Environment Horizon Day

DEPRECATED. This shader is unsupported, but it may still get installed with Softimage to provide compatibility with older scenes that use it. It is recommended that you replace unsupported shaders in your scenes with equivalent shaders from the current Softimage shader library.

| Cloud | Ground | Environment Horizon Map

Shader Type: Material (Soft3D)

Output: Color (RGB) value

Creates an environment that consists of an infinitely stretching texture-mapped sky with a similar infinitely stretching texture-mapped ground parallel to it.

You can make very convincing outdoor desolation effects using this shader. You can change the sky and the ground colors, and place and blend the texture map in a variety of ways. You can generate clouds using a fractal function that you can animate to simulate convincing moving sky effects.

Name	The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.

Sky

Zenith	The base color of the sky directly overhead.
Horizon	The color of the sky at the horizon.
Horizon/Zenith Bias	The bias between Horizon and Zenith color. A value greater than 0.5 results in the sky color being more inclined to the Zenith color than the Horizon color and vice versa.
Y Rotation	The rotation of the sky around the center of the zenith.

Cloud

Cloud Color	The color of the clouds. Mars has red ones, we like white ones... unless you live in the UK, then you want gray.
Cloud Limit	There are no clouds below this angle. The angle is measured positive from the horizon towards the zenith, in degrees. This parameter may be used to reduce aliasing problems should they arise on the horizon.
Cloud Diffusion	Controls how much the clouds have diffused in the sky. A high value will essentially result in thin clouds, but a low value will give the appearance of thick clouds. This parameter, in conjunction with the Cloud Limit, can be used to simulate atmospheric haze.
Offset	Here, Width and Depth control the offset in the cloud texture in the X and Z directions respectively. If the clouds are to move in a general direction (due to heavy winds in the troposphere, presumably) these are the values to animate.
Amplitude	Defines the cloud fractal's amplitude. Note that this is only the amplitude of the first iteration and successive iterations may raise the local amplitude further.
Ratio	The amplitude decay of the fractal iterations. It is defined as the ratio of the amplitudes of two successive iterations. If it is less than 1, successive iterations will have decreasing amplitude; if it is greater than 1, they will increase in amplitude and the fractal will become unbounded.
Iterations	Clouds are soft so few iterations are necessary.
Turbulence	Creates a more turbulent-looking cloud fractal.
Animate	If checked, the clouds become animatable with the time parameter.
Animation Speed	Only enabled once you check the Animate option. Defines the speed of the animation.

Transformations

X, Y Scaling	The clouds are placed on the planet using a lollypop mapping. This means that there will be stretching and a seam at the South pole (negative Y direction). Scaling is in km for convenience, so that a scaling of 1 will give the clouds largest features 1 km diameter.
Rotation	Rotates the fractal. This can be useful to eliminate visual artifacts due to repetitiveness in the fractal.
X, Y Translation	Offsets the cloud fractal. This can be animated to produce a wind effect.

Ground

Sky Mirror	When this box is checked, the ground is just a mirror image of the ceiling.
RGB Intensity	Uses the intensity of the color in the texture file to determine the blend.
Alpha Channel	Uses the alpha channel of the texture file to determine the blend.
None	No blending. The texture dominates.
Real Ground	Causes the texture to do some additional calculations for the ground to allow it to be at a finite distance. In fact, the ground is placed at the Y position 0. This allows objects to change appearance as they move along the ground. Also, the effect of Ground Limit and Ground Diffuse change, and only the Ground Horizon color is used as a background color to the texture. Otherwise, both the sky and the ground are infinitely far away in all directions so that translations have no effect.
Base Color	Defines the color of the ground center, directly below you or the camera.
Horizon Color	Defines the color of the ground nearest to the horizon.
Horizon/Base Bias	The bias between the Base Color and the Horizon Color.
Limit	There is no texture displayed in the angular sector which this value defines. The angle is measured positive from the horizon towards the base, in degrees. When "Real Ground" is selected however, this limit is not in degrees but in units of "distance." This is a product of the distance to the point on the texture and how obliquely the ray strikes the texture. So, if the texture is either far away, or viewed at an oblique angle, or both, it is "distant." In this case, try values of 500 to 1000 to start with.
Diffusion	Increasing this value blends the area outside the Ground Limit into the ground texture, producing a smooth transition between them. Essentially, the base ground color is allowed to exponentially diffuse into the texture. This gives the texture a hazy appearance as it approaches the horizon. When "Real Ground" is on, the effect is slightly different. Then this value specifies the number of units of "distance" over which the Ground Horizon color blends into the ground texture.

Transformations

X, Y Scaling	Width and Depth determine the scaling of the Ground Texture in the X and Z directions respectively. High values stretch the texture while smaller ones make the texture repeat more often.
X, Y Rotation	Rotates the X and Y direction.
X, Y Translate	Here Width and Depth control the offset in the Ground Texture in the X and Z directions, respectively.

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