Hello!

My name is Dick Scherzinger (artists name: eonite) from Switzerland. Got into CG in 2002.

I don`t expect anyone to know me in the Vue community. Have been active in the Artmatic/Voyager scene in the last couple of years. Lots of pictures/tutorials/presetcollections.
Also running an Artmatic related website (http://www.artmatica.ch)

A couple of months ago I decided to get into Vue. What interested me most was to explore Vue`s function editor. Artmatic works with a function graph as well, so it was relatively easy to get into it.

What thrills me about Vue is its incredible potential. Its much slower than Artmatic Voyager but it has some features that I have always been missing. 

When exploring Vue`s cloud presets and options I noticed something. While the Cumulus clouds looked really impressive and convincing I found that the high altitude clouds (cirrus&friends) were not equally taken care of. They looked to me more like random patches or streaks.

In Artmatic/Voyager I spent a lot of time trying to capture the beauty of cirrus clouds...and I found out that the techniques  acquired over the years  could be equally applied in Vue`s function editor.

Currentyl I`m building function trees and create MetaNodes with the relevant parameters extracted, which should generate some natural looking high altitude clouds.

Below are a couple of work renders, so you get an impression of what I`m working on.

Btw. this forum and all the Vue online tutorials really helped me to learn the basics of Vue Infinite. Thank you very much, namely the folks at GeekatPlay, Chipp Walters and Silverblade (recently bought a PC following your specs).

Actually I wanted to share a couple of files but was not sure wether zipped files could be unzipped by everyone and if the Vue 7 Infinite files were compatible with other versions of Vue.

Cheers,

Dick

EXCELLENT work!

You can share files easily, by uploading them to your favorite sharing (i.e. shareCG or shareAC or whatever) spot and submitting them to renderosity's free stuff section.  takes about a day or so, but they end up there usually =D

And most everyone has access to some kind of unzipping program - windows has one by default (its crappy, but works)

As for compatibility - i'll let someone else explain that one =D

PS:  i wouldnt mind getting my hands on your clouds!

 Thanks Melikia!

I will post a link to some files later...

very fancy :)

I particuarly like 2 and 4, excellent job.

Rich

Heyas! :) and glad we could help :)

hot damn, woot finally decent cirrus clouds!
this has been a real pain in the arse for me: to get spectral cirrus to look right, as they are so important for many scenes. I couldn't get anything decent neough for my "Dark Sun - Glory" pic and had ot make do with just stretching a cloud type in one axis.

Well done! :)

i'm hoping for a tutorial??????

hint hint

wink wink

nudge nudge

BEGGING??????????

Those clouds look very realistic - excellent work and thanks for the sharing offer!

Wow, that's some damn fine looking clouds ! 

Wow, really good looking clouds. Congrats!

Welcome to Vue! :-)

Great looking clouds.  Why don't you bundle these up and sell it as a cloud pack on C3D or Rendo.

Attached Link: Cloud Files

Just uploaded a couple of files. You can download them by clicking the attached link.

When you have downloaded the zip file, unzip and open the atmo file in Vue. You will see 3 cloud layers (flat). Check them one by one. Flat layers do not mask other flat layers very well (you will always see parts of another flat layer bleed through. It works in some cases but usually not), Of course you can use them along with any number of volumetric layers.
The atmosphere is more or less left at default, except that I chose a darker blue for the sky, because this gives a nice contrast to the white clouds.

The 3 cloud layers are also included as separate files so you can load them directly into your preferred atmospheres, just make certain you have selected Spectral Atmosphere.

If you want to change the loacation of the clouds or if you want to rotate the layer, check out the screenshot.

What`s great about this type of layer, it renders very fast. For evening scenes I recommend to increase the quality setting to avoid grainyness. Also, depending on your atmo setting it might be nice to subtly color the cirrus layer (pinkish or yellowish).

Enjoy! (Hey, this is a kind of "premiere"!)

Have checked your picture, Silverblade. Know, what you mean. This type of cirrus clouds could certainly be a nice addition.

Melikia, I will try to get a tutorial with some techniques used. But it might take some time.
(Check out the screenshot below and you will understand that there are tons of nodes involved. So it would certainly require more than one tutorial...)

Dburdick, thanks for the hint on C3D! I am already in contact with Christie and she likes the clouds too!

Again, thanks for the feedback and for your warm welcome!

If you have questions, just go ahead :-)

Quote - Have checked your picture, Silverblade. Know, what you mean. This type of cirrus clouds could certainly be a nice addition.

Melikia, I will try to get a tutorial with some techniques used. But it might take some time.
(Check out the screenshot below and you will understand that there are tons of nodes involved. So it would certainly require more than one tutorial...)

Dburdick, thanks for the hint on C3D! I am already in contact with Christie and she likes the clouds too!

Again, thanks for the feedback and for your warm welcome!

If you have questions, just go ahead :-)

Is it possible to convert your sci-fi pack to Vue

Excellent work!!!!!

Thanks Bijan, much appreciated!

Aquiavic, this is an interesting question. Have been thinking about it for a while.

One option would be to have HiRes renders of the skies created in Artmatic. This would provide the same background.

Another option would be to map those elements onto alpha planes so they can be shifted around to fit the scene.

The third option, which I find the most satisfying in the long run, would be to create entirely new skies from scratch in Vue.
The starfields, nebulae etc. would be generated by (procedural) materials mapped onto one or several planes.
The moon/planet textures would be mapped onto spheres and the foreground stars would be generated by using point lights.

Below you can see a picture I rendered with the camera placed 40meters or so above a horizontal plane that uses 3 layered materials. To create the stars and nebulae I used the same techniques used in Artmatic (procedural, not bitmap).
As you might guess, the stars in the foreground are point lights placed in between the camera and the plane.
It rendered extremly fast. It not perfect, too bright. Just a render of an experiment.

Have also tried to place the plane vertically far away 100km so an infinite terrain can be used without being cut off by the plane and it seems to work.

Will need to make more tests. When this method works, then similar results like the one in the Artmatic Voyager SciFi/Alien Sky set can be achieved in Vue (which would be fantastic!).

Any suggestions?

This looks great. Beautiful and very convincing. Well done!

Outstanding work here!  The clouds are fabulous & thank you for sharing :)

I seem to remember one of us that enabled a sky download simply from a picture.  But I don't remember how he did it.  Maybe someone else does.   

Excellent work Eonite!

If the zipped file isnt larger than the allowed 200k you can attach it with your post, the same as images. However you need to change the file name extension to 'txt'. People who download it will need to change the extension back from txt to zip, unzip   and continue from there as usual.

Eonite - welcome, it seems you already have a lot to contribute! Your picture of the nodes in the function editor is very impressive, but too small for my eyes to even begin to unveil some of  the secrets :(

 Hi Dick. Wow, wonderful stuff! Looks like you already have a great command of the function editor.

I remember Eric Wenger from the early Bryce days. Not being a Mac user anymore, I didn't know about ArtMatic Voyager. Fun browsing your site and seeing what you've done with it.

Welcome to our community! :-)

Hi Dick ...

Thanks for your contribution - any cirrus clouds are most welcome, but always good to have a new face around the place, especially someone who comes to contribute as well as to learn.

Cheers
Richard

 Thank you, folks, for the compliments, encouragements and welcoming words :-)

I`m glad you like the clouds. Would be interested to know how well they integrate into your atmospheres, along with volumetric clouds.

Thanks, ArtPearl, for the advice re: uploading. I probably prefer to upload the stuff to my site and attach a link to avoid any potential confusion.

Yes, the picture with one of the functions used to generate cirrus clouds is a bit too small to unveil the secrets. This is intended ;-)

Here are 2 key techniques. They are basically very simple.

1. Take 2 identical fractal noise nodes. Mix them with a combiner node in "add" mode . Now set the amplitude of the second input to -1 while leaving the first input at 1.
   The result will be 0. Complete phase cancelling. You should see uniform grey.
   Offset  one of the 2 noise nodes by slightly shifting the origin in x or y direction. The result is a new pattern that has desity peaks at the edge instead of being in the center.

2. Again, take 2 identical (fractal) noise nodes. Connect the second node to a "Composer 3" (math node). This node has 3 inputs (x,y,z). Connect it for example to x.
   Now connect the output of the composer to the origin connector of the first noise node.
   This should push the peaks of the noise in one direction. 

Of course you can combine both techniques.

The reason why I use those techniques for cirrus clouds is because it approximates the effect the wind has on them. By pushing the clouds in a certain direction, the maximum density of the clouds is no more in the center but is shifted in the direction where the wind goes.

I hope this was not too confusing :-)

Similar techniques can be used to create desert dunes and ripples.

 Hi Chipp,

when googling for Vue tutorials I met your Terra Pak. Hey, This is amazing stuff!
I especially appreciated your E-book. Very clear and easy to understand. And the way you organized your materials is an excellent and really a clever example of how to deal with materials.

Hey, I downloaded it for free !???

I`m glad you know Eric Wenger. Have lots of respect for what he has done. His apps are outstanding. The fact that he is an artist he designs his software from an artistic point of view.
Voyager, for example, is reduced to the max. A few meta-parameters let you control your  entire scene. And it renders much faster than any other software I know. Voyager will certainly be the first app that lets you render movies in realtime (in a few years from now).

 Richard,

I have seen "Unto Us, A Son". That`s beautiful! How the heck did you create those warping clouds???

Thanks ... glad you like "Unto Us, A Son".

The clouds are created using an open source Fractal generating program called Apophysis (link). They were then exported as a PNG with Alpha channel, and then imported to a large Alpha plane. That's it!

It's a technique I've used in a few images.

Thanks
Richard

 Oh, I see. I have heard about Apophysis and it came into my mind when I saw your clouds.
It looks indeed impressive.
Actually I hoped that this ort of confined fractals could be produced in the function editor.

Quote - Is it possible to convert your sci-fi pack to Vue

Yesterday I had a look at my Artmatic skies. Did a 360 panoramic render of one of those skies.

In Vue I chose "Environment Mapping" as atmosphere option, and loaded the render. It worked perfectly. When I deleted the ground plane I had a full 360 panoramic sky. I then rendered one of the Artmatic moons separately and applied it on an Alpha Plane and this looked really great.

What it requires are hires renders of those skies and additional elements. I think when rendered at 8192x4096 resolution, the skies will look identical to the original skies.
What`s great is that in Vue any additional 3D elements can be added.

Also experimented with skies that used just Vue elements but finally I found the above mentioned method more convincing and a lot easier to use.

I will definitely work on a SciFi/Alien sky pack for Vue :-)

Quote -  Hi Chipp,
Hey, I downloaded it for free !???

Dick,

I'm not sure I understand. I suppose you know it's for sale at my website (www.vuetoolbar.com) and Cornucopia3D as well. If you didn't get it from there, where did you get it from?

 I thought so...

Was googling for tutorials and on a site, and landed on a site where I could download it. The password to activate was mentioned somewhere.
I was a bit suspicious first, but then I thought that it was you who offered it for free. I did not think any further and went on.

I will try to find the website again by scanning my browser history and will send you the link.

Well, in this case I will pay for it of course :-)

 Thanks for sending me the URL. I've taken the necessary steps to see it's removed.

best,
Chipp

Attached Link: http://www.news-eintrag.de/news/7614.html

I found a very interesting (German) news article about you and Artmatic Voyager / Alien Skies.

Mazak

@Chipp Sadly to hear you been robbed :( I own your excellent Terra Pack and it is a shame that it is somewhere for free in the net! :sad:

Mazak

Quote -  Spectral atmosphere. Transparency clouds (actually 2 layers at slightly different altitudes and shifted origin to get the shading).

Hi Dick

These are excellent presets ... preset sharing seems to work quite well around here - people share presets and others take them and play around with them, suggesting other ideas or improvements.

You can attach files to forum messages but you have to change the extension to .bmp or something and there is a 200K limit I think.

I don't think Vue 7 .atm files are backwards compatible - I've already tried.

Thanks
Richard

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the cloud samples, I will play with them soon. I look forward to your Sci-Fi pack, so far I've just relied on Hubble but it doesn't have the appearance of depth I would like to see.

Thanks Mazak, Richard and Timspfd for the warm welcome and nice feedback on the cirrus clouds. You`re welcome.

I`m confident that this kind of cirrus layers will make a nice contrast to the amazing Vue cumulus layers.

Mazak, thanks for putting up the link :-)

Richard, thanks for the hint on attaching files. The next file (in a couple of days) I  will be way too big, so I better provide a link...

Timspfd, I really hope that the SciFi sky pack will provide more depth.

Currently I`m figuring out the best way to get the scifi/alien sky collection into Vue.

Did tons of tests.

When things have progressed a bit further I will post a link to an example Vue scene. 

Things seem to work really fine with with environment mapping. They need to be huge (8000x4000) so the sky is crisp without the need to zoom out. 

Currently I think  that in order to get the best results and to be flexible it`s good when the environments maps provide the overall star scape with for example one mean nebula.

All the other elements, like moons, planets, clusters and additional nebulae, are separate renders that can be put onto alpha planes.

What`s really cool is that if you delete the ground plane you have a space environment all around.

Quite impressive.

Below is one of the test renders with an enviroment map (2048x1024) and some additional elements that were put onto alpha planes (the moon uses an alpha mask,  the other elements I turned additive.)

There were point lights added.

Rendertime 10 seconds :-)

That's just gorgeous

 Thanks Timspfd,

Will post a scene example a bit later...

 Here is an update on the Vue space pack project:

After some more tests and comparisons I decided against using environment maps. The reasons are as follows

1. In order to get really nice results and (almost) distortion-free skies it would require HUGE environment maps. For larger Vue pictures even 8000x4000 maps would still be too small. The reason for this is simple. With the camera focal setting of 66mm (to prevent distortion) it captures only a relatively small portion of the sky.

2.Just using completely premade skies are not really fun. I find that artists should have more freedom in setting up a scene.

1. When using the Environment Mapping option, you you are retricted to just a few parameters to setup your atmosphere.

So I came up with a much better solution.
The overall starscape (and some of the nebulae) will be generated by Vue and mapped onto a sphere.

All other elements will be added either as alpha planes or will be Vue objects.
Handling, as far as I can tell, is easy and fun and the resulting skies quite impressive.

The great thing about this system is that you can place/rotate each element and if you have also some freedom over the coloring of those elements (Including the starfield).
Another cool and very powerful feature will be that for the texturing of the sky sphere Metanodes are used with extracted parameters. It can somewhat be compared to Vue`s water editor.

On the next post you can see a rendered demo space scene which contains some of the elements mentioned above as well as some details. The scene file can be downloaded by clicking here

Id be happy to get some feedback on it . Also, Im curious to know if the scene file works for other versions than Vue 7 Infinite for PC/Vista

Enjoy!

The scene contains a starfield projected onto a sphere.

Diameter 190km.

The starfield is generated by Vue.

The reason this sphere is so big is because this will prevent cutting haze and fog off or bleeding into fog and haze (at least when Spectral Atmosphere is used)

The camera is placed somewhere near the center of the stars sphere.

Focal 66mm. This minimizes distortion near the edges.

There are 3 additional sky elements which are in fact pictures mapped onto Alpha Planes. The planes have "Billboard" checked so they will always face the camera.

As a reference I also have added a ground plane as well as a terrain which is placed

80km away from the center (hidden when you load the scene)

Very clever, very beautiful, very simple and extremely effective. Excellent work altogether.

Just downloaded it and rendered it and it looks fab.  Very fast to render too

Artur and Frank, that`s what I like to hear :-)

I`m relieved the scene file loaded correctly and that you like the effect this approach can have. 

You are both using Vue 7 Infinite I suppose.

If anyone finds any kind of faults regarding this setup I`d be interested to know too.

Mazak

 Thanks for feedback and advice, Mazak. Will check this out.