Monday, December 3, 2007

Sun Visualization


Inspired by the Griffith Observatory, and with the help of the latest issue of 3D World magazine I set off to make a Sun Spot visualization of my own. The sun spots still have to be added, they will be created with Fluid Dynamics. Also, I may have missed a step along the way - the rays should be much smaller. I believe I should have worked in meters vs. cm. If I worked in meters the Multi-Streak particles would be smaller. But working in cm is advisable for large intergalactic scenes due to clipping plane errors that can result from working at large scales.


I should also adjust the Color Accumulation for the Hardware Render of the Rays. But the composite is of my own devising, using a combination of blending modes and radial blurs. I think the image works, but this represents how visuals can be misleading while being attractive to the viewer.

It is interesting to note that two particle placement techniques have been used in this composition: Emit from Surface and Emit from Texture. The stars in the background are images of real stars. They have been mapped to sprites, and emitted from a black and white texture painted onto a large sphere.

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