| TG InfinitePlane Cloud |
| TIPS |
| 1. Types Of Object It Can Be Used With Remember that the sky object can be as simple or as complex as you wish! Because the surface of the object is entirely ignored, and only used as a “window” through which to project onto the virtual infinite plane, it is usually best to use the simplest object possible - a cube is often a good choice. Also remember that the size of the object - including its scaling in each of the x, y and z directions, will have no effect on your results. |
| 2. Which Reflectance Shader? Generally, the simplest - Constant. You might want to use Matte, and turn the Diffuse channel to 0, and use the Ambient (Luminance) channel to control the overall brightness of the effect. Remember that the colour and look is that of an infinite plane, but if you use a reflectance shader that picks up on the trueSpace light sources, it will be lighting the surface of the OBJECT and not the surface of the infinite plane....could give some unusual results, but not really recommended for ordinary use of the shader! |
| 3. Getting Started / Where To Go The presets are a good place to start. You can adjust the Sunlight Vector to change the direction of the lighting, and give a different look to the preset that matches the lighting in your scene; or you can change the lighting and material colours to get different effects quickly and easily. This should give you plenty to get started with. Beyond that, playing and experimenting is quite important with this shader, since it can give some highly unusual results! |
| 4. Does It Work In An Animation? Yes, the shader will render the infinite plane correctly within an animation. You could fly the camera in any direction, and the haze will unwind into the distance to reveal continual new detail, with existing detail scrolling by overhead correctly. You could even fly the camera upwards, toward and through the cloud plane, even though the shader isn’t really intended for this (the shader is not guaranteed to work correctly when the camera is VERY close to the cloud plane, or when passing through the cloud plane, but in such an animation, this would only be 1 frame or so that might render incorrectly and could be missed out). Of course, your viewer would also then discover that the clouds are infinitely thin as you flew through the virtual cloud plane! Note that the sky object can be moved, or scaled, or otherwise animated, without affecting what is rendered, which may be useful in certain circumstances. |
| 5. Does It Work With trueSpace Depth Cue or Fog? The answer is no, not really. It might be possible to set up a scene to get around the problems, but unlikely.... The problem is that the infinite plane does not really exist within the tS scene, and as far as trueSpace is concerned, the distance of any given point will be the distance from the camera / viewpoint to the surface of the sky object, and NOT to the point on the infinite plane. This means that the depth cue or fog will not work correctly with the sky object. Using a sphere as the sky object, it MAY be possible to get the desired effects, just as with any other sky sphere. |
| 6. Unusual Things To Try Remember that the sky object acts as a “window” onto the infinite plane..for a strange warp portal effect (for want of a better name!), try painting an ordinary sized object with this shader (ie, one that does not encompass the whole scene, but sits inside the scene)....it will then act as a “window” onto some infinite sky area behind it. Who knows, someone might find this useful, and it’s certainly fun! |
| 7. Using the ShaderLab 2 Mapping Options Altering the ShaderLab 2 mapping (UV / Object / World) will have no effect on this shader, since the calculations are not from points on the surface of the “sky sphere”, but on the virtual infinite plane. |
| TG InfinitePlane Cloud Intro |
| TG InfinitePlane Cloud Parameters |
| TG InfinitePlane Cloud Tips |
| TG InfinitePlane Cloud Samples |
| TG Pack 2 Index |