Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> Second attempt at the image. Less atmosphere, but
> a little more glowing for the earth, less brightness
> for the sun.
> Better? Suggestions are appreciated! (perhaps with
> post-processed versions?)

I'm sorry, but I find this version is much worse than the previous, for 
two reasons:

1. The lights on the dark side of the earth are too bright, it makes the 
image less credible.
2. The sun does not look like a sun. Your sun looks cold, like it was 
made of wax, or plastic, while it should look really hot and be made of 
star plasma (or whatever). And suns never, ever have a shaded surface, 
they appear flat because of self-illumination.

I did some experimenting with space scenes some months ago, and found 
out that you don't really need a sphere for the sun. A spherical pattern 
with an appropriate color_map on a sky_sphere works quite well, if you 
use very bright colors. Just translate and rotate it with some care on 
the sky_sphere. Layering pigments also helps.

I have attached a small pic of the sun I came up with. It's not perfect 
but at least it feels hot, has a color that looks realistic in an 
artistic sense, and it does not exhibit shading. My scene is rendered 
with radiosity, but uses an additional light_source far away in the same 
direction as the sky_sphere sun, to help the lighting of the scene (and 
because radiosity does not give you nice scattering media interaction).

Hehe, and it seems the atmosphere-is-too-thick-effect strikes everyone 
how tries to make space scenes the first time :-)

-- 
(defun f(p x)(If(Eq x nil)nil(If(p(Car x))(Cons(Car x)(f p(Cdr x)))(f p
(Cdr x)))))(defun q(x)(Q nil x))(defun Q(a x)(If(Eq x nil)a(Q(Cons(Car
x)(Q a(f(Lt(Car x))(Cdr x))))(f(Gt(Car x))(Cdr x)))))

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