Program ended abnormally on 6/24/03 7:07 PM, Due to a catastrophic Ross
Litscher error:
> Tim Nikias v2.0 <tim### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
> news:3ef8da2e@news.povray.org...
> 
>>Well, as is no doubtedly obvious, this scene depicts
>>some sort of sunrise (with a nice camera-banking and
>>zoom-out). Nothing that special. Just wanted to share. :-)
>>

Very nice.  I think the atmosphere is a bit too thick, but never having been in 
space, I could be wrong.


> 
> thats neat city lighting. does earth really look lit up like that on the
> dark side? 

Yes.  I'm pretty sure he used this picture for an image map:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020810.html

-- 
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/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   videotron.ca  */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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The atmosphere is too thick, it shouldn't exceed a few tens of 
kilometers (20-30km, which considering the sale would make a few pixels 
of atmosphere). It seems really cloudless. We also should be able to see 
a few stars especially in the lower dark part under the sun. And last, I 
don't think we have halos like this in space (though I've never been 
there), because there is no atmosphere. But I'm sorry for these mean 
scientific remarks, I like the graphic quality of the image a lot. :-)

JC

Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> This is the first scene I consider "pretty much finished"
> for my long-term project: "M-Kosmos".
> At 3m13s tracing and 7s parsing, 600 frames will
> take quiet a while, but I want to have enough room
> for editing later. And I shouldn't be playing on my
> PC at the moment (due to studies), so this keeps me
> from it. :-)
> 
> Well, as is no doubtedly obvious, this scene depicts
> some sort of sunrise (with a nice camera-banking and
> zoom-out). Nothing that special. Just wanted to share. :-)
> 
> Regards,
> Tim
> 
>

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Because several have said this, I'll be making a general
reply:
Yeah, the atmosphere is a little thick, and yeah, the sun
normally has no atmosphere. I'm going more for an
artistic view, with overexagheration, than a physically
correct and realistic view.
Still, I might experiment a little with at least a little
more realism... :-)

Oh, the PC I'm working on is an Athlon XP+ 2400, with 768
MB DDR-RAM on a W2k system.


-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

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"Francois Labreque" <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote in message
news:3EF### [at] videotronca...
> > thats neat city lighting. does earth really look lit up like that on the
> > dark side?
>
> Yes.  I'm pretty sure he used this picture for an image map:
>
> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020810.html

Yeah but he's exagerated the brightness, because city lights are much darker
than the sun, so a real camera wouldn't be able to get both things in shot as
clearly as that.

Still it looks fantastic!

--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

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Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> 
> This is the first scene I consider "pretty much finished"
> for my long-term project: "M-Kosmos".
> At 3m13s tracing and 7s parsing, 600 frames will
> take quiet a while, but I want to have enough room
> for editing later.

Pshaw.  I don't consider an animation to be taking too long until each
frame takes more than an hour.

Regards,
John

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MUCH better!

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

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Thanks! Short and clean answer, eh? :-)

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

>     MUCH better!
>
> Cheers!
>
> Chip Shults
> My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip
>
>

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Love it but isn't the "sun a bit blurred?   i figure from that distance,
and in a near vacuum of space it would look like it had an "edge" sharp
enough to cut with.  but that is just my opinion

"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?)
>
> Regards,
> Tim
>
> --
> Tim Nikias v2.0
> Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
> Email: Tim### [at] gmxde
>
>  [Image]

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Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah, I figured the sun
would be sharper and less soft, but I wanted a
soft look to it. In this case, the sun is just source
for warmth and light, and IMHO a soft sun conveys
this better than a realistic sharp sun.

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

> Love it but isn't the "sun a bit blurred?   i figure from that distance,
> and in a near vacuum of space it would look like it had an "edge" sharp
> enough to cut with.  but that is just my opinion
>
> "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?)
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tim
> >
> > --
> > Tim Nikias v2.0
> > Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
> > Email: Tim### [at] gmxde
> >
> >  [Image]
>

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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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