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atmosphere!
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Event Horizon Forum Index » Engine Suggestions » atmosphere!
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Bill_Ding_



Joined: 02 Feb 2006
Posts: 55
Location: SLC , UT

 Post Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:01 pm    Post subject: atmosphere!
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So I got a little too creative with the whole transparency thing, and created two planets in the same location, one with a slightly larger size & a cloudy, transparent texture... and we have an atmosphere!

But the whole double-planet thing definitely needs to go. Could we add an atmosphere field to the .evh planet files?

oh, and another thought: is there a way to use an animation as a planet texture? I was thinking it would be pretty cool to put in lightning or something.... Wink
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Paul



Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

 Post Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:11 pm    Post subject:
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Well, a basic atmosphere texture would certainly be doable. I'll get on that.


I don't want to mess with animated textures till V2.0, but I'll also have animated models then! Very Happy
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Mike73x



Joined: 12 Jul 2004
Posts: 71
Location: Perth, Australia

 Post Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:22 am    Post subject:
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Cool Smile Another nice way to extend this without an animated map would be to have the cloud sphere rotate slightly faster around the planet. It would be doubly cooler to have falloff transparency for the cloud sphere, to make 'glowing' atmospheres, but that's probably a bit intensive for real-time.
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Paul



Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

 Post Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 3:41 pm    Post subject:
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I'm not sure what you mean by fall-off transparency making it glow, but I could make an option to have the atmosphere ignore lighting, which would give it an arbitrary ambient value, causing it to glow on the night side.
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Bill_Ding_



Joined: 02 Feb 2006
Posts: 55
Location: SLC , UT

 Post Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:15 pm    Post subject:
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whoa, glowing atmospheres? < ideas start bouncing around in head > i like it....

actually with the animation thing, i was thinking more dynamic than merely rotating clouds around the planet... more like hurricanes or thunderstorms or volcanoes... hey, and if it applied to ships, we could do blinking lights & other cool effects....
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Mike73x



Joined: 12 Jul 2004
Posts: 71
Location: Perth, Australia

 Post Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:25 am    Post subject:
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A few mock-up pictures to show what I thought might be cool.

Planet with cloud sphere over it (high res textures, but stay with me):


Then add a third, blue coloured sphere that has lighting disabled. The transparency changes depending on whether the polys are facing the camera directly (fully transparent) or perpendicular to the camera direction (fully opaque), and thus you have an atmospheric haze 'halo' (exaggerated a bit here):


This is probably a bit heavy on the computational side, and it's a smooth effect so I guess 3DS Max must have a way of doing it per-pixel or something. But it also occured to me that it could also be done with a bit of cheating.. Seeing as the sphere is symmetrical on all axes, a simple bitmap transparency map could be planarly projected onto the sphere from the camera's direction to get the same effect.


*deep breath in* Anyway, I just thought it would be a neat bit of eye candy.
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Paul



Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

 Post Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 8:15 pm    Post subject:
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I might be able to do the variable transparency thing. Instead of having a sphere where I would computationally change the transparency based on the player's position, I'd just have a pre-defined sphere that I would orient appropriately.

Also, I can have a separate rotation rate for the atmosphere, so it will move relative to the ground.
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Mike73x



Joined: 12 Jul 2004
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 Post Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 4:28 am    Post subject:
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Ooh yep, that sounds like it would work great
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