[TOOL] Grand designer, the procedural universe generator
Grand designer allows you to create an infinity of planets, nebulae, asteroids thanks to the power of procedural noises. Using the power of your GPU, every parameter changes can be seen in realtime.
Controlled chaos
Create complex ground structures by using one of the thirteen noise generators, like Perlin, Voronoi, Multifractals or Billow
Combine the basic noise layer with a secondary noise layer or procedurally generated craters. Those extra details will beef up the complexity and the richness of the ground of your planet.
Natural features
Boost your productions by adding natural details like :
oceans - and tune water height, density, colors ...
ice caps - and tune ice expansion, randomness, transitions smoothness, minimal and maximal level ...
desert regions - and tune desert spread, randomness, edge sharpness ...
clouds - and tune clouds shape, coverage, coloring, coriolis effect, twirls intensity and much more.
Add sediments taking into account the slopes and cavities of the terrain. Color them depending on the moisture level, terrain height and type. Add extra random vegetation to enrich the surface of your planet.
Colorize the world
Create endless variations of your worlds by using the intuitive color ramps editor. Store presets by categories and recall them whenever you want, it's that easy.
Fill the void
Set a background for your planet by rendering volumetric nebulae in no time, tuning stars color, density and intensity.
Export
Export in png, tga, dds and tiff with a resolution up to 16k x 8k with up to 64 samples per pixel. Have access to all individual layers like :
albedo
roughness
ambient occlusion
normal map
sky color and alpha
slopes
curvature
...
And use the different layers in your favorite game engine or renderer.
Check the teaser here :
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNcheKr9n6g[/ame]
Grand designer is currently on greenlight, waiting for approval. If it fits your needs, don't hesitate to vote for it here
Website : www.ignishot.com
Product page : www.ignishot.com/grand-designer.html
Facebook : www.facebook.com/Ignishot
Twitter : twitter.com/Ignishot
Controlled chaos
Create complex ground structures by using one of the thirteen noise generators, like Perlin, Voronoi, Multifractals or Billow
Combine the basic noise layer with a secondary noise layer or procedurally generated craters. Those extra details will beef up the complexity and the richness of the ground of your planet.
Natural features
Boost your productions by adding natural details like :
oceans - and tune water height, density, colors ...
ice caps - and tune ice expansion, randomness, transitions smoothness, minimal and maximal level ...
desert regions - and tune desert spread, randomness, edge sharpness ...
clouds - and tune clouds shape, coverage, coloring, coriolis effect, twirls intensity and much more.
Add sediments taking into account the slopes and cavities of the terrain. Color them depending on the moisture level, terrain height and type. Add extra random vegetation to enrich the surface of your planet.
Colorize the world
Create endless variations of your worlds by using the intuitive color ramps editor. Store presets by categories and recall them whenever you want, it's that easy.
Fill the void
Set a background for your planet by rendering volumetric nebulae in no time, tuning stars color, density and intensity.
Export
Export in png, tga, dds and tiff with a resolution up to 16k x 8k with up to 64 samples per pixel. Have access to all individual layers like :
albedo
roughness
ambient occlusion
normal map
sky color and alpha
slopes
curvature
...
And use the different layers in your favorite game engine or renderer.
Check the teaser here :
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNcheKr9n6g[/ame]Grand designer is currently on greenlight, waiting for approval. If it fits your needs, don't hesitate to vote for it here
Website : www.ignishot.com
Product page : www.ignishot.com/grand-designer.html
Facebook : www.facebook.com/Ignishot
Twitter : twitter.com/Ignishot
Replies
Just can't wait for the next updates, and for the beta to be released :P
As a reminder, here some possible valuable thoughts :
- Custom mesh & UVs for higher res than 16*8k with custom UDims
- HDR EnvMap generation with tonemap/exposure/gamma controls : cube/spherical etc ...
- Possibility to export separate passes for the env too. starfields + tardusts + nebulae + surrounding planets
- Ability to define water level
- Submarine erosion/deposit option for separate map export
- Ability to export through-time evolution sequence of any procedural, like for the clouds. This would be much more an Offline-oriented feature though.
- Or much more, the ability to generate e.g. 3 levels of clouds, based on same seed so that the overlay provides much more thickness than through simple normal mapping on a single layer
- decals or texture bombing with gismo sticking to planet for custom edit (canyons, impacts, towns/cities for penumbra etc ...)
- Substance nodal prefabs export + exposable parameters set within GD.
- Atmospherics through another englobing sphere. SamplerInfo<>Keylight to define lit/unlit atmospheric effect. Just for a better viewport preview
- Any Yebis PostFX later ?
I think I forgot many of the sparks this tool triggered in my brain, so I'll go to sleep, and I will come back later, with additional thoughts
But well, this just rocks so much already.
I want this tool in any future space project I would work on
Cheers mate.
>Higher res than 16x8k
I was already thinking about splitting the surface in several textures as some realtime engines are limited on the texture side (Unreal and unity for instance)
>HDR envmap
I export the background in RGBE (E is exposure) for the moment, it's not really a common standard but it can be easily use in shaders. I'll have to check .hdr and .exr format to see which one I can easily implement as HDR output.
>Splitting output
Not too hard, I'll definitely put it on my todo list.
>Water level
Water level can already be changed in the software right now, as well as water density and water sahdows (ao) level. The water level affects also the moisture map that I can use to define the sediment/vegetation color
>Submarne erosion/deposit
Yes, this can be really interesting. I've focus till now mainly on the land layers but more can be done underwater. Thanks for the idea.
>Clouds animation
Interesting ... and maybe animating all the maps by changing noise parameters can be interesting also to simulate an evolving planet.
>Volumetric clouds
Should not be too complex as all my noises are 3D noises, I have to see how I can present that in a user friendly way on the interface and not explode the export time as well.
>Decals and bombing
I'm already using a texture bombing technique for the craters, but it's procedurally done and not based on some textures. But in the future, I'd really like to add some kind of painting mode, it's definitely a big feature to implement, so don't expect it too soon, but I'd like to be able to adjust relief and mask by hand.
>Substance nodal prefabs export
I have to contact allegorithmic to see if they have some kind of SDK to output projects, this may help a lot.
>Atmospheric lighting
Well, I'm not really happy with the current atmospheric rendering, so I'll probably update it or replace it with a more convincing one.
>Yebis
Here too, I should contact Silicon studio to see what we can do and also if they have a version that can run on unity 5 (as my software is based on unity).
Well I hope that answers some of your questions, don't hesitate to post more propositions as this will help me to improve the software.
Regards.
While I'm on it, here's one of the lost sparks that striked me back :
- ability to export vector flow maps, like for the lava planet ^^
And thank you for the very quick answer too
@Jeff Concerning the flow maps, this is something I should study too, that can add some realism and life to the planet.
[sketchfab]3cc8fb92638b4395b5746ecf3c58c6bd[/sketchfab]
[sketchfab]3e8050c7e7ba4a2f8cb7b20536c958ab[/sketchfab]
[sketchfab]e600a60e2715472197a2eef48924900c[/sketchfab]
[sketchfab]5eb0c68a5c444d20984142ceeb75d476[/sketchfab]
Check the gallery on sketchfab
Beside that, the development of the software is still continuing, I've rewritten the texture exporter and now you have the choice of exporting in 32BPP or 64BPP formats either in sRGB or in Linear format. You can now configure every textures you want to export in a preset and for each texture chose the content of the RGB and Alpha channels from a long list of presets (37 so far, including composited layers like ground+water).
So, if you find this project interesting, support the greenlight project here
The first thing that drew me into computer graphics (besides videogames) was seeing some space art on deviantart with planets and nebulae and crazy over the top lighting. I spent many evenings following those old "how to make this one specific thing this one specific way" tutorials until I knew enough photoshop to make my own space art.
So yes. I freakin love this project, I hope a thousand kids download it and try to make their own solar systems and get into cg art.
edit: can I try it?
Thank you for your message! I'm still on the phase where I need to have enough votes on Steam Greenlight to be published, but once this point will be reached, I'll try to make the software available as soon as possible. Maybe it'll be in the form of early access in a first step, but I'm waiting impatiently to make it available to all.
Thanks again ...
having the clouds as a separate floating geo layer looks kinda weird, i understand why you think it makes sense. but consider: clouds max out at 20,000 feet and usually float between 10,000-20,000 feet. that means their max height is something like 3.7 miles.
to put that in context, here's how far that is on a map:
you'd never see a visible gap between the planet and cloud layers. except in the case of truly gigantic planets and even then it would be incredibly rare if it even happens at all. and from a tech point of view it's probably more efficient to combine it into a single material pass too.
Yes, you're totally right, I know that I've definitely over exaggerated the height of the clouds layer. I'll reexport my geometru and will reduce that gap, but I'll probably keep it a bit appart anyway to catch the shadow under the clouds as this help having a sense of depth. The same goes for the normals, they are probably too strong for the scale of the planet, but this give a stylized rendering.
I find it quite difficult to have a real sense of scale with planets rendering, this is something we're not that use to see on a daily basis ...