ArtMatic Voyager is a program for synthesizing and exploring stunning, exquisitely-detailed high resolution virtual landscapes and worlds. The application is a new take on 3D landscape creation that makes use of the ArtMatic graphic synthesis technology to create photo-realistic landscapes of imaginary worlds. The application can be used either standalone using the built-in planets and provided ArtMatic systems, or you can use ArtMatic Pro to define completely new worlds and terrains of your own.
Using ArtMatic Voyager is simple.
- Choose a planet surface, texture, and a sky definition.
- Define the environment's sun color and angle, sea and snow levels, haze/humidity.
- Travel the planet by moving and aiming the camera.
- Save interesting locations as places or keyframes for rendering as still images or QuickTime movies.
Camera movement and environmental parameters can be animated to create stunning planetary voyages.
When ArtMatic systems are used with ArtMatic Voyager, the surface and shading can be animated so that the planet evolves during the voyage.
ArtMatic Voyager puts almost all of its controls in the main window so that you can concentrate on scene creation rather than window and palette management. Almost everything that you can see in the user interface is active including the text, icons and glyphs. Pretty much every graphic item can be clicked or dragged to perform some task.
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SURFACE MODES & CONTROLS
 Choose the source for the planet's surface with the Surface popup menu. You can use one of Artmatic Voyager's built-in planets or an ArtMatic system. There are two surface modes for ArtMatic files: one static and the other animated.
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BUILT-IN PLANETS
The built-in planets, Planet A, Planet B, Planet C and Planet X, were designed to allow easy exploration of planet surfaces with varied styles and features. They combine different terrain procedures with random filters that provide a great deal of variety. These planets could be created with ArtMatic systems but would require very complex ArtMatic strucures that would render much more slowly than these built-in functions.
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Planet A
Planet A has a lot of small scale variations that result in dramatic changes over short distances. On a large scale, this planet tends to repeat itself and does not have very high mountains nor the large oceans of Planet X or Planet C
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Planet B
Planet B has larger-scaled features than Planet A. Planet B often displays Nevada-like wide valleys with lovely rock clusters and high surrounding mountains. Terraces and steep canyons alternate with rocky shorelines and lake-filled valleys.
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Planet X
Planet X has larger features than planets A or B. It may require traveling 500 km to arrive at a totally different landscape. Large oceans and high-altitude plateaus alternate with rough shorelines, gently rolling hills, rocky deserts, zones with many lakes and rivers, sand dunes, rock fields and large mountain ranges.
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Planet C
Planet C is the most algorithmically sophisticated planet and has the largest-scale features of the built-in planets. More diverse & geologically realistic than the others, Planet C features large oceans, huge beaches, stratified canyons, sand dunes, river systems, faults and huge parallel mountains ranges.
Highest peak can go over to 10 000 meters.
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ArtMatic Surface/ArtMatic Animation
Uses an ArtMatic file to define the planet geography.
An ArtMatic system
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The map view with the range
set to 15 km.
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The scene as seen in ArtMatic Voyager
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The planet's terrain features and scale are defined by the ArtMatic system and the parameters values and zoom level stored in the keyframes. ArtMatic Pro 3.5 provides an extensive set of components that have been designed for use in ArtMatic Voyager. Most of these components are based on band-limited fractal noise and features an adaptive level of detail.
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When ArtMatic Animation is chosen you can animate the planet terrain with the Voyager timeline. Voyager will map the motion of the ArtMatic files' keyframes so that the ArtMatic keyframes all playback over the course of the Voyager animation. |
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SURFACE MAP OVERVIEW
The surface map shows the portion of the planet that surrounds the current camera position. The default dimensions of the area covered by the map are determined by the Map View Range preference. The map reflects the current sea and snow level settings as well as the surface color mode.
Click and drag on the map zoom controllers "+-" to zoom in or out on the map.
Click On the Map itself to move the camera there.
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COLOR MODES & TEXTURE CONTROL
The color mode determines how ArtMatic Voyager colors the terrain. The options are: Altitude Default, Altitude Gradient, ArtMatic Texture, ArtMatic Animation. ArtMatic Voyager has two built-in shading modes that map elevations to colors. ArtMatic Voyager can also use ArtMatic systems to provide color information.
Altitude Default - The built-in planets have their own colors based not only on elevation but also the local geology. Internally, each elevation procedure has its own corresponding color procedure used when Altitude Default is the color mode. For instance, Planet B may have reddish high mountains, gray rocky valleys, ochre terraces and canyons and dark rocky formations with patches of yellow sand. In Planet X, you will find green-ridged hills, reddish terraces canyons and gray rocky shorelines.
Altitude Gradient - This mode uses the colors of a user-selectable gradient--using the the colors on the left for low elevations and the colors on the right for high elevations. The terrain's slope affects the color slightly.
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When Altitude Gradient is used, the standard U&I gradient tools are available: a gradient editor, the gradient library popup, and a customizable gradient display.
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Planet A Landscape using Altitude default
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Same landscape using Altitude Gradient
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ArtMatic Texture - Use a static ArtMatic system for color texture mapping.
ArtMatic Pro makes it possible to design an incredible variety of color textures.A large number of ArtMatic preset textures are provided with Voyager--so even ArtMatic beginners can create new color textures by editing the provided ones.
The same Landscape using a 2D ArtMatic file featuring our logo.
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The same landscape using a 3D ArtMatic solid texture
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ArtMatic Animation - Same as the above but all ArtMatic keyframes variables are taken into account. Since keyframes store parameter values and zoom levels read by ArtMatic Voyager, you can use this mode to animate your color textures or to control the texture aspect using the timeline slider.
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ArtMatic 360. This mode uses an ArtMatic file as a 360 degree panoramic backdrop often called an environment map. When using a properly-designed ArtMatic system, there will be a seamless sky as you survey in all directions. In this mode, the slider controls the horizontal offset of the ArtMatic system.
ArtMatic 360+Clouds. This mode combines ArtMatic Voyager built-in clouds with an ArtMatic 360 sky (see details above) .The slider affects the cloud density when scalar system clouds are used. To rotate the background revert to the previous mode .
ArtMatic Backdrop. The chosen ArtMatic file is used as a 2D backdrop. The backdrop does not follow the camera motion and will not reflect properly --so it is useful only for creating still images. Any ArtMatic file can be used. The slider provides vertical offset control for the backdrop.
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ArtMatic 360 sky using a cosmic environment map preset |
Using a real sky movie with ArtMatic backdrop
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ArtMatic Cloud Layers. Uses an ArtMatic system to define the cloud layer. If the ArtMatic system has one output, the ArtMatic system will define cloud density and the clouds will be rendered using algorithms similar to those used for preset clouds. If the ArtMatic system has two outputs, the outputs will be treated as two layers of clouds at different altitudes. The second output will be the upper layer and will be shaded more brightly. If the ArtMatic system has three R G B outputs, the ArtMatic system will define the entire sky color and Voyager will not do any cloud shading.
When creating animation, ArtMatic skies (all modes) make use of any keyframes in the source ArtMatic system.
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ArtMatic Clouds using a custom-defined density function (1 output).
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A non-realistic RGB ArtMatic Clouds layer |
ENVIRONMENT CONTROLS
ArtMatic Voyager provides you with a great deal of control over the planet's environment. The light, haze and other environmental parameters can dramatically change the planet's appearance.
Most of the environmental controls are found on the lefthand toolset.
The sun's position is controlled with the sun position controller . The sphere represents the planet. The bright spot indicates where the sun's light is striking the planet. Clicking on the sphere moves the sun so that its light strikes the planet where the mouse is clicked.
SUN COLOR
Click and hold the colored rectangle that displays the current sun color to pop up the color picker that allows you to change the sun color. Sun color affects all colors in the scene and the clouds. The sun provides directional lighting and is the primary source of illumination whereas the Ambient slider provides diffuse non-directional lighting.
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| Varying sun color along with haze color and sun position allow to simulate a wide variety of lighting conditions. |
AMBIENT LIGHT
The amount of non-directional light provided by the sky dome (as opposed to the sun). Ambient light can be eliminated by setting the slider to its minimum value (0). Without ambient light, areas that are not directly lit by the sun will be very dark.
WETNESS
This setting determines the degree to which the sea and snow and areas near the shore reflect the sky color. It also accentuates the water's reflectivity. When the wetness is high, you get fuzzy specular reflections in the areas affected by the setting.
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Fuzzy reflection of the red giant on the ground
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HAZE | HAZE COLOR
This setting determines the amount of atmospheric haze caused by moisture and suspended particles in the air . With low values, the haze is only visible at a distance. With high values, visibility is reduced dramatically. The haze color can be changed by clicking (and holding) the mouse on the Haze Color picker. ArtMatic Voyager models the scattering of light that causes a blue shift of dark colors and red shift of bright colors that increases with distance. Changing the haze color has a dramatic impact on the way that colors are attenuated and shifted in the distance. Setting the haze color to gray enhances the red shift. In Voyager (just as in reality), a low sun will appear more red than it is.
SEA ROUGHNESS
This setting controls the surface texture of the sea. It controls the wind speed which in turn makes the sea rough. The wind speed also affects the speed with which clouds move when a system is animated. This setting also influences the sea's transparency and reflectivity. Rough seas are less reflective than calm sees. The water depth also influences roughness. Water will be calm near the shores.
SEA LEVEL | SEA COLOR
Sea level determines which elevations are filled with water. It is expressed in meters. Everywhere below sea level will be covered with water. Use the color picker found next to the slider to choose the sea color. In scenes where the sea color is predominantly supplied by reflections from the landscape and sky, use a dark color for the sea since the sea color is added to the total light coming from the water and can easily get too bright if its color is too light.
SNOW LEVEL
Snow level determines the elevation above which the planet is covered by snow. The amount of snow is influenced by the steepness of the terrain and the elevation above snow level. You can generally eliminate snow by setting the snow level to 10000 meters since it is rare that you will have peaks that high.
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Snow level at 1000 m with sea roughness at 0% |
Snow level at 0 m with sea roughness at 85% |
Camera controls
The planet is viewed through a virtual camera whose position is user-controllable and somewhat animatable. The camera's latitude and longitude, elevation above the terrain, the vertical tilt, and the rotation can all be controlled. There are limits to the vertical tilt--the camera is not allowed to be pointed straight up or straight down. Use the arrow keys to move the camera's location. Control-left/right arrow rotate the camera. Control up/down changes the camera elevation as do page-up/page-down. The camera's trajectory and the trajectory of the point of view can be finely controlled in the Camera Path editor.
Camera Controls includes:
- Lateral move
- Depth move
- Vertical tilt
- Elevation
- Zoom
- Camera rotation compass
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Timeline and Animation controls
KEYFRAMES
Keyframes let you store locations and enviromental parameters that can be used to render a QuickTime animation. Keyframes are not required for animation if you are using ArtMatic animation for the surface mode or if you use preset clouds and water--whose movement is controlled by the Sea Roughness setting. The ArtMatic system's keyframes will be scaled so that all the keyframes play back over the course of the animation.
TIMELINE
Below the keyframe display is a timeline slider. You can click (or click and drag) to preview how the animation will appear in the animation. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to start and stop animation previewing. Selecting a point in the timeline sets all of the location and environmental variables to the appropriate values to give you an idea of how the scene evolves. Nice animation can be done with a motionless camera by animating the sun position and colors and rendering with shadows on (be aware that turning shadows on increases render time dramatically). Moving clouds will cast moving shadows on the landscape, and the sun can set with the shadows getting bigger and the colors reddening.
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SKY & CLOUD CONTROLS
CirroStratus.
Altocumulus & nimbostratus.
