updated with more screenshots- - -
Frank, thank you so much.
The camera used to shade the inside of that sphere is a spherical projection camera that's part of the node structure. That spherical camera's "orientation", for the purpose of how it renders the surface, is driven the XYZ Position, XYZ Target and Up Vector attributes. Its position relative to the lat and long of "planet surface" is controlled by the Planetary Angle attribute and its distance from the "planetary surface" is controlled by the Altitude. You can then add a "real" camera in 3D space to view portions of the inside surface of that infinite sphere. So what you see in your final render is actually a combination of setting used to generate the surface and the world-space positioning of the thin lens camera used to view it.
This made me realize what setting I was overlooking!
To better understand the scale I created a simple scene with two spheres and a ground plane.
- sample scene - two spheres with ground plane
I attached the .obj in a .zip file:
With the help of the two spheres as reference point for me it was easier to understand what changing the planetary environment settings does.
Hiding the ground plane yields a more artistic effect but then it is once again more difficult to understand that the planet is actually "below" or "behind" the ground plane.
- Planetary environment behind ground plane
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The
Altitude is another crucial setting:
- Altitude 2900000
- Altitude 9900000
- Altitude 38920000
In any case it seems you can create some moons with sphere primitives and combine them with the planetary environment.
- planetary environment combined with spheres
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There is no real planetary geometry, there is no real camera position. It's not like you could build a solar system with multiple planets and make a Planetary Environment for each one and expect them to all render correctly at the same time. In other words, it's a fast, clever fake. That's fine, and very useful in certain situations […]
Agreed, I also do not expect that the "Planetary environment" provides every single one of those complex options a dedicated landscape simulation software offers.
So far I find the Octane "Planetary environment" interesting because it provides results very quickly.
- Ground elevation with random image
Still, for those interested a tutorial by Soberdreamer that gives some ideas how planetary scenes are created in e-on vue:
http://orig09.deviantart.net/0660/f/201 ... 4nz8jz.pdf[…]but it's not a universal atmosphere shader.
I realize now that the "planetary environment" effect is calculated for the displayed "background".
However, it would be interesting if we could just apply a " planetary shader" to any sphere primitive we place in the scene.
Example - A sun system environment:
The sun and starfield settings would remain as they are.
The ground and atmosphere of the original "planetary environment" could be disabled.
A simplified sun system with some planets and moons is created by placing sphere primitives in the scene and applying the "planetary shader".- - -
You can then add a "real" camera in 3D space to view portions of the inside surface of that infinite sphere.
I still wonder if there is a way not to have the planetary environment centered at the middle or the bottom middle of the viewport?
- example - sphere not centered
For some shots it would be interesting to have the planetary environment in just one corner of the image.
Basically what seems missing (or is not possible based on what Frank described) is a way to "offset" the planetary environment from its origin point.
Or is there another simple setting I am overlooking?