Messing a bit with the ANT landscape generator. it works quite well if you tweak the settings a bit! fire away with the crits if you’ve got constructive ones.
what i’d really love to do is add Environment Lighting to just the terrain, and not the planet. i see the Environment pass check box in the Render panel, but they only way i can get it to work is to turn on Environment Lighting in the World panel. doing this gives me an Environment pass to work with in the compositor, but it also applies the lighting to every scene layer. no clue how to make it apply to one layer…
[QUOTE=what i’d really love to do is add Environment Lighting to just the terrain, and not the planet. i see the Environment pass check box in the Render panel, but they only way i can get it to work is to turn on Environment Lighting in the World panel. doing this gives me an Environment pass to work with in the compositor, but it also applies the lighting to every scene layer. no clue how to make it apply to one layer…[/QUOTE]
The only way I can think of doing this is to create another scene
and then add Environment Lighting to the duplicate scene with the planet removed so it only effects the terrain, then use the compositor to comp the two renders together. Just don’t forget to select the two scenes in the separate render layer nodes to be able to select the renders from them
Please keep in mind that this is the Focused Critique section, 'cause there’s a few things to be considered here, depending on the intent of your image.
First is the lighting. Given the position of the star relative to the gas giant and its moon, the lighting plan should be reversed – the moon would be more brightly lit and the gas giant have just a thin crescent plus maybe a little atmospheric dispersion along the limb. Such planets are not self-radiating in visible light, and unless there’s another sun off camera, the shadow side would be dark indeed.
The gas giant, which I assume is modeled after Uranus or Neptune, has a much-too static cloud pattern. While not as gaudy as Jupiter or Saturn, both these Sol-system giants have a great deal of banded structure due to differential rotation speed at different latitudes. That’s just planetary physics. It would also help create a sense of gigantic scale to see different scales of cloud formation on the surface.
The ice moon’s surface is, as mentioned, too regular, and not particularly interesting or accurate. The kind of glossy surface you portray is fine for terrestrial ice where water can melt to liquid and re-freeze, but such a moon, with little or no atmosphere, would have a much different set of ice-generating systems. Probably never any actual liquid that stays liquid long enough to flow over such a wide area. Maybe water ice, but more likely some other substance, and frozen extremely hard but also brittle, resulting in hard fractures where tidal stresses tend to pull at the surface. Jupiter and Saturn have many great ice-moons with widely varied surface features, such variations probably extending down to small-scale levels like that shown. Look at kinds of terrestrial ice conditions, too, such as occur in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It’s amazing how variable it can be, even over small areas. Other substances would act differently than water, but it’s at least a starting point.
Consider also adding some activity to the image, even if only subtle. Many of the Jovian moons exhibit various kinds of vulcanism, from Io and it sulfur calderas to Ganymede and its hypothetical resurfacing mechanism. Right now the star is the focal point of the image – imagine seeing it through a fog of ice crystals erupting near the horizon, complete with sun-dog effects. Much more interesting than lens flare, I think.
All of which is not to say this is a poor image, it has a lot going for it. But think how leveling up the science content might also level up the visual appeal
@ Steve S - hi Steve! thanks for the crit about the stars. i’m trying to tighten them up within Blender because they look a little blobby, but you’re right, they need some variation in location and brightness. right now i’m using a cloud texture mapped to a sphere to make the stars. i’ve considered creating a custom starfield in GIMP or Photoshop to use as the background. by the way, i love Cosmos, both the book and the tv series. watched 'em over and over again on Netflix too. gotta love Sagan! “billions and billions” is all i hear in my head when i think of Sagan.
@ andyio - thanks for the crits, and you’re right about the noise bump on the ice! i actually had it there, but the Normal value was so low it wasn’t making any difference. i’ve turned it up a bit now and added a glare. the result is some nice icy sparkles. and you are definitely right about the planet and its lack of detail. i’m going to take your crit along with chipmasque’s and see if i can get some multiple cloud layers and banding going on to enhance the detail and give it more of a sense of scale.
@ DustyKahn - hey, that’s a novel idea. never thought about just using a totally separate scene and then combining in the compositor. i’ll have to try that out!
@ chipmasque - now this is the kind of crit i’m looking for! i’m well aware this is the Focused Critique section and i posted this work here precisely so people will rip my work apart (something you don’t get in the Works in Progress section). it’s the only way to become a better artist really. and you sir, are right on the money with every point you’ve made. let’s go over them and see if i can explain my reasoning, and see what i can improve.
you’re right, i’ve cheated on the lighting here. i must say though that i thought gas giants, in particular Jupiter and Neptune, radiate more energy than they receive from the Sun. whether or not that energy is in the visible light spectrum, i don’t know. but anyway, that’s why i lit the back side of the planet some, to account for this. however, you’re right! the moon itself needs to receive more light, and the planet a lot less.
again, spot on. this project started out as a view from Miranda, looking up at Uranus. it sort of evolved from there (not much though), but that’s what i’ve had in the back of my head. however in almost all pictures of Uranus, it looks like a flat, featureless green-aqua ball. i thought that a bit boring so i added a simple Marble texture to break it up. but again, you and andyio are right. the planet needs more detail in the form of banded cloud structures.
great suggestions here. not sure why i didn’t think of the fact that, even though it might be an ice moon, the ice is certainly not going to look anything like re-frozen liquid water! thank you for the link, and i’ll try to work this level of detail in.
brilliant idea! i have no idea how i would implement something like this, maybe a particle system? certainly worth the experimentation though. thank you very much for the crits! also, your Kata animation is probably one of the best things I’ve ever seen done in Blender. and to think that’s keyframes and not mocap…very impressive!
latest render (before i read the crits) - trying out more of a greenish hue.
-The planet above looks too flat, like you just threw on a gradient, and a large cloud texture. (not that you did), but it looks like it.
-The planet below looks too much like plastic. I’m not sure if its rock… or ice(as the title suggests). You should look at some reference images from Google Images and apply what you find there to the texture. Because as a viewer I am having a hard time telling what it is.
-The stars in the background look far too uniform, add some color, different brightnesses, otherwise it makes the composition flat…
-The planet below, again. Consider what it is, rock, ice. It’s really clean for a planet. If its rock, add some smaller rocks on it, or a sand like texture in areas, also, perhaps, add some dust into the ‘air’ of the planet below to give it more life…
-The big star that is the focus, why is it lighting the planet above more than the one below?
The other Rundown (artistically)-
-Normally I wouldn’t recommend to have everything centered, but I guess in this case it can work, if your going for something truly surreal.
-Other things in space(planets, rocks, people, whatever) used in the background would give the scene more depth.
-Lastly, like I mentioned before, everything seems too flat. Think about using Depth of Field.
Good job so far! :yes: Keep it up, and I hope to see more! :yes:
Just saw your newest render. Sweet. Though the same issue with the planet above. And everything below seems too dark. (look at the thumbnail.) I like where you going with it though. :yes:
@ Hughes017 - awesome, thanks for the crits! you’re right though, the planet is just a sphere with a large cloud texture…not even a gradient on it. i’ll definitely work on the planet and give it some detail.
the stars are just a cloud texture mapped to a sphere. i might abandon this approach and create a starfield in GIMP, then import it into Blender to give more variation.
the moon surface is also getting overhauled, and a lot more detail added. i think i need to figure out some new techniques in Blender to get higher quality results, but hey, that’s part of the learning curve! i had depth of field on originally, but it had the effect of making the moon surface look like a miniature, so i turned it off.
yes, the lighting coming from the star is messed up. working on that too.
all I’ve had time to do in the past few days is this render. not much is new, just a perspective change, which i think looks a bit better. tried a test render in cycles. crashed a few times and i’m still having trouble working out how to implement textures, but i’ll figure it out eventually!
Much improved to my eyes, particularly the lighting, very natural looking (for an icy moon of a remote gas giant, that is ) The subtle pearlescense of the ice is a very good touch, makes it definitely unearthly but still recognizable. Ice surfaces could maybe use some rougher, sharper edges for contrast?
Looks good so far. Perhaps use sculpt on the ice? build some crags and overhangs. Maybe crater the surface a bit with impacts?
It might not be ‘real’, but maybe some crystaline clusters scattered around? http://reshade.com/resize-image/Crystal-Cluster-50346894
?
i’m also trying to figure out how to do this scene in Cycles because well, Cycles just blows BI out of the water. the problem is twofold. one, i suck at using Cycles but i’m slowly figuring out what’s changed from BI. two, there’s no scene layers!!! surely this has to do with the way the render engine works, and hopefully they’ll figure out a solution in the future, but having no scene layers makes controlling and even implementing things like the flares on the star, the glow of the atmosphere, etc. practically impossible.
Why use Cycles if your getting a better result with bi?
I guess you could always comp render passes from bi with your cycles render… But I have not yet used cycles to be able to give any help in this area. I think I read a thread where people were doing some space scenes In cycles, might be worth digging around.
well, i don’t have to use Cycles. i was just trying it out because the render engine is much faster and is the way Blender will be going in the future, so i figured i’d get a jump on it.
Obviously Cycles doesn’t blow BI out of the water for this subject. It’s immature technology still, showing great promise for certain types of imagery, but not all, imo. So far, using it seems to be like using a paint palette with a dozen colors, while BI has about a bazillion. Personally, the images I’ve seen out of Cycles have tended to have a similar look, like not very well-done tabletop photography. That’s not what I do 3D rendering for. Your latest (and quite stunning) astro-image is the kind of thing I do 3D rendering for, or at least try to do, an illustrative look rather than faux-photography. Don’t worry, BI happy
Your moon is shaping up nicely, the gas giant texturing is a great touch, interesting and convincing without being loud about it, all the more effective for its subtlety. Not much further to go before it could be called done, I think. I don’t know whether you do much digital painting, but a method I’ve been using lately is to do rough paint-overs of my renderings to try out ideas before taking the time to implement them in Blender. It helps nail the effect or look to be produced, and also answers questions about composition, visual strength, etc., without doing render after render to find just the right look.
When I saw the first arrangement where the moon is in the foreground, my instant impression was, “Now you’re getting somewhere!” :yes: But the second and third images immediately stumbled:
In the second version, the lighting value of the planet-rim had been increased to close to that of the moon, and suddenly my eye is going ping-pong between the two, no longer certain what it is that I’m supposed to be looking at. (In the first version, the path was clear: (1) moon, (2) planet, (3) star; also from near to far.)
The third version is murky and under-exposed.
The composition is of course much stronger than before, but the two “stumbles” illustrate just how subtle and therefore precise the light-and-shadow adjustments must now be.
@sundialsvc4 - you know, i’m inclined to agree with you. i like the first arrangement better. it’s a bit of a “perfect” alignment of the moon, the planet, and the star, but it gives it more of an artistic flare. i also tried creating a custom star field in GIMP. the star field turned out alright as a piece of art in its own right, but had way too many stars and things going on in it, which distracted the eye from the rest of the picture. i might try to create more subtle version a little later. anyway, i haven’t had much time to work on my Blender projects these past few weeks (everyday life getting in the way!), so it’s rather slow going for me, but here’s a bit of an update:
i must say though that i thought gas giants, in particular Jupiter and Neptune, radiate more energy than they receive from the Sun. whether or not that energy is in the visible light spectrum, i don’t know. but anyway, that’s why i lit the back side of the planet some, to account for this. however, you’re right! the moon itself needs to receive more light, and the planet a lot less.
i’ll definitely work on the planet and give it some detail.
) The subtle pearlescense of the ice is a very good touch, makes it definitely unearthly but still recognizable. Ice surfaces could maybe use some rougher, sharper edges for contrast?
