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YET ANOTHER NEBULA TUTORIAL
FOR VUE! ;)
AND MAKING GALAXIES!
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| I love
space scenes, always trying to get better space effects....so, here's
yet more work and tips on a major part of space scenes: nebulas
;) |
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NEBULA USING VOLUME SHADED MATERIAL,
WITH 2 POINT LIGHTS WITH CUSTOM LENS FLARES
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VARIOUS NEBULAE USING VOLUMETRIC SHADED
MATERIAL,
note these nebulae terrain objects are small and very
close to the camera
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SAME NEBULAE MADE LARGE, FAR AWAY,
AND HAVE HAD THEIR MATERIAL SCALED UP & TWEAKED
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How I did this was to use a Volumetric SHADED material
on terrains that have been made Symetrical, it has to
be Volumetric shaded, because normal volumetric materials
cannot have multiple colours...real nebulaes have many
hues.
Making a terrain a symetrical object gives it ability
to use volumetric materials better, as it's a "solid"
object. Note, that by scaling the terrain you affect how
the material looks!! Thicker the terrain gets, more material
opacity it has.
Another important point: if you clip or "paint"
edit the terrains in Terrain Editor, some bug makes the
material invisible. No idea why, but it's very annoying!
You cna easily fix that by addign a little "USE DISTANCE
FIELD"
There is also a bug at the moment in the material editor
that makes the materials not visible, at times, see below
Alternatively, you can use greyscale images, to drive
it all, of course.
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TERRAINS SCALED VERY LARGE, MOVED FAR
BACK, MATERIAL TWEAKED BY REDUCING OVER ALL DENSITY VERY
LOW. NOTE THE "BAD" NEBULA ON TOP, IT HAS NOT
HAD DENSITY REDUCED, OR THE EDGES OF THE TERRAIN CLIPPED.
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VIEW OF HOW THE TEST SCENE WAS BUILT,
SHOWING SYMETRICAL TERRAINS
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Connect the FUZZINES function to a fractal, now, you can
do this many ways, I used a Variable Roughness Fractal.
Experiment for taste, there's no"right" or "wrong"
way, you just wish to get what looks good to you ;)
Note, adjust the QUALITY BOOST to taste, it
has major impact on whether the nebula is rough, or soft
and puffy.
Also, nebula glow brilliantly, so in Lighting, add Luminous
to whatever amount desired. Add random function to that
too if wish, for more realism.
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| Next, you need to make sure the fractal
is not too opaque, so I used a BLENDER to combine the fractal,
with white, the end output is lighter grey, this means most
of the nebula will be transparent, which is what we want.
Nebulae are gaseous, not solid. |
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Colour production is up to you, here
I used a Voronoi.
Note you can see one of the bugs in action here, note the
dozens of function links flying off to one side! |
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Now, nebulae are VERY big and VERY far away. So, often,
you want to move the terrains way far back and scaled up,
this requires tweaking, Increase material scale up to perhaps
1000! Decrease over all density WAY down, to say 0.01
So, it will take a bit of tweaking to get right for your
scene, as the scale, size of objects etc all have huge effect
:)
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BUGS:
At the moment, there's a bad bug in the material editor, AND
one soem how linked to the terrain editor, that make stop
the object being visible.
1) Adjust the Distance Field in material edtitor, this slows
renders down, by the way.
2) delete and remake both the blender and solid colour node,
if #1 doesn't work.
a) If you clip or paint brush edit the terrain, the material
can disappear. |
| This same tehnique can be used to
make galaxies! You can sculpt a terrain, or use a greyscale
image , to achieve the look of a a galaxy |
SIMPLE VOLUMETRIC SHADED GALAXY
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My sincere thanks to "RedTrek" from Renderosity.com, who
figured out that using "Use Distance Field" sorted the
bug, and about using this to make galaxies! :)
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I hope you find this of use! :)
Silverblade the Enchanter, © 2008
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