GeoSim 1.4 Documentation

General Controls

- Add GeoSim Planet

Adds a new planet to the scene. This can also be done through Add > Mesh > GeoSim Planet.

- Sun

Which sun illuminates the selected planet. Currently, only one light can effect a planet at once.     

- Indirect Lighting

When enabled, allows the atmosphere to illuminate the surface and clouds, at the cost of reduced performance.    

> Strength

 The strength of the indirect lighting.  

Atmosphere

- Color

The color of the atmosphere surrounding the planet.

- Color Separation

The intensity of color change at harsher angles, resulting in "sunset colors".

- Thickness       

The distance between the planet surface and the edge of the atmosphere.

- Density

The density of the atmosphere.

- Density Falloff

How smoothly the density decreases as it reaches the edge of the atmosphere.

- Ambient Light

The brightness of light illuminating the dark areas of the planet.

Clouds

- Cloud Map

The texture used to generate the clouds. Must be a black and white map.

- Color  

The color of the clouds.

- Density

The density of the cloud layer.

- Altitude

The distance above the surface that the clouds appear.

- Displacement

The amount of displacement applied to the clouds to give a 3D effect.

- Sharpness

The sharpness of the lighting applied to the clouds.

- Opacity

The opacity of the clouds.

- Shadows

The intensity of the shadows cast by the clouds.

- Atmosphere Shadows

The intensity of the shadows cast by the clouds.

Surface

- Bump / Displacement Distance

The intensity of height based normal mapping / displacement

- Parallax Displacement

Toggles between a flat planet surface and elevation map based displacement. All displacement is based off of the planet's assigned height map.

> Quality

The amount of parallax steps used to render the displacement. Higher quality will result in lower performance, and lower quality will result in higher performance.

> Self Shadowing

Determines if the displaced surface casts shadows. This effect will reduce performance.

- Textures

The image textures applied to the planet surface. All textures have color space options, so Blender can more accurately read them. It is recommended to set specular, roughness, cloud map, and height textures to "Non-Color", while all others to "sRGB".
All textures can alternatively be accessed via the node editor, inside of the "TEXTURES" nodegroup (See "Advanced Texturing" for more information).

> Base Color

Albedo / Base color of the surface.

> Specular

The intensity of specular reflections on the surface of the planet.

> Roughness

The roughness of the surface.

> Emission

Where the surface emits light.

- Emission Strength

The intensity of the emission.

- Disable Emission in Daylight

Hides the emission texture in areas illuminated by the sun, to simulate city lights being turned off. Will only be visible if an emission texture is imported.

> Height

The height map used to generate bump mapping or displacement.

> Normal Map

The texture used to apply normal mapping to the surface.

Advanced Texturing

Along with image textures, GeoSim also supports the usage of procedural textures. In order to apply your own procedural textures to a planet's surface and clouds,

- 1: Select the planet you wish to edit.
- 2: Enter the node editor.
- 3: Select the nodegroup outlined in red and press TAB to open it.
- 4: Create your textures!

Things to note: 

In order for your procedural textures to be correctly mapped to your planet, make sure to connect their vector inputs to the node labeled "Texture Coordinates". Once the procedural texture has been created, it should be connected to its respective output (ie: Base Color if it is meant to control the surface color, Cloud Map if its meant to control the clouds).

Example: