Earth from Space

[Fuchur]

Hi guys,

 

I am working on a small project I dont spoil too much about, but I liked the last rendering and wanted to show it to you.

 

Let me know what you think .

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[itsjustme]

Looks great so far, Gerald!

[kwhitaker]

nice, looking cool, crisp and clean.

[robcat2075]

I like it. The lens flare might be a bit too prominent since the sun itself doesn't appear very bright.

[Darkwing]

Actually, that gets me to wondering, do you have more than one light in the scene? Cause I don't think the side of earth facing us should be that brightly lit where you have the sun located I presume somewhat behind the planet

[TheSpleen]

love it

less lensflare is my only suggestion

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Am I missing something or is that Earth in a BINARY star system? Trinary from the look of the lighting... LoL. (One behind the camera)

 

Nice render though. I donated a project to the data CD a few years back that used several different resolutions of images from the "Blue Marble" project. I also have a full solar system project with textures. The orbits are to scale.

 

Let me know if you want either of them. Included are land images for earth from all twelve months of the year for different snow and ice lines as well as a map for city lights so you could light up the dark side...

 

I would concur with the less or smaller lens flare and the lighting of the planet itself, unless that's the look you were going for.

 

Cheers!

[Fuchur]

Am I missing something or is that Earth in a BINARY star system? Trinary from the look of the lighting... LoL. (One behind the camera)

 

Nice render though. I donated a project to the data CD a few years back that used several different resolutions of images from the "Blue Marble" project. I also have a full solar system project with textures. The orbits are to scale.

 

Let me know if you want either of them. Included are land images for earth from all twelve months of the year for different snow and ice lines as well as a map for city lights so you could light up the dark side...

 

I would concur with the less or smaller lens flare and the lighting of the planet itself, unless that's the look you were going for.

 

Cheers!

 

Thank you guys and...

 

of course there are... but it would be quite a dark scene, if we had only one sun in there behind the earth (because I liked the look of it) with not too much too show... actually, the sunlight is facing from next to the camera (a little on the left towards the earth... (sunlights doesn't care about their position but only the orientation)) . Actually there are even more lights in the scene... we got 5 or 6 if I am not wrong (don't have it open currently).

 

A few stars, a specularity light, a light inside the earth to highlight the clouds above the ground, the "sun" you all see and in addition to that, a small amount of global ambiance (without AO, since that made not too much sense too me... so the sunlight got 5 rays, not 1).

 

But the most interesting part is the glow around the earth... how do you think I got it to look that strong and nice (i liked it quite much) without overpronouncing/overbrighten the actual earth?

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[Fuchur]

Nobody ?

[NancyGormezano]

But the most interesting part is the glow around the earth... how do you think I got it to look that strong and nice (i liked it quite much) without overpronouncing/overbrighten the actual earth?

 

I like the lensflare, composition!

 

Would prefer the satelite to be more shiny metalically. If going for realism, then I would prefer the earth to look more "blue marbley"

 

I found the larger glow (atmospheric ring) interesting, eye catching, but a bit too large (too deep) relative to the earth size.

 

I found the tighter smaller "atmospheric ring" strange, felt too solid.

 

I will guess that you might have either composited, or used a separate transparent model positioned in front of earth? or used "planet glow" shader (or something like that).

[Fuchur]

But the most interesting part is the glow around the earth... how do you think I got it to look that strong and nice (i liked it quite much) without overpronouncing/overbrighten the actual earth?

 

I like the lensflare, composition!

 

Would prefer the satelite to be more shiny metalically. If going for realism, then I would prefer the earth to look more "blue marbley"

 

I found the larger glow (atmospheric ring) interesting, eye catching, but a bit too large (too deep) relative to the earth size.

 

I found the tighter smaller "atmospheric ring" strange, felt too solid.

 

I will guess that you might have either composited, or used a separate transparent model positioned in front of earth? or used "planet glow" shader (or something like that).

 

Hi Nancy...

 

nothing about composition or glow or the planet glow-shader (nice, but doesnt create exactly that look but is always a little more toony).

 

But the model was a good guess... I created a flat ring out of patches, painted a transparency-map (a simple gradient from black to white). Then I attached it using a patch-image to the patch-ring. I had to rotate the patch-image of some of the patches, but finally it worked out quite good. After that I created a bone for it facing away from the earth. It had to be place at the exact 0/0/0-point so it could easily rotate around the earth without hiting it.. In the chor, I used an AimAt-Constraint to always aim the ring at the camera and like that I got a quite nice, controlable glow around the planet. Using the color-value of the ring-group, scale one of the ring-splines and changing the percentage-value of the transparency-map it is now possible to increase / decrease the glow, adjust its color and adjust its strength.

 

The cool thing about it: It doesnt effect the rest of the planet. Glow itself would always make the surface too bright for me, so this was an easy but quite effective way to do it.

The hard edge around the surface of the earth is something I could not get rid of... I tried to fade the transparency-map-value from black to white to black, but somehow I could not get it to work exactly as I wanted... anyway it looks much better than glow itself and is easier to control... so this solution only is useable with spheres, not with anything else as long as the camera gets animated.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Hi Nancy...

 

nothing about composition or glow or the planet glow-shader (nice, but doesnt create exactly that look but is always a little more toony).

 

But the model was a good guess... I created a flat ring out of patches, painted a transparency-map (a simple gradient from black to white). Then I attached it using a patch-image to the patch-ring. I had to rotate the patch-image of some of the patches, but finally it worked out quite good. After that I created a bone for it facing away from the earth. It had to be place at the exact 0/0/0-point so it could easily rotate around the earth without hiting it.. In the chor, I used an AimAt-Constraint to always aim the ring at the camera and like that I got a quite nice, controlable glow around the planet. Using the color-value of the ring-group, scale one of the ring-splines and changing the percentage-value of the transparency-map it is now possible to increase / decrease the glow, adjust its color and adjust its strength.

 

The cool thing about it: It doesnt effect the rest of the planet. Glow itself would always make the surface too bright for me, so this was an easy but quite effective way to do it.

The hard edge around the surface of the earth is something I could not get rid of... I tried to fade the transparency-map-value from black to white to black, but somehow I could not get it to work exactly as I wanted... anyway it look much better than glow itself and is easier to control... so this solution only is useable with spheres, not with anything else.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

Fuchur,

 

Sounds like you have a very creative solution to the glow problem. I fiddled with that for quite a while before I did away with it. Here's an old render from V14 that I did for a simple desktop background. It used a single light source (Sun) and Glow was still used and shows as a edge on the dark side. All in all it came out pretty good.

 

I'll play with adding a star field to it and see if I can get glow to cooperate for me as you describe.

 

[rusty]

But the most interesting part is the glow around the earth... how do you think I got it to look that strong and nice (i liked it quite much) without overpronouncing/overbrighten the actual earth?

 

I like the lensflare, composition!

 

Would prefer the satelite to be more shiny metalically. If going for realism, then I would prefer the earth to look more "blue marbley"

 

I found the larger glow (atmospheric ring) interesting, eye catching, but a bit too large (too deep) relative to the earth size.

 

I found the tighter smaller "atmospheric ring" strange, felt too solid.

 

I will guess that you might have either composited, or used a separate transparent model positioned in front of earth? or used "planet glow" shader (or something like that).

 

Hi Nancy...

 

nothing about composition or glow or the planet glow-shader (nice, but doesnt create exactly that look but is always a little more toony).

 

But the model was a good guess... I created a flat ring out of patches, painted a transparency-map (a simple gradient from black to white). Then I attached it using a patch-image to the patch-ring. I had to rotate the patch-image of some of the patches, but finally it worked out quite good. After that I created a bone for it facing away from the earth. It had to be place at the exact 0/0/0-point so it could easily rotate around the earth without hiting it.. In the chor, I used an AimAt-Constraint to always aim the ring at the camera and like that I got a quite nice, controlable glow around the planet. Using the color-value of the ring-group, scale one of the ring-splines and changing the percentage-value of the transparency-map it is now possible to increase / decrease the glow, adjust its color and adjust its strength.

 

The cool thing about it: It doesnt effect the rest of the planet. Glow itself would always make the surface too bright for me, so this was an easy but quite effective way to do it.

The hard edge around the surface of the earth is something I could not get rid of... I tried to fade the transparency-map-value from black to white to black, but somehow I could not get it to work exactly as I wanted... anyway it looks much better than glow itself and is easier to control... so this solution only is useable with spheres, not with anything else as long as the camera gets animated.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

Wow, this sounds exactly like what I need! You lost me a little of your description of how you did it--is there anywhere I can get more information on this technique or see an example?

 

Thanks,

Rusty

[Fuchur]

It is really quite simple:

1.) Create a sphere.

2.) Create a ring of a single patch around that sphere. You can easily use the lath-tool for that.

3.) Create a texture-map with a gradient from black to white. (EXR with 32bit is a good idea, will give the best results, but a TGA can work too).

4.) Create a group containing the ring-patch.

4.) Use the texture-map as a patch-image on the ring-patch-group. (drag and drop the image on the group)

5.) Set the Patch-Image-Type to "Transparency".

6.) Sometimes you need to rotate the patch-image around on some of the patches of the ring-patch-group. For that just select the patch which is wrong, right-click on it in the modelling-window and use "Rotate Image".

7.) Create a bone for the ring which is placed exactly at the center of the sphere (and like that at the center of the ring-group).

8.) Make sure it faces out in a 90°-angle. (so if you look flatly on the ring, the bone should face directly at you)

9.) Attach the ring-path-CPs to the bone.

9.) Drop the model in a chor.

10.) Create an AimAt-Constraint on the bone of the model and aim it at the camera.

 

This should do it... you can decrease and increase the glow by sclaing the outer ring-spline. The intensity can be changed by changing the percentage of the transparency value.

I had somet intersting effects with an additional glow on the sphere itself, like you can see in the provided model.

 

Hope this helps . Let me know if you got stuck somewhere.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

planet_glow_simple.zip

[Kamikaze]

Gerald,

 

Thanks for the file and the detailed info .... this will come in handy to learn from..

 

Mike

[rusty]

It is really quite simple:

1.) Create a sphere.

2.) Create a ring of a single patch around that sphere. You can easily use the lath-tool for that.

3.) Create a texture-map with a gradient from black to white. (EXR with 32bit is a good idea, will give the best results, but a TGA can work too).

4.) Create a group containing the ring-patch.

4.) Use the texture-map as a patch-image on the ring-patch-group. (drag and drop the image on the group)

5.) Set the Patch-Image-Type to "Transparency".

6.) Sometimes you need to rotate the patch-image around on some of the patches of the ring-patch-group. For that just select the patch which is wrong, right-click on it in the modelling-window and use "Rotate Image".

7.) Create a bone for the ring which is placed exactly at the center of the sphere (and like that at the center of the ring-group).

8.) Make sure it faces out in a 90°-angle. (so if you look flatly on the ring, the bone should face directly at you)

9.) Attach the ring-path-CPs to the bone.

9.) Drop the model in a chor.

10.) Create an AimAt-Constraint on the bone of the model and aim it at the camera.

 

This should do it... you can decrease and increase the glow by sclaing the outer ring-spline. The intensity can be changed by changing the percentage of the transparency value.

I had somet intersting effects with an additional glow on the sphere itself, like you can see in the provided model.

 

Hope this helps . Let me know if you got stuck somewhere.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

Out-Fing-standing!! Thank you.