Here comes the sun! 2004-10-18 - By Dave Angelini
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MessageTony, Allan, Lee,
Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions. The neat thing about the
animation is that it only is comprised of two planes and an omni light. I
have created realistic looking planets out of spheres (one for the base
planet, one for the clouds and one for the atmosphere) but the effect seems
to fall apart should I wish to make a sunrise behind the planet (you just
don't get a realistic looking crescent/terminator...or at least what we've
been trained to think is correct from all the sci-fi movies ;-). The
shadows on the sphere are always too sharp whereas the actual terminator on
a real earth image is gradually feathered from full light to dark.
So I hit upon the idea of using two square planes rather than spheres....one
plane holds the image of the actual earth as seen from space. This image is
in direct sunlight and contains no terminator across its face. The other
plane is placed above the plane that holds the earth image and contains a
matte derived from the earth image. This matte has been blured and made
semi-transparente (fully transparent near the planets edge and gradually
getting more obscure towards the center of the planet). As I used the
original planet image for this matte, it creates the perfect terminator
across the earth plane. The matte has also been colored a dark blue. As
the omni light is animated to move from behind the planet plane, the shadow
plane is animated to slide in the opposite direction to slowly reveal the
planet and create the crescent in the process.
Its a cheat...but it works.
Thanks,
Dave Angelini
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: Lee Evans
To: truespace@(protected)
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 9:58 PM
Subject: Re: [TSML] Here comes the sun!
Looks great Dave. How'd you make the planet?
Lee Evans
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: Dave Angelini
To: truespace@(protected)
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 2:59 PM
Subject: [TSML] Here comes the sun!
A quick "proof of concept"
http://home.comcast.net/~dianeangelini/sr2.avi
Always wanted to try this, but I could never figure out how to make it look
realistic. Still needs some tweaking in terms of the animation timing, but
as a proof of concept, I think I figured it out.
Thanks,
-Dave Angelini
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