[Bobboau]

yeah, let me clarify that a bit, use a TGA with an alpha mask as a seperate subobject for the atmoshpere, this sort of thing won't work very well for most other situations (ie on a fighter cockpit) becase that sort of alpha blending requires sorting polygons by distance and that would slow things down, however, a planet in the bacground will already have everything  sorted for it if the atmosphere is simply put as a submodel and thus rendered after the main hull objec it will be rendered in the correct order, wich is why this is a single odd situation were alpha blending will currently work.

[Omniscaper]

How do i get an object in the background? I made a sphere with the land texture. I made a larger sphere with a cloud texture (black and white).

My hierarchy:

Earth
...    Sphere1
......             Clouds
.........                  Sphere2
.........                  light01

Is that correct?

The cloud texture is a 32-bit TGA. The image is of the clouds, white clouds against black background. The alpha channel is the same image. Should I make the base image something other than the cloud picture? I'm getting confused. Should I make the alpha green?

[Bobboau]

what you have should work

[Omniscaper]

Actually it didn't. I had to reverse it, to get it to render correctly.

Clouds
.....Sphere2 (textured with white TGA with Cloud image alpha)
...............Earth
.........................Sphere1
.........................light

But it works!!! I'll have screen shots up shortly. Now how would I approach adding one more layer of clouds. Since the Cloud sphere has now become the parent objects, I can't get the second cloud layer to render correctly.

Test Hierarchy:

Clouds    <(parent name)
..........sphere2 <(object)
....................clouds <( sub name)
..............................sphere3 <(object)
.............................................Earth <( sub name)
....................................................Sphere1
....................................................Light

[KARMA]

can he make a rotating cloud layer?
actually it would be damn cool:)

[Bobboau]

just make a second cloud subobject, as subobjects seem to get rendered first (I seem to remember this now) make it the subobject after the planet and smaller than the larger cloud layer

[Omniscaper]

Karma, that is the goal, cloud movement. Animating it takes up far toom much memory.

Bobbaou,

Like so:

Cloud
.....sphere2
..........Earth
...............sphere1
...............Light
..........Cloud2
................sphere3 (smaller than previous)
................light

[Bobboau]

you do know that in reality the clouds would be moveing way way way to slow for you to see them, right

not that any of this 'reality' has any baring on FS, but an interesting point none the less

yeah, I'm thinking that'll work

[Deepblue]

screenies?

[Omniscaper]

SUCCESS. I know about reality. It sux. Thats why i like to play and eventually get involved with making ALTERnate realities.

EARTH!!! With 2 moving layers of clouds! Looks better when playing with.







Its still a work in progress. Sharper textures will be used in localized areas VS the sphere mapped single texture. I think the model could still be optimized. At the moment it has 3 spheres and a cube core to play as parent object. Total poly count is at 17k. I believe the cloud layers could use a shave. I just hope the shading issue won't reveal the polys.

As you can see, I just hit clipping range with that earth model. You can tell my the abrupt end to the sphere edge. I believe its 30000 km away or something like that. I'm gonna have to reduce its size to be able to see the planet this far and still see it in it's entirety.

I have experimented with planetary glows by using a glowmap with, inthis case, a radious of 60000. There are perspective issues with a planet this close and large, but I'll mess with different sizes and distances. I wonder if Truespace has a FACE FRONT ALWAYS texture mapping?

Any ideas on how to make planetary glows?

[Singh]

wow!
:shock:
that......is soooo....pretty(lack of better word to describe it)*

[KARMA]

with glow you mean the fading atmosphere?
well, let me think:
you may model a flat disc directly behind the planet model, and facing the play area. The disc will be little wider than the planet+ clouds, textured with a cyan plain colour, and an alpha opacity layer to have it fading around the borders.
Or maybe a sphere with flipped faces (you'll see only internal faces) but the problem is that in this case it'll not fade
the overexposure effect would probably generate a better effect, but the problem is that it has not been implemented in the code

[Lightspeed]

I think the clouds are a bit overkill (theres not THAT much of them

... And they need to be closer to the surface. Clouds are really, really close to the planetary surface.

Still, if you get a atmosphere glow working it could be pretty nice

[Omniscaper]

I'm playing with the transparency levels right now. I think thin whisps would look kool as the first layer. Like i said before, in motion, you really get to see more of the topography. Its gonna be fun making more localized cloud textures. I'm off to the NASA website for satellite photos. Any other sites where I can get textures (royalty and $$$ free)

Using 3dsmax procedural textures don't cut it for me. "noise and fractals" get close, but no cigar for believability for me.

[kasperl]

well, if you just want clouds, you could try some weather sites, and do your best at photoshopping. dunno about copyright there though.

[Bobboau]

there was some site that offered free satalite spheremaps of earth, they updated ever hour or so, don't remember were it was though, and it was a ***** to find, and I used google

[Setekh]

Hey, they worked! Awesome, I've never seen someone use the transparency so effectively. Well done.