[1.8] EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements [1.8.0-2]

[ModerndayLink]

On 7/15/2017 at 7:27 AM, KerbMav said:

How do I turn this

OBJECT
    {
        name = Minmus-Dust
        body = Minmus
        altitude = 250
        speed = 0,0,0
        killBodyRotation = true
        settings
        {
            _Color = 114,146,134,255
            _MainTex
            {
                value = zzzMaruko/EVE/Minmus/Textures/duna1
            }
        }
        layerVolume
        {
            size = 3100,3
            rotationSpeed = 0.0002
            area = 18200,3.7
            particleMaterial
            {
                _Tex
                {
                    value = zzzMaruko/EVE/Minmus/Textures/particle/rgb
                }
            }
        }
    }

 

into a fullfledged dense fog covering all but the highest hills on Minmus?

Change altitude to 500

change color to 114 146 134 260

change the main texture from duna 1 to to detail1

[golkaidakhaana]

Never mind my other post, just me being stupid, but I have a massive list of installed mods, of which I suspect one might be conflicting with EVE, and for some reason whenever I'm around ~11km above Eve's surface, my game stops responding, it doesn't crash, just freezes indefinitely until I close it. Anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

[ModerndayLink]

6 hours ago, sslaptnhablhat said:

Never mind my other post, just me being stupid, but I have a massive list of installed mods, of which I suspect one might be conflicting with EVE, and for some reason whenever I'm around ~11km above Eve's surface, my game stops responding, it doesn't crash, just freezes indefinitely until I close it. Anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

Well at about 11 km I'm pretty sure at that height you would have the most volumetric clouds loaded.

[golkaidakhaana]

10 hours ago, ModerndayLink64 said:

Well at about 11 km I'm pretty sure at that height you would have the most volumetric clouds loaded.

Any clue on how this could be fixed? I've just switched to using SVE instead, which doesn't work for me at all, so I'd rather just go back to using EVE, provided I could actually land on Eve without freezing.

[ModerndayLink]

9 hours ago, sslaptnhablhat said:

Any clue on how this could be fixed? I've just switched to using SVE instead, which doesn't work for me at all, so I'd rather just go back to using EVE, provided I could actually land on Eve without freezing.

I would suggest removing the lowest cloud layer using the in game editor (alt+0) as this will mean not as many cloud layers will be loaded at once.

[golkaidakhaana]

15 hours ago, ModerndayLink64 said:

I would suggest removing the lowest cloud layer using the in game editor (alt+0) as this will mean not as many cloud layers will be loaded at once.

Thanks, I'll try this when I reinstall EVE.

[Poodmund]

@JadeOfMaar, @Sigma88, @Drew Kerman, @Galileo & @OhioBob...

Seeing as there was discussion of it over on the Kopernicus thread about EVE axial tilt implementation of clouds and how Sigma did it way back with OPMTilt (giving Urlum a 90 degree axial tilt) I thought I'd just share that it is absolutely possible to give EVE cloud layers axial tilt at any degree of inclination.

Basically you implement the texture as a cube map, change the rotation axis of the texture to be through the Y axis and then change the Y value in the texture offset to the amount of degrees of inclination you require. Finally you set killBodyRotation to 'True' to stop the precession.

[Sigma88]

1 minute ago, Poodmund said:

Basically you implement the texture as a cube map

you don't even need to do that

last time I checked any type of clouds could be tilted at any degrees, even those from equirectangular textures

[Poodmund]

True, it obviously depends on what kind of textural concept you wish to implement.

[JadeOfMaar]

Excellent!  

[ModerndayLink]

I actually made use of tilt to give Neidon a "great dark spot" that actually spins

[panzer1b]

So im back to modding this game after a bit of a hiatus following unfortunate HDD crash, and i have a quick question to the EVE experts out there:

 

Is there a way to disable the transparency of the 3d particle effects completely expecially when you move the camera around.  It seems that EVE has some sort of effect that duplicates particles and makes em more or less transparent as you move the camera around (i presume this is intentional to make the particles more natural and less obviously fake looking and it works well for clouds or dust but not my intended mod feature).  Basically im trying to create a potatoroid belt around a planet (in my case dres) composed of lots and lots of tiny little asteroids.  Sofar this is what i have done:

As you can see (look closely at the potatoroids), some of the potatoroids are partially transparent and i cannot allow this to be the case as real rocks are supposed to be 100% opaque.  I know EVE was never designed with this in mind, but if anyone knows a cofiguration that disables this "transparency" effect id apreciate the help, since i just cant release a asteroid belt that has transparent asteroids (and the texture is pure white so thats not the cause of this bug). 

 

Also, a bit of a side note, ive tried a few times, but i cannot figure out how to code EVE plugin to support glowing 3d volumetric particles in a similar way that the game has a "minlight" parameter for the 2d texture which lets you make that sorta glow on the dark side (used for aurora rendering or just about any sort of glowing effects.  I really really want to make volcanoes on moho, but you just cannot get em to look right as the volcanoes turn pitch black on the dark side of the planet, and last i checked, lava is not pitch black (and even if it is it sure would look cooler to have glowing lava eruptions).  If it cant be done, then so be it, but if anyone knows how to do this (im no pro but i know how to code a little bit) id appreciate all the help i can get, EVE really need to add support to glowing 3d particles (and while we are at it proper rain beneath cloud layers).

[Waz]

3 hours ago, panzer1b said:

As you can see (look closely at the potatoroids), some of the potatoroids are partially transparent and i cannot allow this to be the case as real rocks are supposed to be 100% opaque. 

Very cool! The setting you're after is layerVolume.particleMaterial._InvFade, but this means they'll "pop" in and out, unless you make the layerVolume.area.x quite large.

I've often wished Kopernicus could make asteroids via "ground" scatters.

[panzer1b]

40 minutes ago, Waz said:

Very cool! The setting you're after is layerVolume.particleMaterial._InvFade, but this means they'll "pop" in and out, unless you make the layerVolume.area.x quite large.

I've often wished Kopernicus could make asteroids via "ground" scatters.

I dont think that setting is doing anything for me to fix the issue.  I have tried everything from very low numbers (as low as itd go before the potatos stopped rendering completely to like 1 million or so), and i have my area set to like 300K since i need it to render the entire belt when you are in orbit.  If you look really closely at the pics you can see how particles that are very far away from the craft are also being faded in and out randomly over time (and each particle seems to randomly split into copies of itself as you move the camera around too alternating between opaque and transparent).  I know the description is kinda bad here (and ill try to make a video of what i mean tomora or so) but the issue im having is that i need each particle that is rendered to be distinct and fully opaque with no variation in alfa layer and no random fading in and out for another identical particle in teh same spot but in a different orientation.

Anyways, if its not clear what the issue is ill provide my configs tomora alongside a video showing exactly what i dont want occuring.  Kinda hard to tell from a screenie thats static...

[Waz]

5 hours ago, panzer1b said:

 i have my area set to like 300K since i need it to render the entire belt when you are in orbit. 

 

I suspect you're pushing it well beyond intentions - volumetric layers are extremely expensive, and really need to be faded out to plain textures at some point well before entire orbits. Even if you get it working, most people will just scream at you (and then me) for how poorly it performs.

[Poodmund]

7 hours ago, panzer1b said:

 If you look really closely at the pics you can see how particles that are very far away from the craft are also being faded in and out randomly over time (and each particle seems to randomly split into copies of itself as you move the camera around too alternating between opaque and transparent).

Do you appreciate that the volumetric particles are rendered on the x, y and z plane individually according to the x, y and z particle textures that you use? Each one is only rendered depending on the orientation of the user camera.

 You may be seeing your particles similar to the image above. To further accentuate this effect, replace your particle texture with a solid white square, you'll easily be able to see what's going on behind the scenes.

[panzer1b]

2 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Do you appreciate that the volumetric particles are rendered on the x, y and z plane individually according to the x, y and z particle textures that you use? Each one is only rendered depending on the orientation of the user camera.

 You may be seeing your particles similar to the image above. To further accentuate this effect, replace your particle texture with a solid white square, you'll easily be able to see what's going on behind the scenes.

This appears to be the culprit.  As the effect is basically like multiple particles being rendered somewhat differently based on camera orientation and they fade in/out as you pan around.  If this is how EVE works then i guess ill have to shelve my "potatoroid belt" plans, but if there is a way to force particle rendering to be more conventional (like older games where its just 1 sprite that always faces the camera) id like to know how to enable that.

5 hours ago, Waz said:

 

I suspect you're pushing it well beyond intentions - volumetric layers are extremely expensive, and really need to be faded out to plain textures at some point well before entire orbits. Even if you get it working, most people will just scream at you (and then me) for how poorly it performs.

Ive not noticed any major performance issues with this regard, as i have the textures scaled to massive proportions (above 10000) so it looks like there is lots and lots of particles but in reality the density isnt far beyond that of what you'd get out of SVE cloud layer (being on dres and timewarping has roughly the same lag inducing effect as being anywhere near the vicinity of kerbin with SVE installed).  Also there is no plain texture at all, since i cant get the layers to look "authentic" otherwise, so its literally no visible 2D anything and 3D potatoes around the entire planet (it dissapears if you get excessively far from planet but i cant be rendering them when im at kerbin )...

[Poodmund]

I expect that you're using the standard BoulderCo particle texture that comes with EVE? If so, it has 3 difference textures for the x, y and z planes? If you specify your own texture that has the same texture for all 3 axis, I would expect that it would fix this issue for you as it would be rendering the same texture no matter the orientation of the camera.

[panzer1b]

9 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

I expect that you're using the standard BoulderCo particle texture that comes with EVE? If so, it has 3 difference textures for the x, y and z planes? If you specify your own texture that has the same texture for all 3 axis, I would expect that it would fix this issue for you as it would be rendering the same texture no matter the orientation of the camera.

Im using a custom potatoroid texture and its rendering this way as well, its pure black/white and isnt a rgb styled texture like those used by stock eve configs or SVE.  The texture should render the same in all axis but it does not (there is variations in rendered angle and opacity).  If you have an example texture that renders correctly i can base mine off of it, but sofar both RGB style textures and my own textures (that are just greyscale and have no color) render with varying transparency depending on view angle.

Im prolly gonna shelve the potatoroid concept since i dont see it being doable with the way EVE renders 3d particles, but who knows,m maybee someday ill figure a way to do it (once i learn how to properly code EVE style plugins )...

[HafCoJoe]

 There's been an issue with detailTex that's been bugging me for a while now and I finally got down to figuring out what's causing it...

@Galileo I bet you've run into this issue too. I labeled corners on the detail texture and it seems as though the DetailTex is warped into square faces and then wrapped around the layer2D texture. Note that DetailScale is 3 so there's 3x3 tile on each face. Thyis means that while all the sides have the same tiling, they only "match up" on one side since the other faces are rotated either 90 or 180 degrees.

 

I laid the textures flat in this imgur embed to demonstrate clearer. The arrows mark adjacent faces and the off-green box highlights the one wrapped face that's correct. You can open the second image in a new tab to see all the faces that don't line up:

Two ways I see to fix this:

1. Make detail textures not tile as a box (I.E. make them tile the way surface textures do)
2. Use a detail texture that's patterned, that way it that tiles regardless of rotation (I.E. a checkerboard or something non-organic)

As it stands, it's really ugly to look at from orbit and there isn't a user-end fix to my knowledge. Is this something doable?  @Thomas P. I'll ping you here too since you might have a word to say on tiling?

Edited August 12, 2017 by Avera9eJoe

[Galileo]

15 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

 There's been an issue with detailTex that's been bugging me for a while now and I finally got down to figuring out what's causing it...

@Galileo I bet you've run into this issue too. I labeled corners on the detail texture and it seems as though the DetailScale is put into warped square faces and then wrapped around the planet. Note that DetailScale is 3 so there's 3x3 tile on each face. Thyis means that while all the sides have the same tiling, they only "match up" on one side since the other faces are rotated either 90 or 180 degrees.

I laid the textures flat to demonstrate clearer. The arrows mark adjacent faces and the off-green box highlights the one wrapped face that's correct. You can open the second image in a new tab to see all the faces that don't line up:

Two ways I see to fix this:

1. Make detail textures not tile as a box (I.E. the way surface textures tile)
2. Use a detail texture with a pattern that tiles regardless of rotation (I.E. a checkerboard pattern or something non-organic)

As it stands, it's really ugly to look at from orbit and there isn't a user-end fix to my knowledge. Is this something doable?  @Thomas P. I'll ping you here too since you might have a word to say on tiling?

I have actually never noticed, or if I did, it didn't bother me enough. Lol very interesting though

[themaster401]

Quite interesting discovery, expected the detailtexture to tesselate as if it were an equirectangular mask over the clouds.

[HafCoJoe]

1 hour ago, Galileo said:

I have actually never noticed, or if I did, it didn't bother me enough. Lol very interesting though

Aye, It isn't that noticeable if you land at the equators  anywhere around 45 degrees of inclination it's a real bother though  On Eve it's most noticeable because of the far detail fall off

1 hour ago, themaster401 said:

Quite interesting discovery, expected the detailtexture to tesselate as if it were an equirectangular mask over the clouds.

I'm just as surprised as you

Edited August 12, 2017 by Avera9eJoe

[The White Guardian]

@Avera9eJoe thank you for figuring this out! I kept seeing these odd detail-related cutoffs on the clouds but no clearance as to what was causing it exactly.

I personally figured the detail tex would be applied like a standard Unity detail mapper... regardless there is certainly some room for improvement when it comes to detail-enabled cloud layers on densely-clouded worlds.

[Gameslinx]

[snipped] ignore

Edited August 12, 2017 by Gameslinx