Spotlight
Asteroids
October/17/2008 20:46
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).
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).
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Surreal Construct
October/02/2008 17:14
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-
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-
Artmatic Moons
September/30/2008 15:29
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-
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-
QTVR Movie:Snowy Mountains
September/23/2008 17:42
Here is a QTVR movie (Panoramic view of a picture)
named Snowy Mountain. The clouds sky is a newly
developed seamless
360 Environment.
What`s cool about this approach is that you can not
only add Voyager clouds to it, but also that this
enables you to add any other elements to the sky,
like planets, moons, suns, sunbeams etc.
Another interesting aspect is the RGB Surface file. The snow, instead of taken from Voyager, is provided by the AM file.
The fact that the snow is generated by the AM file rather than directy by Voyager gives you more flexibilty.
1. You can make the snow appear where you like. It does not have to be altitude/slope dependent.
2. You probably noticed that Voyager snow, when used on edgy surfaces, is not smoothening out those areas. This tends to look unnatural.
When creating the snow with AM, all you have to do is make those areas, where the is supposed to be snow, look smooth (which is quite a challenge though).
As for the RGB Surface I made use of the newly added extra output option "Normal", which adds a bump map to the rock texture. The really tricky thing was to get the snow to appear only on shallow slopes AND to have no bump map applied to it, while having the rock texture on steep slopes with bump mapping.
As those techniques/features have great potential you will probably hear and see a lot about them.
See the QTVR movie - Snowy Mountains-
Another interesting aspect is the RGB Surface file. The snow, instead of taken from Voyager, is provided by the AM file.
The fact that the snow is generated by the AM file rather than directy by Voyager gives you more flexibilty.
1. You can make the snow appear where you like. It does not have to be altitude/slope dependent.
2. You probably noticed that Voyager snow, when used on edgy surfaces, is not smoothening out those areas. This tends to look unnatural.
When creating the snow with AM, all you have to do is make those areas, where the is supposed to be snow, look smooth (which is quite a challenge though).
As for the RGB Surface I made use of the newly added extra output option "Normal", which adds a bump map to the rock texture. The really tricky thing was to get the snow to appear only on shallow slopes AND to have no bump map applied to it, while having the rock texture on steep slopes with bump mapping.
As those techniques/features have great potential you will probably hear and see a lot about them.
See the QTVR movie - Snowy Mountains-
Bump Map
September/22/2008 21:25
Here are some examples of what Bump Map (one of the
options for the AM extra outputs) is capable of.
Normal-Test-D
Normal-Test-K
Normal-Test-K3
Normal-Test-K5
Download Normal Test K5 (Voyager bundle file)
Leaving a comment won`t hurt...
Normal-Test-D
Normal-Test-K
Normal-Test-K3
Normal-Test-K5
Download Normal Test K5 (Voyager bundle file)
Leaving a comment won`t hurt...
Tip: Sunset/Sunrise
September/21/2008 15:44
