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Vue F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2025 Jan 24 7:34 pm)



Subject: Planet from a Terrain??


thefixer ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 7:28 AM · edited Sat, 03 August 2024 at 5:46 PM

Ok I know it's been asked before but a search hasn't revealed it!!

I've just taken advantage of the 7.5 upgrade and looked at a premade scene of a planet made from a terrain. Now i've looked at it and studied it [for 5 minutes LOL] and can't figure how it's done and the pdf manual isn't much help either, at least I can't find the info anyway [LOL].
So if anyone can point me in the right direction to make my own planet from a terrain that would be good.
TIA!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


Rutra ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 7:46 AM

File -> Options -> Units & Coordinates -> tick "planetary terrain" and choose whether you want the full sphere or just the bit that the camera sees and define the planet radius. Your infinite terrain will then be magically transformed into a nice round planet. :-)

And by the way, it is in the manual... :-))


Rutra ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 7:48 AM

By the way, I wrote that by memory, I'm not sure if it's exactly like that but it should be similar.


thefixer ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 7:51 AM

Thanks Rutra, I'll give it a go, appreciated!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


thefixer ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 7:53 AM

Perfect, many thanks!!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


Rutra ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 2:45 PM · edited Thu, 15 October 2009 at 2:46 PM

You're welcome.
I love planetary terrains, except for one thing which is a very strange behavior: if you create an ecosystem in a planetary terrain, it will not populate below the equator line. Just like an eco won't populate on the lower half of a sphere. The rest of the things (coordinate system, atmosphere, etc) works like you'd expect (in a spherical logic) so it was surprising to me to see the ecosystems don't.


thefixer ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 2:57 PM · edited Thu, 15 October 2009 at 3:10 PM

Haven't tried ecos on them yet, I'm still trying to work out a decent amosphere, when I pick any of the ones that come with Vue I get a message saying that I can't use it with a spherical terrain.
Any hints on atmos??
Sorry to be a pain, but new toy and that!! [LOL].

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


Rutra ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 3:07 PM

I'm afraid I'm not of much help in what regards preset atmos, as I never use any. I create all my atmospheres from scratch, starting from the default one. Sorry...


thefixer ( ) posted Thu, 15 October 2009 at 3:09 PM

Ok thanks for the help anyway, appreciated!

Injustice will be avenged.
Cofiwch Dryweryn.


FalseBogus ( ) posted Fri, 16 October 2009 at 2:54 AM

thanks for this thread. Helped me the trouble of trying to figure it out too ;)


Plutom ( ) posted Fri, 16 October 2009 at 9:56 PM · edited Fri, 16 October 2009 at 10:06 PM

file_441370.jpg

There is another way to make nice looking planets-its the sphere within a sphere method.  It takes a little work especially if you are designing your own distant worlds terrain.  The terrain is done in your favorite 2D program, the map must be a 2:1 ratio eg 4000wX2000h etc and simply carve it up on a black background (black becomes invisible), another layer for water or you can combine both to start with.  The next sphere is for your clouds, I use the earth cloud maps.  Again white clouds on black backgrounds.

In Vue simply make two spheres, one for the terrain water sphere and the other slightly larger for your atmosphere (cloud layer).  Since the cloud layer is sort of tricky, you will need to null out everything except your transparency layer where you activate additive mode making everything invisible except the clouds.

To check your work, null out your atmosphere, (fog and haze to zero) and brightness to taste and check it-your world over a black background.

Since you have two spheres, you can rotate each one to create different terrain views or cloud dispersal.  The thing that I can't figure out is how to get clouds to cast shadows on the terrain.

However, when you return your atmosphere levels to normal and throw your grouped spheres way into the background, it will show up behind all your clouds.

Folks using Maya etc do their planets that way and for that matter, you can do it in Poser and you can cast cloud shadows on the terrain in there.

Sort of wordy--sorry--Jan

PS, it looks like this with all the atmosphere nulled out


Rutra ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 5:12 AM · edited Sat, 17 October 2009 at 5:16 AM

Plutom, your planet looks very good. I use a similar technique to build planets seen from a distance. I add an aditional sphere for the atmosphere and use a fresnel effect to make it visible mainly in the borders. Here two images I made with this technique:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1741954
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1647033

But this technique is not sufficient when you need to place your camera near the ground of your planet, like in these images I made with planetary terrains:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1895219
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1899439
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1889407

The planets in the distance are also made with spheres, of course, as there can be only one planetary terrain in a given scene.

So, depending on the situation, you could need one technique or the other.

 


Plutom ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 7:23 AM

Morning Rutra, your right on the close up shots and by the way your renderings are fantastic.  I noticed that in one of them, you actually got the clouds to display a shadow on the water and terrain.  How did you get that.

Question #2, you stated that you used procedural on your rings, how did you design your rings to get that super effect.  Everything about the ring structure looks correct, you nailed the thickness (ring thickness is extremely thin when compared to the planet--just a few kilometers thick at the most).  Is astronomy a hobby or your career--you nailed everything.  Jan


Rutra ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 8:08 AM

Good morning, Jan. :-)

Thanks. Regarding the cloud shadows, which one do you mean? If you're talking about "micro-world of soul-sphere" those are normal Vue clouds around a planetary terrain. It's a perfectly normal cloud layer which becomes spherical when applied to a spherical scene. So, I didn't do anything special about it.

About the rings:
Those are many torus primitives, flattened and with different radius and thickness. I applied to them all a material from the light gel folder, one of those that simulate caustics. :-) I just changed the transparency profile and scale. In fact, I think I made the rings not transparent enough and so in a later image I made it much more transparent and also changed some of the colors, making it a bit more diversified:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1953366

Astronomy is neither a hobby nor a career, but I'm a sort of passionate about stars and space. :-)
For that image I looked at reference images and studied some of the theory behind rings. I usually study some of the background of whatever I'm depicting in my images.


Plutom ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 9:20 AM

Thanks for the info Rutra,  I was talking about the distant images of the planet similiar to the one I have displayed as far as ground shadows.  The one I was refering to was with a POV of about 250 to 300 miles up.  As for the rings, I'm going to try the Torus thing with light gel/caustics--thanks.

Since you are passionate about stars and space (like I am), you may want to give Solarvoyager.com a look see (I'm a moderator there).  We are relatively small group consisting of folks from NASA/JPL, teens through folks older than dirt.  Only requirement is an interest in Space, astronomy and art.  We do critique each other--nicely.

As for the plug, we do plug Renderosity over there-eg folks needing help in Vue or ideas of renderings in Vue are often refered here.  Jan  


Rutra ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 4:13 PM

file_441394.jpg

Sorry for the delay, I was finalizing an image and got too absorbed on it. :-)

Regarding cloud shadows, I'm not sure why you don't have shadows in your planets. Here you can see the most relevant tabs of the cloud material of one of those planets. Do you see something different from yours?


Rutra ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 4:17 PM

About solarvoyager.com, I'll take a look but I already have big troubles to find the time to do all the things I want to do, so I'd probably not be a good member of another community. Thanks for the invitation anyway and I will take a look. :-)


Rutra ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 4:39 PM

Wow, that community may be small but they do create very good images. Definitely worth a long look. Thanks!


Plutom ( ) posted Sat, 17 October 2009 at 5:36 PM

Thanks Rutra for the comment on SV and for what I forgot to do in creating the shadows-forgot the transparency production and bump maps-they did the trick--Jan

Now to refine the bump layer a little
 


Arraxxon ( ) posted Tue, 20 October 2009 at 7:44 PM · edited Tue, 20 October 2009 at 7:45 PM

thefixer - basic rule - you can only use spectral atmospheres for those new planetary terrains ...
You have to find the one working the best for your scene - not easy - but we want to have some challenge in our creations ...  ;-)

But you have to play around then with cloud layers and their height , thickness , even changing things like fog, haze and so on can have an effect on the look and feel of the planetary atmosphere.
But it depends on the chosen planetary diameter, too, how the changes and values given for the above mentionend atmo aspects will be seen and influence the overall look ...

I'm new to it, too, and i've noticed, there is a lot to experiment with ... while i have created my first images using this new function ...


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