curious

[Grey]

you might ask over at 3dgladiators.com those guys are science fiction fanatics who do 3D... they might know...

[LucentDreams]

I think their textures are typically procedural based

[GothMog]

I don't know if the radius alone is important.... It must fit in scale with the others CG elements.:wip:

I mean, there is no rule of thumb for a planet radius like 500 or 5000... anything works.

:buttrock:

[That Adrian Guy]

It's the size of the texture that matters... techincally... wireframes are all vectors anyway, so size doesn't make a difference (except when rendering shadows = ) ...I'd just go with the default sphere size, actually... unless you're gonna get intricate

[LucentDreams]

Originally posted by That Adrian Guy
It's the size of the texture that matters... techincally... wireframes are all vectors anyway, so size doesn't make a difference (except when rendering shadows = ) ...I'd just go with the default sphere size, actually... unless you're gonna get intricate

Thats partly why I think that they use procedural, because then texture size isn't important either.

If you look in th channel shaders there should be some good ones to help you out with making planets, a neptune, saturn ring a few others, a galaxy shader, seemsone of the programmers probably was doing a space project back in version five or four, otherwise I don't see why these are here, but they can always come in handy.

[victor]

Originally posted by nurv
I am jsut curious. For an example, how big of a radius do you all think the planets are when u watch sumtin like star trek or voyager. ?


In general, planets in the fly-by/orbit shots on these shows are way smaller than they should be.

This is done for for the sake of composition, since the planets would be too large for the frame if "accurately depicted" using the same field of view as for the foreground elements. In most cases it's not obvious, mainly because we don't often have occasion to see what views like these would really look like.

One example where this is clear is actually in Voyager's opening credits, where the ship is flying over a planet's rings. At first the planet appears to be off in the distance, but as the camera follows the ship, we see a reflection of it in the rings which makes it look like it would be about the size of a small country down on the surface. :P

It's much more clear when in motion, but take a look at the last two of the small images on this page (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7851/open.html).

Anyway, here's a 60 degree FOV of what would be a pretty typical orbit shot...

[nurv]

thanks for the help. So lets say in the voyager opening, the pictures u mentioned. Do u think the ship AND the planet and its rings are all in the same channel? or could the ship itself be a composite of that scene. Only reason i ask is the lighting, how is the lighting from the ship not affecting the rings or the planet if its in the same scene and not a compisite.

Bare with me im still learning. =\

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