Changing the Realistic Sky Moon Texture?

eponica

I'm reporting from an alien planet right now, which uses the Realistic Sky. Everything looks suitably alien here except the moon is still the Earth Moon. How can I change this, as the moon is not showing as an object in the scene tree, nor do there appear to be controls for anything but color, brightness and position in the Sky editor? I have searched the forum and the Web with no hints as to how it's done. ^^;

WendyLuvsCatz

I doubt you can
it is a realistic sky after all not an alien sky :lol:
postwork maybe?

eponica

Yes, that's just what I was thinking Wendy. A little postwork in GIMP would be easy.

Still, I'm just too curious to not ask about this. :-P The sky must be pulling that image from Somewhere. If I could find the source file, maybe I could substitute another?

Diomede

There is a checkbox to show the moon or not. Could you solve your problem by not showing the realistic moon, then insert a sphere or spheres in the distance to represent alien moons?

eponica

Yes, I've been playing with that idea too :)

I love the Carrara space objects, I just turned Pluto into an extra moon :) The aura controls are so nice, and the glow shader works great!

evilproducer

I have nifty solution that works with the realistic sky. First, turn off the moon in the editor.

Here's what you do:

Set up your scene and lights.

Save a copy of your scene.

Open the copy and delete the terrestrial objects, but keep the lights and cameras exactly the same. Put in your moon or planet object. You could do that in the first scene and just delete everything except the planet, lights and cameras if it helps with framing.

Make sure that the atmosphere is removed as well. Render the scene. The planet or moon will appear against a black background. Save the render.

Now, open the original scene, if you put in your moon or planet, then hide or delete it.

Keep the atmosphere and select Map in the Backdrop pulldown menu. Load the picture you rendered.

Now, when you render your scene, the planet will appear behind the atmosphere. This looks really effective if you use clouds.

You could do it with other things as well. Need a giant space station in orbit? An attacking alien fleet? Works great!

evilproducer

That little effect also works if you stick an image in the Background. The major caveat being that since the Background wraps around the scene it should be a spherical render, and a large one at that. The plus is that it reflects in objects that have reflection and if you use the Skylight option in the render room it will contribute to atmospheric light in addition to what the realistic sky contributes.

The image in the Backdrop does not reflect or act as an image based light. It only fills the production frame, so any image you use should be the same aspect ratio as the final render.

You can also load animations into the Background and Backdrop, although the Background would be rather impractical.

eponica

That's a dandy trick! I'm going to be trying that one sometime today! :)

MarkIsSleepy

evilproducer said:

I have nifty solution that works with the realistic sky. First, turn off the moon in the editor.

Here's what you do:

Set up your scene and lights.

Save a copy of your scene.

Open the copy and delete the terrestrial objects, but keep the lights and cameras exactly the same. Put in your moon or planet object. You could do that in the first scene and just delete everything except the planet, lights and cameras if it helps with framing.

Make sure that the atmosphere is removed as well. Render the scene. The planet or moon will appear against a black background. Save the render.

Now, open the original scene, if you put in your moon or planet, then hide or delete it.

Keep the atmosphere and select Map in the Backdrop pulldown menu. Load the picture you rendered.

Now, when you render your scene, the planet will appear behind the atmosphere. This looks really effective if you use clouds.

You could do it with other things as well. Need a giant space station in orbit? An attacking alien fleet? Works great!

Great tip evilproducer!

This solves a problem I'd been fiddling with for the last week - I had a "broken" moon I wanted to put in the sky and I couldn't figure it out. Here's a couple test renders I just did using your technique. In the second one I turned down the brightness on the backdrop to make it look a little more faded as the sun rose. I'll have to play with this some more, but I think it will work perfectly for what I want to do.

Thank you!
Mark

evilproducer

That second one looks especially good.

evilproducer

It's also a great way to add a stars to the scene. Just be aware that if you use the realistic sky's moon, there is chance that you will see stars through it.

wscottart

Most definetly clipping this tidbit for later. Thanks! Any tips for making those huge spherical maps, and whats a good size to experiment with?

Diomede

You can download some sample spherical HDRI maps from around the web.
for example, http://www.hdri-hub.com/free-samples
Also, there are some spherical maps for sale in the Daz store, such as several HDRI sets.
In addition, I believe that you can make your own in Bryce and similar programs.

**! You can also make your own in Carrara. From the "insert" tab, insert a spherical camera. It will render 360 degrees all around the camera. You can insert the spherical map that results in the scene menu to create a full environment with a sky, horizon, ground, etc. You can also assign the spherical map to a sphere to make a "crystal ball" effect. For a general atmosphere, you will want to render a high quality detailed image or you will get splotchy skies, etc when it is assigned in the scene menu. Depending on how you use a 360 image, you may also want to learn about shadow catchers in the shader tree. !**

evilproducer

wscottart said:

Most definetly clipping this tidbit for later. Thanks! Any tips for making those huge spherical maps, and whats a good size to experiment with?

Well, they should be twice as wide as they are tall. If you need a nice clear image, they should also be large. Start with 8000 X 4000 to see where that gets you.

You will also want the camera at a right angle. I've played with different directions but tend to insert a camera and then tip it up so that is level and the numeric value in the motion tab is 90º. That's just my personal preference.

You could also apply a spherical image to a sphere and make it encompass the scene. I would use a vertex sphere and reverse the normals so they point inwards just to avoid any texture wonkiness.

My Black Hole video uses a spherical render with an alpha channel, so that only the ship is rendered and the space around it is an alpha. I mapped it to a sphere and then in the Background slot, I placed a star field. I did this towards the end of the video when the robot goes after the astronauts. The only things 3D in that sequence is the astronauts, the pipe, the robot and the sphere the image of the ship is mapped to. There was some other work to match lighting and such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-sNje4k0o

wscottart

diomede64 said:

You can download some sample spherical HDRI maps from around the web.
for example, http://www.hdri-hub.com/free-samples
Also, there are some spherical maps for sale in the Daz store, such as several HDRI sets.
In addition, I believe that you can make your own in Bryce and similar programs.

**! You can also make your own in Carrara. From the "insert" tab, insert a spherical camera. It will render 360 degrees all around the camera. You can insert the spherical map that results in the scene menu to create a full environment with a sky, horizon, ground, etc. You can also assign the spherical map to a sphere to make a "crystal ball" effect. For a general atmosphere, you will want to render a high quality detailed image or you will get splotchy skies, etc when it is assigned in the scene menu. Depending on how you use a 360 image, you may also want to learn about shadow catchers in the shader tree. !**

Wow between you and evil producer this is some some great powerful knowledge. I can hardly wait to begin exploring this, for now clipping it all to evernote so I don't lose it like everything else I come across.

evilproducer

I used Holly Wetcircuit's photoreal sun tutorial from the Carrara Cafe and decided to try an alien landscape. I also made a torus and replicated asteroids on it, but I think I need to use even more artistic license and make it more prominent. This was just a quickie and I already have an idea for a more detailed take on this scene.

As I mentioned, I had followed Holly's excellent tutorial and made the sun. She also uses a bulb light with a lens flare to sell the brightness of the sun. I didn't want the flare in the scene I rendered for the background image, so I set the flare to none for that copy of the scene. I did want the flare for the main scene, so I got rid of the sun model and kept the bulb light with the flare and used that for the light in the scene.

Before I got rid of the sun model, I used it as a guide to line up the RSE sun disk and aura with the model. Once that was done, I retained the bulb light and lens flare and deleted the model. I went into the RSE and kept the aura, but turned the sun disk's size down to 0%.

When I loaded in the render for the backdrop, the aura and lens flare in the scene line up perfectly with the backdrop.

I should also note, that in the scene with the ring and sun only, I added a distant light pointing back at the asteroid ring for reflected light. I excluded the sun model from the distant light.