I am very pleased to announce the release of the Alien/SciFi Skies Set for Artmatic Voyager.

You can find all the relevant informations here

Cheers,

Dick

Tags:SciFi Skies, Environment 360, Voyager

I am almost done with the Alien/SciFi skies collection. Some of you might be curious to see what the skies look like. I have just set up a gallery so you can view each and every sky of the collection. The pictures are renders from the Voyager scene files included in the set. So the RGB surfaces used for in the renders are also part of the set.

Enjoy!

-Alien/SciFi Skies gallery-

Tags:Voyager, Alien Skies, SciFi Skies, Environment 360

Have you ever wished we had another light source in Voyager besides the sun.
I think I have found a way to at least fake one.
When working on the 3D Pro set for Artmatic I discovered a way to create positional light (A light source that is near the viewever as opposed to the sun).
Now I have tried to make use of it for Voyager and was surprised that it actually works!
The picture below shows a terrain which is lit by the moon (taken from the upcoming Alien/Scifi Sky collection) and there is a second light source which illuminates the hole.
I think it has great potential...

Tags:Test, Advanced, Alien Skies, Positional light

Here is a possible moonsurface as seen in AM. The small craters are generated by the Craters component. The more prominent craters are built from primitives. This way much more control is possible, like shaping the craters, adding rubble, the way they overlap etc.

Tags:Moon Craters, Advanced

When I went through my moon, planet systems I was quite happy with my arsenal. Then I saw a image of an asteroid. The most obvious about it was that the asteroid was not perfectly round but rather looking like an enormous stone.
I also knew that this would challenge me and I equally knew that this would not be easy to achieve with Artmatic.
There were earlier attempts to create stones, meteors and asteroids but they all failed. But they all were experiments I did a while ago and since my experience with Artmatic had been growing in the meantime, I was tempted to find out if I could work it out this time.
...and after days of trial and error I finally found a convincing way to do it (see below).

Tags:Asteroid, Advanced, Alien Skies

Someone was asking if it was possible to have cities with rounded shapes. Well, here is one that combines squared shapes and rounded shapes.
The sky is an example from the upcoming SciFi/Alien sky collection.

Click here to download the Stargate City bundle file.
Stargate City A.vy

The UFO is from Eric...

Tags:Test, Environment 360, Advanced

Here is another QTVR movie file. For the surface I used one of Eric`s very cool city files.

The sky is a 360 environment. The technique used here makes it possible to have objects that span the entire sky. The construct in this example seamlessly surrounds the city. It`s a candidate for the Alien/SciFi sky collection...

-Surreal Construct-

Tags:Voyager, QTVR, Environment 360

Below is a link to a slideshow with some of my favourite Artmatic moons. Many of them will be part of the Alien/SciFi sky collection I am currently working on.

They all share the following features:

1. 3D shading. The shading of the textures aligns with the light direction automatically.
2. Correct mapping of the craters
3. The texture can be rotated 180 degrees. (The entire moon can be rotated 360 degrees).
4. Packed into a single CT so they can easily be added to Voyager skies.
5. Variable contours added (shift of brightness, color near the edges.

Check it out!
-AM Moons slideshow-

Tags:Artmatic Moons

Here is another tutorial with some more on how to use the extra output option.

In the first tutorial on extra outputs we have learned how to set up Artmatic and Voyager to get the extra outputs to work.
In this tutorial we will see how we can use an AM extra output to add reflection to halfspheres.

First download the files: Extra-Output-2
If not done automatically, un-zip the downloaded folder.

Launch Artmatic, then from the downloaded folder open the AM file "Halfspheres".

On the preview you can see that this AM system generates a surface with halfspheres.


The left part of the tree is the main tree. The right part is the subtree.


As explained in the previous tutorial, only the main tree is visible on the canvas. It generates the surface and color.

The effect of the subtree is just visible in Voyager. It`s purpose here is to add reflection to the halfspheres.

We will not go into details about the maintree. For this tutorial it`s sufficient to know that it generates the RGB surface with the halfspheres.


Let`s have a closer look at the subtree. It is connected to the Global Input A4.


This input provides a constant value. When you click on one of the Global Inputs,
the Input Matrix panel opens where you will find the constant value for A4. By default it is set to 0.



The tile in the middle of the subtree uses an RGB alpha component. This component in short let`s you apply a mask.

The Global Input A4, which is set to a value of 0, is connected to Input 1. We need this value of 0 to tell Voyager that no effect should be applied.


The second input of the RGB Alpha tile is fed by an x+A component, which in turn is connected to A4. We use this component to offset the constant value provided by A4. Voyager then will apply an effect (in our case a reflection) depending on the offset value from x+A.


The 3rd input of the RGB Alpha component is fed by the tree providing the halfspheres. It`s also called the Alpha input. This input controls the areas on which the offset value from x+A is applied.



The bottom component (Ax+B) of the subtree has only one purpose. It tells Voyager that there is 1 output (if we left the RGB Alpha component at the bottom of the tree we would have 3 outputs).

Let`s make the subtree visible. Click on the Ax+B tile to select it, then press "m" to temporarily make it the master output.


On the preview you now see what`s actually output by the tree.


The black color represents the value of 0 provided by A4.
The white color represents a high value provided by the a+X component.

The reason why we have dot shaped areas with white color is because we have connected the halfsphere branch to the Alpha input of the RGB Alpha component.

Note: Make certain you get a good understanding of how alpha components work since masking is used over and over when building trees for Voyager.

Get the Ax+B tile to the right again. To perform this you click on the 2->4 Max tile to select it, then press "m". (The procedure should now be familiar. We already used it in the previous tutorial)

Now that we have discussed the details of the subtree, let`s see how it effects what you see in Voyager. No need to save the file.

Launch Voyager and open the Voyager file Extra-Outputs-2.am3d.

The preview should show a ridged surface with halfspheres.


Now, in order for the sub output(s) to actually have an influence we need to open the Preferences panel. Press apple (command)/ "," or open it via menu.
At the bottom of the panel you can see some setting options for the Extra Outputs.


Extra Output 1 is currently set to "nothing". Click on it to open the menu of options. Select "Reflection level".


Close the panel.

The halfspheres should now reflect the sky. Nice isn`t it!


Note: The current Voyager version (1.6) can only reflect the sky properly. The ability to reflect the surface will probably be added in a later version.

That`s all for now.

Tags:Voyager, Tutorial