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Multiple Light Sources
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...
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...
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Moon Surface
October/22/2008 22:04 Archived in:Artmatic Know
How |
Tests
Asteroids
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).
QTVR Movie:Snowy Mountains
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-