Ok, I'm flummoxed. I have tried to use a torus with the actual "Map" (Obtained from a NASA website. Won't map at all correctly. I've tried an alpha plane with variable levels of transparency. Nothing that I've tried will work to any satisfaction. The closest I've come is to use a series of nested torii, but it's still not good enough. There is no way to isolate the "Saturn ring" from the planet would there be? (BTW, is there any way of using the "Planet" object and having it accept other maps? Of course a map can be applied to a sphere, but the result is less than stellar. No pun intended... yeah right.) Does anyone have any suggestions? I've only been using Vue for about three months or a little more so I'm not a Grandmaster, but not COMPLETELY hopeless. Thanks Dr. Nash

Attached Link: http://www.derby-vi-service.demon.co.uk/pictures.htm

You can see some saturn rings at my site by following the link. They are towards the bottom of the page. Use an alpha plain, a torus is too thick, the rings are very thin. These rings are generated from Nasa data. I have data for transparency and reflectivity. The pictures, unfinished, currently only have transparency data applied, plus a little bit of procedural noise. The maps are applied to an alpha plain. The original data is in the form of a string of numbers, giving values across the rings. These are used to form a greyscale 'strip', which I then turned into rings of the right proportions in Corel Draw. I also had a go at purely procedural rings a few months ago, but I can't get at the image from where I am sitting, though there is an early vesion on my site. These procedural rings us a boolean operation to create the hole in the middle. Hope this helps.

You also commented on planets - the Vue 4 built-in planets are nice in the distance, but you can make much better ones using spheres, as you can make them as accurate as you like using all the features available in Vue. E.g., look at the edge of Saturn above - its slightly transparent.

Toruses can be as thin as you like. Just create a torus, double-click on it and configurate. Guitta

Really like that second picture of Saturn you have on your HP Zoon.

Holy Cow, that is amazing, you did a great job on those rings. Sharen

outstanding! You win my hero award (with barbed wire cluster) for the work of translating raw date into such terrific results :)

Attached Link: http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/data/saturn/rings.html

I got my data from some obscure NASA document, which I can't trace, but here is a site containing raw data and greyscale strips. Also the pic here is a ringed planet created using only vue functions.

Zoon, The first image is exactly what I'm looking for! Now, I understand using the numbers to form a greyscale strip (I am assuming it is like the one on the link containing transparency data). I guess my real question is how to get that data from the strip into a concentric ring texture that is capable of being mapped on an alpha plane? I use Paint shop Pro (Mainly cause it was cheap and pretty functional). Do you make an image with concentric circles and use it in greyscale as your alpha map? Sorry if I appear a bit pedantic. You have some wonderful images on your site, I appreciate the replies. Dr. Nash

I did it in Corel Draw, and then converted to a bitmap. I've just shifted 30 3 foot by 2 foot concrete slabs, so I'm going for a long bath. IF I get out of the bath this evening, I'll post some details of how to do it. The final bitmap is 20mb, and even zipped its 6 mb, so showing you is going to be easier than sending the image!

Here's how I converted the strip into a ring system. I imported the strip into Corel Draw, a vector drawing program. You can see the strip selected. I then placed the centre of rotation in the correct position, where the red arrow is pointing. This is at the centre of 'Saturn'. I can't remember the proportions, but just find out the inner and outer ring diameters from any boy scout's diary. I then duplicated and rotated 0.5 of a degree. In corel, if you have moved an object as you duplicate, using the numeric pad plus, any subsequent duplications do the same movement, in this case a rotation. After about 20 duplications, I selected the group, and rotated and duplicated this, so I didn't have to click the mouse 720 times. You can see a sample above the original strip. I then saved it as a bitmap, loaded it into photopaint, and added very slight gaussian blur. After working with the rings, I did a bit of cheating. The very dark band you can see just gave a solid ring in Vue, and didn't look right, so I selectively masked this in photopaint, and lightened it. So its not really spot on Saturn values in my picture. Hope this helps, I'm sure there are other ways, but this was the easiest. I daresay you could directly map the strip onto a thin torus and fiddle with x and y in some way, but I'm too tired to think now. I might have a go tommorrow. It should be possible to fiddle something purely in vue once you've got the strip. When I made the strip I reduced the numbers to greyscale, giving 256 levels. The NASA data went to about 10 decimal places. Have fun. ps here's a set of instruction I posted for someone on how to make the procedural rings, I think they were using Vue 2; First, the rings are a cylinder, squashed flat, to make a disc with a slight thickness. This is then cut with another cylinder using CSG boolean difference. nOw you have your basic ring disc. For the material, I'll give you all of the settings I can, and you can try to reproduce it in 2.1. Remember that with materials like this, lighting is very important. The lighting in yur scene could make it look very different. of course you can alter the settings I will give you to tune your picture. First, go int your material editor and click on 'new' to get a new material. Select 'object space' and 'cast shadows'. COLOUR PRODUCTION set 'procedural colours'. Create a colour colour map containing band of colour to your needs. You do this by right clicking on the colour map and selecting 'edit'. My colour map has 11 bands. Right click on the function preview and select 'edit function'. For your first function, select type 'onion'. Combination mode set to 'blend'. Leave the scale at 1 1 1, and click 'fractal layer'. Edit the fractal layer, setting complexity to 4, and scale and amplitude both to 0.5. Combination mode 'add'. Leave the fractal layer editor. You should now be back in the material colour function editor. Click 'add' and add another onion layer. This layer is as for the first layer except that the scale is set to 0.1 0.1 0.1, and the fractal layer complexity is set to 2. Click ok and leave the colour function editor. BUMP PRODUCTION Right click on the colour function preview, (the little square picture in the colour tab). Select 'copy function'. Go to the bump tab. Right click on the bump production preview picture, and select 'paste function'. HIGHLIGHTS Set to zero. TRANSPARENCY Set global transparency to 100 percent. Select 'variable transparency'. Set 'fading out' to zero. Set 'blurred trans' to zero. Set 'refractive index' to 1. Set 'flare' to zero. Copy the colour funtion to the transparency function as you did fur bumps. Right click on the transparency production preview picture and select edit. Create these extra layers using 'add': leopard scale 0.01 0.01 0.01. Fractal layer complexity 2, mode add, scale .5 amplitude .5. turbulence comp 2, noise (smooth), mode add, scale 2, amp .25, harmonics .5. rotation x 91, y 54, z 200. Onion scale .8 .8 .8. fractal layer comp 2, add, scale .5, amp .5. leopard scale .05 .05 .05. Click ok and leave the function editor. Right click on the transparency function graph in the transparency tab. Edit the graph to make it look like the picture with this post (above). REFLECTIONS In my picture the reflections are set to zero, but if you want reflections, select 'variable reflectivity' and copy the transparency function to the reflection function preview picture. EFFECTS these are setting for my picture, they may be different in yours. Set lighting, diffuse and ambient both to 500 percent. You have to type this in, the slider only goes to 100 percent. I have 'colour reflected light' set. Transition to shadow is 72. FINAL Make large mug of tea and relax.

Sorry about the lack of paragraph breaks in the post above, I've accidentally installed a beta netscape and I think that's the problem.

Holey Moley! Thanks for the info, Zoon! I am humbled. I assumed that that was the way it would have to be done, by creating a vector bitmap. I'll get to work on it and see if I can get similar results. I appreciate all the work you have done! Many thanks! Dr. Nash

I'll try to attach he first ring made by the procedural method delineated above. Thanks Zoon! MN

Great info and good results! This thread has been added to the Archive Tips Collection so others will be able to find it easily in days to come. :)