Hello,
I started this project back when Sky Atmosphere was first introduced.
I created Earth and Moon at real scale and real distance from one another. The sun distance is faked.
The camera is behind the moon pointing toward earth. The atmosphere is very noisy.
I put this off for awhile to see if it would be improved in UE5. It seems the atmosphere still breaks up.
As a workaround, I’m attempting to miniaturize the existing work from Maya, and recreate at 0.01 scale of the original in hopes the atmosphere will avoid breaking up and I can maintain proper distance between the Earth/Moon and maintain my focal length.
It seems the miniaturized scale improves in terms of maintaining a cleaner looking atmosphere, although there still subtle pixelated noise:
However, now it seems the values on the atmosphere can’t really get close to the look/feel when the atmosphere is at it’s default 1-to-1 earth scale values.
Full scale atmosphere with default values:
0.01 scale atmosphere, with approximated values (I’m hoping I’m missing something here)…note the edge of the atmosphere being harsh, the color transition/shadowing missing:
It seems the atmosphere height with really small values (in my case, 0.5) completely loses all of it’s inherent beauty that it has at 60.
Same mini scale of earth (0.01 of real world scale) but with atmosphere height at 60. Note the very nice gradient to black as well as the nice color transitions into the shadowed side.
It seems as soon as values less than 60 are used, all the nice gradated elements begin to get harsher/lost.
A few questions to help me determine my best next step:
-
Are there settings I’m failing to alter to improve the look of the miniature earth? I’m creating an earth that is 0.01 of real world scale in maya, and exporting in CM to Unreal.
-
Are there suggested min/max scales of planets to not exceed in order to maintain proper atmosphere behavior?
-
If the answer to the above 2 questions are both “no”, is my best bet to use real world earth/atmosphere and fake the moon scale/distance and camera distance?
I’m really hoping not to do #3 as I had recreated the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and modeled all the text to the focal length of the camera (that took into account the earth/moon distance) as I was aiming to do the intro entirely in viewport with all 3d elements. I have the project basically ready for proper texture/lighting if I can just get the atmosphere working. I even have the music/animation in there and done.
If I had to do #3, the problem is I matched pixel-for-pixel to the original film, every 3d letter and put them in 3D space… so changing focal length would mean the 3D text would no longer match up to the original films pixels.
I suppose I could turn the 3d text into simple 2D graphics and lay them over the scene but I was really set on doing it all “in camera” so to speak in 3D. Plus, getting all those 3d letters done and matching mostly to the original took some time and I’m hoping not to bake them down to 2d elements. I was also intending to do a camera fly through of the letters had it worked…
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
John
*The project isn’t texture/color correct (colors/textures are all in progress/placeholder… I really got hung up on the atmosphere it seems).
