Creating a Moon Mission...
by Jason Farmer · in Torque Game Engine · 09/22/2005 (5:13 am) · 5 replies
Last night, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to have a mission on the moon. A few neat touches would see it done really nicely.
Low gravity
Starry Skybox with pictur eof the Earth
Bland Moon texture
Very low ambient light
All sorted..
But then I though.. Where's the craters?
I tried creating a crater mesh and using a shape replicator to place it on the moon surface, but that didn't work out too well, lots of intersecting craters and they looked really strange when they went up hills.
So what I thought was, How about Decals?.. they'd be perfect. Better would be a Decal Replicator?... I've had a search and I can't find anything.
Has anyone made such a beast?
Does anyone know how to make a decal replicator?...
Low gravity
Starry Skybox with pictur eof the Earth
Bland Moon texture
Very low ambient light
All sorted..
But then I though.. Where's the craters?
I tried creating a crater mesh and using a shape replicator to place it on the moon surface, but that didn't work out too well, lots of intersecting craters and they looked really strange when they went up hills.
So what I thought was, How about Decals?.. they'd be perfect. Better would be a Decal Replicator?... I've had a search and I can't find anything.
Has anyone made such a beast?
Does anyone know how to make a decal replicator?...
#2
The two biggest things about what you are trying to do isn't how to make the most realistic moon surface, it is how to cheat and not get caught...
First, Make various craters of different sizes. Since the moon didn't form like the earth, it is relatively flat. All the craters are highly visible. So small impacts make small craters, large ones make large craters.
Second, and this is far simpler... take the angle of the sun, and move it more towards the horizon. And take the ambient shadow, and make it very dark. There isn't alot of light that reflects on the moon, so dark areas are really dark.
moon rocks are entirely up to you, you will need something to break up the monotany. And there is a thing called a shape replicator for the rocks, foliage is about the same, but the shape replicator allows for collision.
09/23/2005 (9:19 pm)
I think the best way is to use the terrain edtior, give the whole mesh a slightly rocky texture(i.e. the original detail mesh given with TGE) then use two or three sub textures at varying levels of darkness. paint them on with small brushes, in streaks.The two biggest things about what you are trying to do isn't how to make the most realistic moon surface, it is how to cheat and not get caught...
First, Make various craters of different sizes. Since the moon didn't form like the earth, it is relatively flat. All the craters are highly visible. So small impacts make small craters, large ones make large craters.
Second, and this is far simpler... take the angle of the sun, and move it more towards the horizon. And take the ambient shadow, and make it very dark. There isn't alot of light that reflects on the moon, so dark areas are really dark.
moon rocks are entirely up to you, you will need something to break up the monotany. And there is a thing called a shape replicator for the rocks, foliage is about the same, but the shape replicator allows for collision.
#3
What about using TSE? It has a much more flexible terrain engine that can easil deal with this sort of scene.
09/23/2005 (9:30 pm)
Moon has lots of detail - tons of little rocks and debris and such. :)What about using TSE? It has a much more flexible terrain engine that can easil deal with this sort of scene.
#4
Here's what I did.
Created a terrain with mostly flat areas but with some mountains.. not too high, but to give an interesting look..
Then I used a hard brush and made large craters in the terrain all over the place of different sizes. Kept doing this until a, I got the look I wanted and b, got bored..
I lowered the sun in the sky and removed the ambient light (well, set it to very very low levels)
I created a skybox with a starmap generator and added a nice picture of the earth on one face (opposite to the sun)
Then I applied a blank gray texture and lit the map...
Looked oK, apart from the definite gray banding and the low resolution light and shadow resolution was sticking out like a sore thumb.
Robert, you are right, it's not how to make the most realistic image, it's how to cheat and make it look realistic without getting caught... If the light map was smoother, I might have gotten away with it but there was no way I'd fool anyone into thinking this was the moon..
So I took a high res picture of the moon, found a suitable area of craters and chopped out a 256x256 texture.. then ran it through a Seamless Texture generator, then I found an are with less craters but some nice detail and did the same.
Using fractal placement, I put them both on the terrain and was pretty happy with the results. Just had to rotate the images so the highlight and shadows of the craters were looking right and I was away.
It's amazing how much, small touches like light and shadow can have on an image and our perception of what's realistic or not.
Ben, I'd love to use the TSE, but I think it'd be a little too much for me to learn at the moment. Maybe my next project once I've got my Torque-Fu Green belt (i.e released something into the wild). I think TSE is blackbelt stuff. Am I right? Is it easy?
If anyone's interested I'll post some screens of the final article.
09/26/2005 (5:50 am)
Cheers guys, thanks for the tips. I managed to get something looking pretty much how I wanted it to look. It's not perfect, but hey, it's a game not a simulation of the moon.Here's what I did.
Created a terrain with mostly flat areas but with some mountains.. not too high, but to give an interesting look..
Then I used a hard brush and made large craters in the terrain all over the place of different sizes. Kept doing this until a, I got the look I wanted and b, got bored..
I lowered the sun in the sky and removed the ambient light (well, set it to very very low levels)
I created a skybox with a starmap generator and added a nice picture of the earth on one face (opposite to the sun)
Then I applied a blank gray texture and lit the map...
Looked oK, apart from the definite gray banding and the low resolution light and shadow resolution was sticking out like a sore thumb.
Robert, you are right, it's not how to make the most realistic image, it's how to cheat and make it look realistic without getting caught... If the light map was smoother, I might have gotten away with it but there was no way I'd fool anyone into thinking this was the moon..
So I took a high res picture of the moon, found a suitable area of craters and chopped out a 256x256 texture.. then ran it through a Seamless Texture generator, then I found an are with less craters but some nice detail and did the same.
Using fractal placement, I put them both on the terrain and was pretty happy with the results. Just had to rotate the images so the highlight and shadows of the craters were looking right and I was away.
It's amazing how much, small touches like light and shadow can have on an image and our perception of what's realistic or not.
Ben, I'd love to use the TSE, but I think it'd be a little too much for me to learn at the moment. Maybe my next project once I've got my Torque-Fu Green belt (i.e released something into the wild). I think TSE is blackbelt stuff. Am I right? Is it easy?
If anyone's interested I'll post some screens of the final article.
#5
Just a little tip for you, don't use completely blank textures - that's when you get the banding artifact. The human eye is great at focusing on these details and enchance the edges. Do a google search on Mach bands and you'll see what I mean.
Instead of having flat-color textures, just add some noise to the texture. It doesn't have to be a lot, just some grain. It'll help fool the eye and it'll look better.
--
Hans
09/26/2005 (5:57 am)
Good job Jason, nice to hear that you've succeeded with what you set out to do.Just a little tip for you, don't use completely blank textures - that's when you get the banding artifact. The human eye is great at focusing on these details and enchance the edges. Do a google search on Mach bands and you'll see what I mean.
Instead of having flat-color textures, just add some noise to the texture. It doesn't have to be a lot, just some grain. It'll help fool the eye and it'll look better.
--
Hans
Torque Owner Jason Farmer
I made some pretty decent (ish) craters using the terrain editor, but because the main texture is quite plain, just gray, it shows up the low resolution light map quite a bit. I've read elsewhere on this site that in order to improve the quality of the terrain light map involves pretty much ripping the blender to pieces, something I've not got the budget to do. so I guess I'll just have to play with the textures and see if I can mask the low res ligh map in detail... which will be quite an achievement as the moon is kindof devoid of detail. Perhaps using the foiliage replicator for moon rocks and the shape replicator for bigger moon rocks will help...