Deep Space WIPs

[parkdalegardener]

That is where the generator sits now. I can dial up the number of rings, the size of the ring, and drop a shepherd moon into each gap automatically. Ring gaps only appear if there is something to sweep up the dust and small particles so a shepherd moon just happens. The number of particles per ring is adjustable as is the thickness of the ring. That is the noise offset. The shepherd is just a larger random particle. I generate it on a curve circle concentric to the rings. There is a dial to speed it on it's way around the "sun" if it doesn't appear in your camera view, or make it go away if it is.

The big collisions and resulting destruction is where I am now. Keeping 0,0,0 has been a big help in locating the instance I need to make real but the math is complicated and needs to be adaptable so I can cast collisions where I want them. I have results but I am not pleased. I need a new method to do that. I have a thought. I'll implement it later to see if it robust enough. However, I suspect that I may need a separate system.


It is important to again point out that instances are not real. If they were I would be roasting weenies on my machines and selling the stove for cash to pay the electric bill.


The current issue is identifying a particular instance to make real. I have proximity nodes I can use to tell when collisions are about to happen but I need real geometry in order to use them. Catch-22.

[McGrandpa]

Seems to be the fly in the ointment.   Too many real meshes and it bogs down the whole system.   So how many real meshes are you messing with, and what actually is it calculation wise that is heating up the CPU?

[parkdalegardener]

CPU is under about 27% load across all cores. Not particularly hot on it's own, but the MB clock, CPU and RAM timings and the front side video bus are all clocked up.  It's the temperatures in this apartment. When it's over 30 degrees ambient in here and the air is wet enough to wring out, dissipating heat from the GPU is the biggest issue. I run it at as close to full load as possible. I crank out 4K Cycles frames for these test anims. That's 250 frames at 25fps rendered at 256 samples and a full set of passes. My render times are under 7 seconds a frame. There's your heat. My rent includes the utilities thank goodness.


I am very conscious of whats being calculated per frame. That's why there are no realized instances. True geometry is a killer. There only two realized objects in the scene. The "sun" sphere and a meteor you cannot see because it is inside the "sun". I could move it out of shot somewhere but must keep it visible. As mentioned earlier; whatever I do to that initial meteor happens to all of them. Turn it invisible in the render and they are all invisible in the render. Thus; it is hidden in the central star where it can remain visible, but never be accidentally appear as a wayward object in another angle or a different scene.


Heck; because that particular rock is already a real object. It would be a perfect target for obliteration but that would result in the destruction of the universe. Well maybe not the universe, but most certainly the ring system.


I need two more real meshes. The rock to be obliterated and the rock that hits it. No problem. I can easily incorporate one into the generator by putting them in intersecting orbits. However, for the intersecting orbits to be seen in frame by the camera; either the camera or the orbits have to be artificially manipulated. That defeats the purpose of a generator.


The current setup for collisions I am testing isn't going to work. Well it does work but it too time consuming. Timing tells me that the check is adding .017 milliseconds every test. That is ([.017 ms x number of meteor hits] + [.017 ms x number of misses]) * number of frames = time for bed when you are dealing with 10s of thousands of meteors per frame because any given one could be hit at any given time. It only calculates those within the camera view bounding box s it may not be that stiff. It would depend upon the density of instances upon the ring disk(s) and weather or not they are within the camera view.

[parkdalegardener]

Oh, Blender has a setting to turn on node timings. That is why I know the cost of what I do.

[parkdalegardener]

So I'm getting into the weeds. I need a project outline for this. Project outline: Start in the middle. Work outward. Done. Yep, that ought to work.

So: Starting in the middle we need a star. It needs six controls. Colour, size, surface complexity, complexity movement, rotational speed of star.

This is the surface of that star with the controls above attached. The colour is a single chip. In this case orange. Frames render at 2.1 seconds so far. A bit steep but so far I can live with it.

So this is the surface. The albedo/diffuse if you will. It is a 4D distorted noise. 3D noise with the W (time) parameter activated. I'll add the ambient next so it casts light into the aether.

[parkdalegardener]

Man I hate youtube compression. The boiling surface of the star freaks it out.

[Wizzard]

The utube compression sucks, but I can see the roiling surface. With high ambient I'll need shades 8 )
So, this is done with scripts?  Do this whilst doing that whilst cycling the other?
My experiance with blender was one of frustration, with an odd mix of satisfaction whan something worked.
                i really enjoy learning like this, thanx
Cheers

[McGrandpa]

That is one busy star surface PDG!   Great stuff man.   

[parkdalegardener]

The utube compression sucks, but I can see the roiling surface. With high ambient I'll need shades 8 )
So, this is done with scripts?  Do this whilst doing that whilst cycling the other?
My experiance with blender was one of frustration, with an odd mix of satisfaction whan something worked.
                i really enjoy learning like this, thanx
Cheers

This star is just noise. No funky scripts or tools. Just plain old every day noise with a musgrave texture over the whole thing to give some 3d depth to a flat surface. The noise is 4D. That means that W (as in W,X,Y, and Z) "direction" is active. The W direction on a graph is Time. That gives me an easy way to animate the noise and the rolling and boiling. System load while rendering is 24 meg.

I'm just sucking back the morning coffee. Should have grabbed one from Fafnir with a bit of Rye in it. At any rate. Ambient, thought about it last night. Do my best work while I'm asleep. More shader tricks coming up. I'm using the object mapping here and not the UV. In other words the object itself is used for mapping co-ordinates not a projection of some type. Planar, box, cylinder and so on. I have yet to give it a go.


The theory as I figure it will to be use the object mapping by normalizing (equalling) the vectors as projected from the object. This will make (I hope) radiating spikes from the center outward of the sphere. This will allow me to make the corona and ultimately the flares and prominances if I take it that far. First up, when I get back to this; is to subdivide the sphere a bit . It is still flat with no displacement or bump.


I make this stuff so that it works by itself and I can forget it once it is up and running. For instance the star texture will move as long as the frame counter advances. No need to do any keyframing or anything else and the shader will work on most anything. I could use something like this as the interior of a volcano in a set of shots somewhere and just forget about it. If at any time the villagers decide to sacrifice the maiden the boiling lava will be happy to oblige and I need not worry about it.

[McGrandpa]

Can shaders in Blender be carried over to other progs, like Poser?   I know some things work great in vue, some best in poser, some in DS, others in ZBrush and so on.   I still like to play in ONE program at a time.   When I play in Vue, it always involves vegetation, volumetrics and that sort of thing.   Vue's renders look better, to me, than either Poser or DS.   So, means my output is all kinds of disjointed and unconnected.  Yeah.   Oh well.
I am enjoying where all you have gone with this Ringed System thing.   Me, I figure that might work best in Vue.  And I only have V 6 Infinite man.  Shrugs.