently haven't found a better earth than this texture (on one of my favorite resource sites, arstechnica):
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/images/earth-map-huge.jpg
(6400x3200 @ 200dpi JPEG)
What I wonder is, how high resolution can I get with my texture? Currently truespace feels like it's going to die when I apply this texture, so I'm assuming I'm really not supposed to use something that high resolution as it is..
Are there any texturing tricks I could do to use an ultra, ultra-high resolution texture (20,000 or 40,000 px, something insanely unreasonable) that I could create that would let me move a camera closer and closer to earth to reveal more and more detail? As it is now, I can only get so close to Earth before the detail runs out and it becomes ugly..
Thanks for any tips!! |
Post by weaveribm // Jun 20, 2007, 4:51am
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weaveribm
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Google Earth?
Peter |
Post by RichLevy // Jun 20, 2007, 5:37am
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RichLevy
Total Posts: 1140
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I wish it exported to an AVI or QT or something but I have premiere and after effects and such to compile the sequence. It just seems a little dated to need to use an image sequence haha. Thanks for the info!
Well.. I tried all night to play with lights and I wish I uploaded some of the things I tried but all you'd see is miserable failed attempts to create the gradient-esque atmosphere.
I'm very open to suggestions if anyone knows a way in TS to create this kind of effect!
http://chemistry.org/portal/resources/ACS/ACSContent/wondernet/images/moonrise_sts35.jpg
Needs to start at earth at a bit of a bluish glow and then linearly fall off to fully transparent at the outskirts. Does anyone have any ideas on how to pull this effect off?
edit:
Also for this little project I wanted to zoom down into a part of california from space. To do this will require what I imagine is fading in several screenshots over the whole zoom, each screenshot containing a high res satellite photo of the area I'm zooming into until I reach the ground. Think of using something like using mapquest and centering the map on your desired area while zoomed all the way out, then taking screenshots as you click zoom..
Though what I wonder is how good of a texture can I use on the earth so some of the zoom effect can happen in TS. I currently haven't found a better earth than this texture (on one of my favorite resource sites, arstechnica):
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/macosx-pb1/images/earth-map-huge.jpg
(6400x3200 @ 200dpi JPEG)
What I wonder is, how high resolution can I get with my texture? Currently truespace feels like it's going to die when I apply this texture, so I'm assuming I'm really not supposed to use something that high resolution as it is..
Are there any texturing tricks I could do to use an ultra, ultra-high resolution texture (20,000 or 40,000 px, something insanely unreasonable) that I could create that would let me move a camera closer and closer to earth to reveal more and more detail? As it is now, I can only get so close to Earth before the detail runs out and it becomes ugly..
Thanks for any tips!!
If you have After Effects and Premiere, why not use the power of TS and the power of those programs together?
TS does not like large textures (TS7.51) from my experience... but you can fake your project by doing several different camera moves into your earth, Each of the earth's could have a different texture with different levels of texture detail.
So you would have an earth form deep space (very low level of detail because you barely see it. Say that part on the camera move is only 50 frames.
Next camera can have a slightly different angle, or drastically different depending on what you want to do. Now the earth is more visible so you can use a higher resolution texture. Maybe this camera move is 100 frames.
For the sake of simplicity lets say this camera move is to the point of the atmoshere, you are now using the highest resolution texture. You can use the clouds as a point to shift to a more local texture (Google is your friend if you want to get down to house and street level of your planet)... 125-150 frames.
Take the 3 compositions into after effects and add clouds, sun, sun glare... whatever makes you happy. Export out AE file to Premiere than export out to DVD, show your friends and relatives your genius and live comfortably the rest of your life oin the royalties :D
Just an idea to ponder.
Rich |
Post by om1nous // Jun 20, 2007, 6:53am
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om1nous
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Haha thanks for the visuals ;).
That's what I've planned on doing from the start but it occured to me I should first investigate the possibility that I don't know about a texture swapping technique that might exist in TS.
I want to use the google maps but I'm unsure if they're copyright. Anyone happen to randomly know that?
Aside that I'm still looking for a technique or effect that might make a difference in quality.
Ultimately I know I will end up in AE to perform the majority of the orbit to street level zoom, as it's pretty easy to do (I've done that before plenty of times). It's things like the glow around the Earth that I really would like to figure out in 3D so I don't need to composite that. It's very easy to render it on a solid color BG and knock the BG out and add the glow to the alpha channel in AE. But there must be a way to simulate that blue linear falloff glow atmosphere in TS, no? |
Post by RichLevy // Jun 20, 2007, 8:47am
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RichLevy
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One of the subscriptions they sell (google earth) allow you to use there images in commercial projects, there free verison is ok to use in non commercial p,rojects. The pay levels have higher resolutions versions and some other features, I think they have 2 commercial versions, the first level was very affordable. They have them listed on the site.
Rich |
Post by om1nous // Jun 20, 2007, 9:28am
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om1nous
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Great info, how'd you happen to know that? Did you use it in one of your projects? |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 20, 2007, 9:38am
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SteveBe
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I know this isn't what you're looking for om1nous, but it may give you some ideas.
Attached object with alpha material.
6972
6971 |
Post by RichLevy // Jun 20, 2007, 10:18am
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RichLevy
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Great info, how'd you happen to know that? Did you use it in one of your projects?
I had an older version and needed to upgrade to the newest version. While I was on the website I read the ELU for the 3 versions. I did this last weekend so the info is recent.
I needed to get the newest version because I am working with some people making some content for Google Earth.. panos and buildings for different spots around the world.
Rich |
Post by om1nous // Jun 21, 2007, 3:39am
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om1nous
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RichLevy~
Hmm, did you get the Enterprise version or Google Earth Pro? I assume pro? The Google Earth Plus can't be what you mean, it's only $20 and Pro has the enhanced feature set and better printing, etc.
I was browsing through the agreements and to use anything from the application it seemed like you needed to fill out a permission form. So I sent that in but that takes like 2 weeks to get back. I did it anyhow. Is that what you did or did you find something in the way of "Buy Google Earth Pro and use unlimited content free" or something? I see how it says a variety of industries use it professionally so if they can do that then I guess, why would video be any different?
SteveBe~
Thanks for the DX9 material to look over! I think I understand some of the concepts you wanted to illustrate. First, that I'm a noob and have no idea how to load that RsObj because the file->load->object dialog doesn't support RsObj, so I'm already highly confused as to Caligari's overall thinking here. So after being confused for 5 minutes I finally just tried to drag and drop it from windows explorer into the object library and that worked. (Note to Caligari, WTF?)
Anyhow I spun around the cylinder and saw that the front faces are completely transparent. The first viewable portions are the side edges (on the inside). It told me that if I applied that kind of look to a sphere then it would be similar to 'stroking' the sphere. Looking straight on at earth there would be no color (because of the frontal transparent faces) but on the edges of the earth there would be a hard color stroke from seeing the inside faces of the sphere this material is applied to.
So I went to investigate what property made the front faces disappear in the DX9 material and, being anoob and having no more sophisticated means to do so, I started deleting properties of the material, waiting for the front faces to appear, so I'd know the part I deleted is responsible for the effect, so I can examine it. Well I deleted all of the effects (alpha/model/etc) and the effect still happened! It leads me to believe it's some kind of UV wrapper effect of some sort? I'm stumped, how did you do that?
Aside that I noticed the alpha portion of the material and wondered why you wanted to show me that. I figure if I'm zoomed in very close to earth, I assume you are showing me that the sphere could be put in the center of the cylinder and, if I'm zoomed in close enough to the earth (where I cant see it all), then the alpha effect you have going on would actually be a horizon?
It would make a great atmospheric horizon, but the problem with it is it will take a lot of work to reposition things if I choose to change my camera angles or adjust the scene. What I'd really like to do is create an actual functioning atmosphere effect that surrounds the whole Earth so no matter where the camera is, it looks right. No retooling required.
I'm interested in knowing how you got the front faces to disappear. I've done this before a bajillion years ago and I thought it had to do with using a 2d plane face (of which only one side renders) and wrapped it in a circle like a cylinder. Or maybe that's what you did here?
It's definitely fueling ideas but it's still not quite right. It's a possible way to fake the atmosphere but I'm really trying for a sphere with the proper materials to do this so I don't have a problem always making sure the horizon is in the right spot.
For it to be right it really needs to be similar to a sphere of glass. You notice the edges of glass a lot more than straight on when the glass sphere is hollow. As you look through the edges, you're also looking through more material as your vision goes through it diagonally.
Kinda like a swimmer diving into a 10 foot pool.. If the swimmer dives straight down, they can only go 10 feet till hitting the bottom. Though if they dive at a 30 degree angle and swim on that angle to the bottom, they will have to swim through twice as much water to get to the bottom. I realize possibly 1 out of 7000 people need this analogy to understand what I'm talkin about but to that 1 person, there ya go :P
Also as your eyes move from looking at the center of a hollow glass sphere to the edges, the amount of material you're looking through increases as you get closer to the edges. This means the effect is increased gradually as you get to the edges, which is how an atmosphere really looks. It isn't just on the edges of the earth like Google Earth (and its glow filter, used as not to obstruct your view of things, out of the contents way). The color atmosphere effect should be much smoother and seep into the edges of earth, as I think glass would do.
I've tried some glass spheres but honestly I'm not able to get this effect. I can't seem to find the 'ambient' lighting part of the material to alter, as that will help the glass show up when only one directional light is being used. I find that the glass sphere doesn't even show up on the renders that I've tried, and I think it's the lights rather than the material being wrong. So adding some self illumination to the material is what I'm trying to do but can't figure out how.
Sorry for the long post but I haven't posted in about a day! ;D
Any other ideas on how to create this atmosphere would be greatly appreciated!
I didn't get a chance to work on it yesterday or the night before but I will be tonight, so let any ideas rip! |
Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 21, 2007, 7:28am
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3dvisuals dude
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Hey all you guys...
This is really becoming a fascinating thread with great input from all of you!
Seems like every time I pop in here to see where you all are heading with this it just gets better and more interesting all the time!
Thanks! (I'm back to observer mode now;) )
- 3dvisuals dude |
Post by om1nous // Jun 21, 2007, 7:36am
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om1nous
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Ya I'm long winded haha.. I type too fast (but I think we all do these days)..
A picture is worth, well, the thousand word post I just put up haha. I will jump in TS later and try to see if faking it is easy with the atmosphere prototype you made. I think I know how you intend me to investigate it but trying it will prove that ;).
Thanks again for all the help! I'll figure it out one way or another but help along the way is always great :D
edit:
Forgot to mention the (distort) polarize filter in photoshop really fixed up the top of my Earth texture! Amazingly easy to just paint or clone the texture so it UV Wraps on the sphere and seams together at the top much better! That was a great tip! |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 23, 2007, 11:57am
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SteveBe
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The cylinder is really a sphere, I sized it vertically so it would show more in the
screen cap. The sphere is a single sided mesh with the vertex's flipped. I don't
have any new ideas right now as I'm pretty busy but I'm still thinking about it.;) |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 24, 2007, 12:21am
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W!ZARD
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A most interesting thread. Perhaps I could offer a couple of comments.
From any distance where you can see the entire face of the earth the atmosphere layer is so thin that any gradient fade is not visible - the atmoshere looks like a film of soap bubble across the Earth. Many people tend to show atmospheres at unrealistic depths when illustrating Earth from space.
Secondly there are several options for creating materials with a gradient fade at the edge if you use the LightWorks renderer. At the bottom left hand side of the default modeler view along with the colour, displacement and reflectance shader librarys is the Transparency shader library which includes the 'Glow' shader. This may be of some use to you.
Additionally there used to be a .TSX called EdgeAlpha which did much thre same thing - I can't recall where it came from but you could try the usual sources for tS plugins.
Hope this helps though I suspect it won't if you are commited to using Vray renderer. |
Post by om1nous // Jun 25, 2007, 12:28pm
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om1nous
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SteveBe~
Ahh! I think I get you now, I'll re-inspect the object but I only thought it was cylindral because the render of it appeared as such but perhaps I can find a way to get it to render as a sphere. I will play with it, thanks!
W!ZARD~
Thanks for the tip on that! I'm not partial to any renderer, basicly because I have no idea what the limits are of each specific one. I'm still waddling around the interface trying to find basic things haha. Once I get a better grip on everything then these things will matter to me a whole bunch more ;).
I suppose for the most wide range usage possible, I should stick to lightworks! Not everyone has Vray and I'm not sure why I should use it over Vray anyhow so thank you for that very useful tip!
Sorry I haven't replied sooner, life sometimes gets in the way but this week I will be busy trying to get something useful out of trueSpace, so time to re-read the new manual :D
Thank you! |
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