#Inside a Globe
18 messages in this thread
How do I put a globe around my geometry and get it to act like clouds or a sky.
When I put a big gshere you see all its facets in the rendering (which is very
cool but I want it smooth). Plus I don't know how to get a bit map to look
right. Mr. 3ds Dummie.
Mitchell,
there's a really good sky dome available for download on this forum. It was
contributed by Jamie Clay of the Adesk IDL and I use it all the time. You'll
have to browse around to find it but it's ready to import and render with a
geometry and a map and it looks great – it's seamless.
Martin,
I think you're referring to CLOUDS.ZIP in Lib 3. I'm having similar trouble
getting my "celestial sphere" to look right. I've used AAPro to create a GIF
file with white dots representing stars. I then use this as a texture map in a
material. I have a huge sphere surrounding my solar system. I flip the
normals on the sphere, use spherical mapping, and assign the material. The
result looks pretty bad. My stars end up being big blurs of white. I've tried
using real small dots in the GIF file, but with the same result. I've got the
celestial sphere linked to the motion of the sun. I'll download CLOUDS.ZIP to
check it out. Maybe it will help with my celestial sphere. Do you have any
thoughts on how to get a more realistic starry background? I don't think I can
use the STARS IPAS routine because I need to have the starry background linked
to the sun's motion.
Thanks!
Dirk
Dirk,
Jamie Clay used a cylindrical map for his clouds squashed hemisphere so you
might try that – make the height the same as your globe.
Thanks, Martin. I have been using spherical mapping. I'll give cylindrical
mapping a try. Greg also suggested making individual objects for each star.
Maybe I'll see you tomorrow at the users' group meeting.
Dirk
Dirk,
I do plan to be at the meeting tomorrow, but I think cylindrical may work
better for you except for possible distortion at the poles of the sphere –
that's why Jamie's cloud mesh is a squashed hemisphere.
Dirk:
Because of the expansion of maps when you apply them to the inside of a
sphere, I don't know if you will achieve satisfactory results with that
method on your universe! You may end up having to create the stars as
objects, and apply a self illuminationg material to each one!
The smallest object consists of three vertices and one face. Create one,
map it, and place it wherever looks good. Then copy it like crazy! After
you have created a good sized chunk, copy the whole thing a few times. May
take the better part of a day, but should look very realistic!
You can have a few sizes and colors to add even more realism. Just make
sure your normals all face towards the Earth! Even adding 3,000 stars like
this will only add 9,000 vertices and 3,000 faces, which shouldn't slow your
rendering down too much, especially considering that each one will be only a
few pixels in size…
Greg Pyros
PMJI – This method is one I've considered and points up an obvious place where
macros would be heaven sent in 3DS. (As in animating characters [not
letters])…
{RELEASE 3!!}
DT
Dave:
>> This method is one I've considered and points up an obvious place where
>> macros would be heaven sent in 3DS.
It's called I.P.A.S… <g>
Greg Pyros
Well, it may be called I.P.A.S. to you, but, as a non-programmer and as one who
just went through the motions of bringing 42 letters, one at a time, from so
far back that they were invisible to the front of an animation, over the course
of 80 frames, I can tell you that macros which allowed pauses for user input
would have saved me about 25 or 30 minutes on Saturday. I was doing this in the
tracks dialog, too. Course I'm far from expert, yet, but I've worked with
computers long enough to recognize when I'm doing something my machine
could/should do for me faster. However, my animation is now doing what I
wanted, so I can't gripe too awfully much.
DT
DT:
I would hardly call IPAS programming fun or user friendly! Especially not
after what we went through this weekend!
Sounds like what you are looking for is a 'record' function to be able to
play back certain steps – similar to Ani Pro. Would be handy!
Greg
>>what you are looking for is a 'record' function to be able to
play back certain steps – similar to Ani Pro. Would be handy!<<
ExACTly! (forefinger raised)
DT
Thanks, Greg. I thought I might end up having to do the stars as individual
objects. I was hoping I wouldn't have to do it, but that's life.
I'm hoping to go to the meeting tomorrow. Maybe I'll see you there.
Dirk
Dirk,
Why not use the STARS.IXP in video post?
Danny…
Danny,
I need the "celestial sphere" to follow the movement of the sun (don't ask,
it's a long story). STARS.IXP does a great job, but I don't think it will do
what I need it to do, i.e., it won't allow me to animate the star field.
Dirk
Hi, Dirk.
Great stuff from Greg, etc, but you might try a higher resolution bitmap to
keep those stars from blowing out. I think the first thing I would do is crank
up the tiling setting in the mapping section. Should increase the number of
stars as well as keep them looking more like the points of light effect that
you are probably looking for…
Worth a try anyway…
-Alan
Alan,
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give them a try.
Maybe see you tomorrow at the meeting.
Dirk
If you're seeing facets, you may have created a faceted rather than a smoothed
sphere. The important step, however, is to flip the face normals on the sphere
so they're on the inside (Surface/Normals/Object Flip). Another trick is to use
a reflection map with clouds instead of a texture map. Reflection maps don't
need lights or mapping coordinates, and as you move the camera, they'll stay in
place, giving the illusion of distance. If you decide to use a texture map,
however, you might try adding self-illumination to the material.
– Jack