Tips & Tricks For Space Scenes

evilproducer

brianorca said:

JimDHart said:

evilproducer said:

This image was created using your formula- Including the bump channel. The light didn't use soft shadows and the shadows are at 100%. I just used the default scene light.

Okay. I am getting similar results with these settings, but there is a side-effect that I could not work around. When you generate an image in the twilight region, you get several bands. One is where light no longer strikes the clouds directly. The other is where clouds disappear behind the planet's surface. (See 1st image below.) One way to keep bump and eliminate the band effect is to reduce shadows. In the 2nd image, I set Shadow Intensity to 10%. The problem NOW is that light strikes clouds behind the planet, so that is of no use.

The only solution I have found so far to deal with this is to eliminate bump.

Maybe you or someone has an idea how to deal with this?

BTW, this has been very helpful, and I am learning a great deal in this dialogue. Thanks.

You need to subdivide the sphere a bit more.

Ahh... Good call. My initial thought was banding from using a low setting on the soft shadows since he had mentioned using them earlier.

So, what's the advantage of using a vertex sphere over a primitive? I tend to just throw a primitive in the scene and haven't really noticed any issues with the geometry. Is a low poly vertex sphere with smoothing easier on the resources than a primitive?

briandaz_3e696c2bd8

evilproducer said:

brianorca said:

JimDHart said:

....

You need to subdivide the sphere a bit more.

Ahh... Good call. My initial thought was banding from using a low setting on the soft shadows since he had mentioned using them earlier.

So, what's the advantage of using a vertex sphere over a primitive? I tend to just throw a primitive in the scene and haven't really noticed any issues with the geometry. Is a low poly vertex sphere with smoothing easier on the resources than a primitive?
Unfortunately, Carrara's "primitive" sphere isn't treated as a perfect sphere anyways. It still ends up getting converted to a mesh, and doesn't give you many options about how it's done. There are very few programs that treat spheres properly, and the only one that comes to mind is the old PovRay renderer.

It's not that it's "easier on the resources" so much as it's easier to program. While the math for a light ray intersecting a sphere is trivial, it is substantially different from the math for a mesh. And when they have to start adding things like textures, bump, and modifiers, it's hell trying to maintain separate logic for each primitive.

FractalDimensia

"A Walk in the Park"

Working at a different "angle" for this space scene....

There are 3 terrains at varying distances, each with a replicator for the rocks.

evilproducer

Nice job. Very Martian.

evilproducer

Lots of good information in this thread! It was very informative reading about how a sphere primitive is handled vs. a vertex sphere. Holly's tutorial on how to make a sun object and shade it is super valuable. I sure hope any new Carrara users that haven't looked at this thread, "bump" into it! ;-)

Dartanbeck

You speak the truth, my friend!
I'm glad that this got brought back up to page one - as it is my belief that this thread is not yet complete. And now with the intervention of Phil Wilkes cool discovery on linear workflow rendering, we have a whole new set of rules to play with! Try out his Gamma Correction 2.2 Discovery on your favorite Space Scenes!

Headwax

Hey, you can't bump this thread, You'll give away all it's secrets. ;)