Is there anyway I can use Aura without Glow?

You've got to use something in the glow channel to get aura to work - but you can use a colour that's very near to black and reduce this still further using the Multiply operator. The aura will take colour from the glow channel so you'll need to pay attention to what part of the spectrum you're in. HTH, Mark

You still have real problem with Aura and glow, it is the shadow on the earth that is supposed to be dark. I do not want my object to glow at all and only wanted to use Aura upon the light emitter from object surface.

Attached Link: http://digitalcarversguild.com/

Will Eric's(Digital Carvers guild)new plugin help, try checking it out . Mike

Which plug in you were talking about?

I think Mike means ShadersPlus. I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve. The image I posted does not 'glow' because the glow channel has such a small amount of colour in it. Agreed there should be a shadow on the atmosphere. This is easy to achieve using Julien Chaplier's Baker plugin - you make a light map and stick that in the glow channel. Perhaps a texture map will produce the effect you are after but unless you give a few more details I can't make any more suggestions. Mark

I did not use any plug in for this and I think I am almost there and still working on the shadow problem.

Other method to give good example that I was able to increase aura on a side of Earth. (still without any plug ins)

Basically I had problem with Glow and Aura. Not everything on an object are aura. The function in Carrara fo Aura requires Glow to work. It is really bad idea and should be separated. Anyway with several functions in shader, I was able to split the glow pattern separated. I am still working on the line between light and dark.

Here is other image. I am still almodt there to reaslistic atmosphere

Shonner I am familiar with that method. I like using aura because the gas scattered the lights in atmophere. Carrara need some improved light physics. For example glow and aura should be separated becuase I dont like to put my object with some glow.

Possibly but it was just my opinion that Aura should not be bounded with glow because it just make my job harder.

This is my final WIP. I am satisified with the settings I made in the shader room for this realistic atmosphere. Thank you all for your help to accomplish this.

Other image in different position

Very nicely done. I was referring to shaders plus earlier in the thread.

Message edited on: 11/22/2004 07:08

I didn't realise you were actually after atmosphere. Looks good.

Post the scene file! I'd love to see how you accomplished this GWeb.

Well, this is one way... Be sure to watch the render... and note there are no lights! :-)

I was not after atmosphere but it was fun to be on it. Separating Glow and Aura is what I actually was after. It can be very bothersome to apply glow on an object. I am thinking of a new realistic light physics that is needed in Carrara; lights that hit on an object creates aura. I am away from home and will post scene file tonight. :)

I am going to work on new "Light Emitter Aura" plug in possible with sub-division scatter. Anybody want to help me with this project?

Do you mean 'sub-surface scatter'? If so, I'm sure MANY would love to see that made available. I think it's considered by many to be the 'holy grail' of skin shaders.

Yes I mean sub-surface scatter!! Thank you bluetone

I would, but I'm already playing there. ;-)

Good news I drew a new Light Emitter theory diagram. It is going to take me a while to make good first plug ins for Carrara. I have never done it before but I am going to try. What plug ins may include: 1) 3 different light emitters. 2) Material settings for objects for light emitters in texture room. 3) Polygons breaking down upon light emitters and material settings

This is an image generated with three spheres all stacked together, each one a little smaller than the other. The first sphere is the earth texture sphere. The second sphere is clouds. The third sphere is an atmopheric sphere.

Here's the shader tree for the atmospheric sphere (the largest one). This sphere has also had a "point at" behavior added to it so that the glow in the sphere is always pointing at the light source.

You can set the color and the strength in the aura settings to get lots of different results regardless of the color or strength of the shader in the atmospheric sphere. This was my shot at it. -Kix

My version. Using Fake Fresnel.

Kixum you need to colorize the glow, either single color or texture map. Hope that helps

Actually Shonner you are wrong the earth does have a glow. Though technically if you look at all of our images they are slightly wrong in some way showing that slight glow:) http://www.geographicguide.com/earth-nasa.htm http://www.racine.ra.it/planet/testi/Foto/apollo8.htm http://starryskies.com/The_sky/events/lunar-2003/earth.moon.jpg

Isn't this aura simply the scattering of light from the atmosphere? In that case it would be very thin in relation to the size of the earth's sphere. Also the moon would have no aura. Sorry, just had to jump in :-)

The top view of earth have too much aura but it was just for example only. Earth does have alot of light scatters and may glow chemically in gas from distance view. If you take shots with your camera in space it would look like that depending on what lens you used. If you use sensitive light measurement device you will find that the light still scattering in the sky til 10 pm. Other light scatters from other side of earth is after 2am.

My image (thread 34) actually has exactly the result I was looking for. The aura is very thin and very minor and is actually barely perceivable (This effect is more artistic than real so I wanted it to be very minor). My example is showing how it can be done pretty easily. You can change the magnitude or the color to get the level of desired effect (be it realistic or artistic or cartoonish or whatever). The glow will only appear on the lighted side of the planet and falloff to zero at the shadow line with a perfect gradient with respect to the light source. This should satisfy the question that was originally posted. The back of the planet will not be lit at all. -Kix

An image from NASA

An image from NASA. This looks cartoonish and they used filtered method or lense that removed all the light scatters to be able to see the surface.

Message edited on: 11/24/2004 11:51

Back of earth do lit some it depends on what camera, film, and lenses you use and it gives you different results. The truth is that the lights do lit some in the back due to massive of radition from sun. If you have a greenhouse and half of it is covered with no light from sun. The light scatter still lit in the dark space.

An image of moon from NASA

Work in process: Sun

I think that is good sun art work. I would like to hear suggestions if you have any to improve the sun. I did not use any plug ins for this.

Glowing Titan August 5, 2004 The glow of Titan's extensive atmosphere shines in false colors in this view of Saturn's gas-enshrouded moon acquired by the Cassini spacecraft visual and infrared mapping spectrometer during the July 2, 2004, flyby. This image is a combination of near-infrared colors, each of which probes different phenomena in the moon. From its vantage point over Titan's terminator, both the dayside and nightside of the crescent moon are seen, with the sunlit side on the left. In this false color rendition, green light is the fluorescent emission of methane gas powered by sunlight, at a wavelength of 3.3 microns. This is some five times the wavelength visible to the human eye. The glow extends over 700 kilometers (435 miles) above the surface, revealing the unusual thickness of the moon's atmosphere, which nearly doubles Titan's volume compared to the volume of the solid sphere, indicated by the solid line. On the nightside (right side), the moon glows red out for over 200 kilometers (125 miles) altitude, indicating carbon-monoxide emission at 4.7 micron wavelength produced in Titan's relatively warm stratosphere. This glow actually extends over the dayside as well, producing the yellow layer observed on the left as the two glows from methane (green) and carbon monoxide (red) mix together in this rendition. Titan's surface is indicated by the circle determined by a surface image at 2.0 microns (blue), which is unaffected by atmospheric glows showing the sunlit surface. Here, due to the reddish glow of carbon monoxide overlying the blue-colored surface, most of the dayside appears purplish in color. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Purple Haze July 29, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06090 Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Titan appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colorized image taken one day after Cassini's first flyby of that moon. This image shows two thin haze layers. The outer haze layer is detached and appears to float high in the atmosphere. Because of its thinness, the high haze layer is best seen at the moon's limb. The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The image has been falsely colored: The globe of Titan retains the pale orange hue our eyes usually see, and both the main atmospheric haze and the thin detached layer have been brightened and given a purple color to enhance their visibility. The best possible observations of the detached layer are made in ultraviolet light because the small haze particles which populate this part of Titan's upper atmosphere scatter short wavelengths more efficiently than longer visible or infrared wavelengths. Images like this one reveal some of the key steps in the formation and evolution of Titan's haze. The process is thought to begin in the high atmosphere, at altitudes above 400 kilometers (250 miles), where ultraviolet light breaks down methane and nitrogen molecules. The products are believed to react to form more complex organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that can combine to form the very small particles seen as haze. The bottom of the detached haze layer is a few hundred kilometers above the surface and is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) thick. The image was taken with the narrow angle camera on July 3, 2004, from a distance of about 789,000 kilometers (491,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 114 degrees. The image scale is 4.7 kilometers (2.9 miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Glowing Titan August 5, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06418 The glow of Titan's extensive atmosphere shines in false colors in this view of Saturn's gas-enshrouded moon acquired by the Cassini spacecraft visual and infrared mapping spectrometer during the July 2, 2004, flyby. While flying over the terminator, where Titan's day and night meet, both the dayside and night sides are seen at various wavelengths. In these views of the crescent moon, the sunlit side is on the left and the nightside on the right. The blue image shows the sunlit crescent as observed at a wavelength that pierces through the thick atmosphere to show only the surface. This image is much smaller than the other three images to the right, because it does not show any atmospheric affects. In contrast, the green image shows the immense size of Titan's atmosphere. This is revealed by the fluorescent glow of methane gas, which extends over 700 kilometers (435 miles) above the surface, showing that the atmosphere nearly doubles the size of Titan. This glow is at a wavelength of 3.3 microns, five times the wavelength visible to the human eye. The red image shows that Titan also glows at night, which initially surprised scientists. The moon glows out to more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) in altitude, indicating carbon-monoxide emission at the 4.7 micron wavelength produced in Titan's relatively warm stratosphere. The multicolor image on the far right combines the three previous images into one composite. Here it is seen that the carbon monoxide glow extends over the dayside as well, producing the yellow layer observed on the left. This is because the two glows, one from methane (green) and carbon monoxide (red) mix together to form yellow in this multi-color composite. Titan's surface is indicated by the circle. Titan's surface appears purple due to the mixing of the blue and red surface images. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

I performed some light testings how the light plays in the environment. The data is with an sphere object toward a soft light blue with a fogger emitter: Light refects the object at approx 50% to 80% depending on intensity of fogger, light blub, and the position of camera. The 50% of sphere that is direct reflect from blub is visible of its surface. Approx 20% of dark area is measured as the size of the light blub, in this dark area may increase blur contrast depending on the distance of the camera in back of the sphere and the distance between light blub and sphere.

Hi All, I do not know if you guys would check this thread again after the email notification from ebot. I am going to post an important image and information regarding the light exposure for someone who cross this thread. ------------------ Reflecting sunlight ignites the moon's limb into a fiery crescent in this image taken by an amateur skywatcher. Philippe Moussette of Quebec, Canada recorded this view of Earths moon on April 9, 2005 at the Observatory of Douverte Val-Bair. He used a 20D Canon digital camera mounted to a Meade LX200 telescope to record this 30-second exposure

Other image of Earth's haze

Attached Link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia07577.html

Tethys in the Dark http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia07577.html A close inspection of this image reveals that there is more of Saturn's moon Tethys here than is apparent at first glance. A slim crescent is all that is visible of the moon's sunlit side, but the left half of the image is dimly lit by "Saturnshine," or reflected light from the planet lying off to the left of Cassini's field of view. Tethys is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) across. On occasion, useful details about a moon's surface characteristics can be revealed under such dim illumination, as in PIA06168. This view shows principally the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Tethys; north is up. Craters along the terminator, the boundary between day and night, are Penelope (at the top) and Antinous (at the bottom). The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 3, 2005. The spacecraft was approximately 842,000 kilometers (523,000 miles) from Tethys. The image was taken with a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 144 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.

Any guesses as to this raw image? Here's the caption for it: W00013174.jpg was taken on January 15, 2006 and received on Earth January 16, 2006. The camera was pointing toward TITAN at approximately 164,703 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the IR2 and CL2 filters.