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TerraLumina. Thank you for purchasing TerraLumina. We hope you enjoy this product, and appreciate any feedback you may have. This pack is intended for use with Poser8 and newer, though we would reommend Poser9 and newer for best results. For the purposes of this guide, we'll be using PoserPro 2014, but there is nothing we'll be doing that can't be done in Poser 8 and above. And initially, pretty much everything is in default, except Render settings. This pack consists of three atmospheric elements, Lens Flares, Volumetric Rays and Rainbows and once you've installed the product, your new TerraLumina items will be in: Runtime:Libraries:Props:TerraDome2:TerraLumina Runtime:Libraries:Materials:! TerraDome2:Add-ons:LensFlare Runtime:Libraries:Materials:! TerraDome2:Add-ons:Rainbows Runtime:Libraries:Materials:! TerraDome2:Add-ons:VolumetricRays This pack is an add-on for TerraDome2, and while, technically, it will work without TerraDome2, results will be far less favourable. So to begin with, we want to load TerraDome2, and get some materials and morphs set up, as shown in image1 below. NOTE: Some of the images contain morphs in the group TerraFirma. These are part of a morph pack currently under construction. |
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Image 1: TerraDome2 loaded,
morphed and materialed. |
Lens Flares. To begin with, we'll take a look at Lens Flares. Our first step is to find a nice place for our lens flare to be originating from. Select the Skydome body part on TerraDome2, and use the yRotate dial to turn the sky around until you find a suitable patch for adding a lens flare. In image2 below, we've turned the Skydome 104 degress, and we're going to place our lens flare coming from the left hand side of the big mountain, and sweeping across our scene towards the front right corner. So next we need to load a Lens Flare from the props library. This will open as shown in image2 below, appearing as a set of outlined squares. Don't panic, we've set the preview visibility to Wireframe, to allow us to see the object, because of the transparencies used. Those squares won't be there when it renders. :) |
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Image2: Lens Flare loaded |
Ok, so now we need to get
the origin of our lens flare positioned. The Origin is at
the far end, furthest from the camera. Rotation is set at
Posers absolute zero, in other words where a character
will load in default. This means when we use the Turn and
Up-Down dials, the Origin remains on the inside surface of
the skydome. In image 3 below, we've used both the Turn and Up-Down dials to position the Origin just to the left of the big mountain. When all the lenses come into view, we can see the Origin is a bit larger than the others, which helps to position it. |
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Image 3: Origin positioned |
So we've got our Origin in roughly the
right place, and we can make any small adjustments that
are needed once we see how it renders. But first, we said
we were going to have the flare coming to the front right
corner, and at the moment it's coming to the front centre.
We'll adjust this using the morphs on the Lens Flare prop.
In image 4 below, we've used the Skew-Right morph to pull
the nearest lenses to the right front corner of our image. |
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Image 4: Skew Right |
But we can see a bit of a problem, which
is that the lenses aren't facing the camera which may
cause distortions of the rendered flares. To correct this,
we've use the RotateLenses-Clockwise dial. *NOTE* The rotate lenses morphs work as if you're looking down on them from above, so Clockwise twists right, and Anticlockwise twists left. We can see our lenses lined up in image5 below, so they're now facing the camera better. |
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Image 5: Re-align |
So now we've got both our Origin set, and
the direction of our flare, so let's render that up and
see what it looks like. |
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Image 6: Light, camera,
render! |
Ok, that's not too shabby, straight out of
the box. We can customise our lens flares with firstly the morphs. We've included morphs to make the flare longer or shorter, to make it uneven, and of course to change the direction. Play around with the morphs and see what results you get. We can also change the materials for a different look to our flares. We've included both single materials for changing a single lens, as well as material collections for changing all lenses. |
Volumetric Rays. Next up, we'll have a look at the Volumetric Rays. In image 7 below, we've got the same scene as we used for the Lens Flares, and we've deleted the Lens Flare prop, and loaded a Volumtric Ray prop. Again, in preview mode, this object is set to Wireframe, to help us see where it is. This prop works in a very similar way to the Lens Flare, with it originating on the inner surface of the Skydome. The Up-Down and Turn dials work in the same way too, turning the origin point around the sky. In default, the prop loads with a bit of Up-Down applied, to make initial positioning easier. Again the same as with the Lens Flare, we need to find a good point for our Volumetric Ray to be originating from. *TIP* Moving the origin point slightly out of shot at the top means you dont have to be so particular with finding a suitable origin point on the sky material. |
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Image7: Volumetric Ray loaded |
In image 8 below, we've found a nice patch
of sky, with a suitably sun-lit clump of cloud near the
top left of our shot, and we'll have our Volumetric Rays
appearing to come from slightly above that bright area in
the top left corner. To make this effect more convincing, we need to place our sun at approximately where the sun would be casting the light which is causing the volumetric rays. So we need to position it at the back of our scene facing towards the camera. For this we've used HorizonPosition at -126 and TimeOfDay at -48. We've moved our VolumetricRay so the origin is approximately lined up with the patch of sunlit cloud, and we've applied a couple of morphs to make the angle look more convincing. |
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Image8: Volumetric Ray
positioned and morphed |
When we render this as shown in image9
below, we see we have two quite strong volumetric beams.
If the strength of these beams is too much, we've included
3 strengths for each set of rays, with the suffixes A, B
and C. In each case A is the strongest, and C is the
weakest. Which strength you use will be dependent on what
sky you're using and the strength of your lights. *REMEMBER* Keep the direction of the sun somewhere roughly so it's in a line with the volumetric ray. You don't have to be too precise, there's quite a margin where the resulting image will look right. |
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Image9: VolumetricRay rendered |
Rainbows. The third component of this pack is the Rainbows.Because rainbows form when there is precipitation in the air, we're going to use a landscape that looks more like it would have rain, as seen in image 10 below. |
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Image10: A green and pleasant
Land. |
Next we want to load our Rainbow prop, as
seen in image 11 below. Depending on the focal length of
your camera, it may appear larger when you load it. If it
does, either reduce the amount the focal length of your
camera is set at, or scale the Rainbow prop to suit.
*NOTE* We recommend using the overall Scale dial for this
as it won't distort the shape of the rainbow. |
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Image 11: Rainbow prop loaded |
There are a number of materials included
to give various part-arcs, and each has two brightness
variants. Like the Lens Flares and Volumetric Rays, which
variant you use will be dependent on your scene lighting
and sky material. |
We hope you enjoy using this product and
we look forward to seeing what images you make with it. Happy Rendering Andrew and Tracey :) |
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Mortem Vetus
store for the dark side of Poser. |