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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: efflux on June 23, 2015, 07:59:25 PM

Title: Two Planets
Post by: efflux on June 23, 2015, 07:59:25 PM
I was using Modo and getting used to the way of working where you use multiple meshes so I thought why not do this in Terragen. It's so blatantly obvious because each planet can be totally different entities meaning surfaces etc can be easily controlled. Rocks poking through sand for example. No need to mess with an impossible masking situations. Maybe others have tried this, I don't know. This extreme terrain never satisfied me because it was all gashed at lower level as well and no way too cleanly create a sand like surface that broke with the smoother rock. It works now so I might go back and add details. I tried before but wasn't happy.

There are all sorts of possibilities wit this. Warped terrain jutting out of non warped terrain etc etc.

Still on the previous Terragen version here but I have some things to upgrade. Modo and my graphics card for a start. I might upgrade though. Is the rendering faster?
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Dune on June 24, 2015, 02:07:38 AM
The hard thing with multiple planets is that the transitions aren't gradual, but that's not always bad. The good thing (I believe) is that GISD will work stronger on areas of mesh transition, which may or may not be a good thing. I don't know about render time, though.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: fleetwood on June 24, 2015, 07:36:26 AM
Good idea. Could naturally limit populations that way too. On smaller scales displaced planes poking through the planet surface do some similar things.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: efflux on June 24, 2015, 08:28:23 AM
It's just a simple idea but has a lot of consequences. For example, if you distrubute stones or rocks on one planet they won't be on the other but nodes can be hooked across to both. The tight transition can be harsh but that's one of the benefits because you can create transitions that would be otherwise impossible. I have tried hooking surfaces from one planet to the other to break the transition. This works but you still have a sharp geometry transition even if surfaces are the same. A good experiment would be to use two planets with the same terrain but adjust one so it pokes through in a controlled way. I've tried that but the renders I have look quite standard. You wouldn't know it was two planets. I'll try to make something a bit cleverer.

As for render times, it will be higher because Terragen does render parts of both planets that you don't see. You'll see this as it renders with a lot of dark patches as it tries to sort out the shadows. The final result seems to be fine though.

I did come across one issue where I increased the setting that gets Terragen to look further for displacements because I was getting the chopped off displacements problem on terrain. It seems that this creates a problem even if both planets have the same setting.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 24, 2015, 10:13:08 AM

Efflux using two planets isn't a new idea. It does have its own problems and can be used for certain things with good results.
Using a displaceable plane (this isn't new too) is probably better from a rendering time aspect.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: WAS on June 24, 2015, 11:52:22 PM
The only thing I use this for is oceans, or a sphere. The only problem with both of these as even with shadows off, you don't get smooth effects, such as volume decay.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: efflux on June 25, 2015, 12:17:12 PM
WASasquatch,

I used it for oceans as well but one of these has a problem with water. I'm not sure that they both do. I can't remember which way it was. You have to either use a sphere or a planet for oceans. I'd have to look back at my Terragen files to see what the issue was.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: WAS on June 25, 2015, 01:30:17 PM
Both yield the same exact effects. Both are the same objects, one just has added atmosphere and surface plugin on the node itself, planet has some basic default settings, where as sphere is relative to position with it's small default sizes. Both have no transparency with water, and both have hard edges. And both are not able to be correctly viewed in preview. Overall, the fact there is not a solid transparent surface shader with height control, that is smooth with the ability to add a water shader as it's surface shader is really beyond me. This is a simple feature of almost all 3D programs with a sphere. :(
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 25, 2015, 01:54:00 PM

WASasquatch, you can do height control with a sphere,plane,Lake objects and use the water node with them.Some easier some less so.
Other then some transparency issues that can come out some times, i am not sure what the problem is? 
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: WAS on June 25, 2015, 01:58:17 PM
The problem is you don't get transparency, which is the main goal of water  :P

The water will be solid blue until the very shore edge, and then create hard pixel collisions against the shore. From space this isn't a issue, however, it is a issue that there is absolutely no shore transparency. Your terrain looks fake, and has no volume, just peaks out of the water.

What I mean by a solid shader is it will create displacement to whatever the height is set to, and it's volume completely transparent to said parent terrain. This allows you to use the water shader on a global scale, with volumetric effects. Currently we have a object. And terragen doesn't support object transparency with the water shader as it's surface, as then the parent surface becomes black, so the water is as blue as it can get, and has no transparency as it's just a  surface effect with reflection.

This "Solid" Surface Shader would act like a "Surface Shader" with a child set of nodes to be it's surface in whatever unique manner you see fit, but it's input would be the "Floor" of the surface, and it's volume (displacement) perfectly smooth wrapped around the sphere. Creating whatever depth surface you need.


This type of shader could be used for so much more then just water too.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 25, 2015, 03:47:24 PM

With another planet node it is problematic if you want transparency.
You can use higher settings then 1 like 10 (you know that you can use much higher settings in many (all?) places in Terragen)for example.
But because of the shadow of the planet and the other settings etc. it is hard to use so far i know.

So if you want transparency in a global scale the best is to use a sphere object .
When you disable the shadow in the sphere object you can use it easily.
Put the planets radius in all of the sphere scale inputs (and adjust it for your need) and use the same centre as the planet node for the sphere.
Others might be more of a help. I haven't tried rendering with a sphere but there shouldn't be so much problem except at the edges a little maybe(not sure).
Have you tried it?

Not sure if this is any help.

Regarding other ways to do this, there is always room for improvement of course.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: WAS on June 25, 2015, 04:50:53 PM
I use a sphere mainly because it's easier to get in scene then a planet, with disabling nodes, etc. But again, with my transparency set as 100000 I see no difference. It's a black surface under the water. The transparency works fine, without the water surface.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 25, 2015, 05:08:16 PM
Quote from: WASasquatch on June 25, 2015, 04:50:53 PM
I use a sphere mainly because it's easier to get in scene then a planet, with disabling nodes, etc. But again, with my transparency set as 100000 I see no difference. It's a black surface under the water. The transparency works fine, without the water surface.

Disabling shadow is important.Probably the decay distance too.It works for me.I just tried it to be sure.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 25, 2015, 05:15:47 PM

Maybe a version difference in Terragen? I use v3.2 (3.2.03.0).

Edit: Efflux i hope you don't mind it is still related to two planets at least :)
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: Kadri on June 25, 2015, 05:25:33 PM

A very basic way to be sure is plug the Water node directly to the Sphere surface shader input.
Don't use the default shader(unplug it)) in the sphere and see what happens.

If nothing works you can upload the bare scene here.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: WAS on June 25, 2015, 05:57:39 PM
Yeah sorry if this is blowing up your topic. I'll post another and just share the project, cause there is another question I have as well regarding clouds.
Title: Re: Two Planets
Post by: mafriedl on April 27, 2017, 05:34:13 PM
Has anyone tried rendering a two planet setup through an animated camera? I'm getting pretty bad flickering, presumably where the two terrains line up closely