Nebulae in Progress

Hmm... kinda going back to spacey nebula stuff. I felt like I needed to make the next version / variant of the Nebula gen I was making.

Unfortunately what I've come to realize myself was that sometimes nebulae formations end up becoming extremely random and sometimes results are unsatisfactory.

I thought about it, then decided to make a much more controlled nebulae gen. Variation often comes in handy but sometimes it becomes something that kills the awesomeness of the filter results.

There are expectations. So every time I press the variation button, I will be guaranteed that I'll get what I want as an end result.

Note that its not complete. I just made it look like some advertisement for fun.

Now for another test! Lets see if this filter can handle non-square images!

Here's what it looks like:

I tried doing something much simpler by offsetting a line with a sphere map, but it's not correct, and gets distorted after about 17... ONWARD AND UPWARD!

Aaand, apparently I can't stop myself when it comes to FF. I just start adding more and more stuff and whammo: complete filter. Lunar Phases is now in the queue.

Multiple Moons!

Actually it wouldn't matter because you can have like... anything in an imaginary world.

*headdesk*

...

you have to wait for a Filter to be accepted before submitting updates, right?

Filter's up: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/7161.html
It's more of a snippet right now, but I'll inevitably add stuff too it later.
SO: the phasing technique, it actually couldn't be simpler.
Construct a spherical profile gradient, and use it to offset a smoothed Step gradient. (after running the spherical gradient though a tone curve to flatten the range to 25->75)
Use it again on a reversed flat step gradient and blend it with the original flat step gradient then use THAT to blend with the smooth offsetted gradient.
Use an invert on the spherical gradient and different blending modes to get waxing/waning, then run it though "Any Angle Rotate" and "Zoom in alpha".
Ta-da...

...

It'll probably make more sense if you look at the screenshot.

I still want to make something that looks reasonably better :o
Back when I was using Artmatic (which also happens to be exactly like filterforge, only it has sound synthesis capabilities, and 400+ components or something,) I was having a hard time understanding how to get great results.

Now I'm in FilterForge being comfortable, I see this .... awesome gallery by an Artmatic user:

Artmatica.ch Backlit Neblae Gallery

Node based interface, complex channeling, alpha construction on alpha, and lets don't forget fractal layers after fractal layers... oh boy, the procedural capabilities.

Just linked it if it helps some inspiration for some who have tried before....

[Side note and personal thoughts]
I've looked at artmatica.ch for inspiration since the time I've actually created the first version of "Voyager" filter. Since then, it went off on its own course in other fancy realms which was not intended at all. I've hit walls that seem to either come from my methods of construction or from FilterForge itself. Limits on components? Limited number of specialty components? No... shouldn't be. I know that I can construct it so that anything I make compensates for those found in Artmatic and so on. But still....

As being quite a space freak, I do want some kind of nebulae + space-scape generator for myself and everybody else. And its always been quite a challenge to make a decent looking nebulae formation, I'm sure anybody who tried knows this.

Of course, this entire long long forum began by ThreeDee and continued by numerous others always inspired what to do next. Either way, here's the next step for me: get real-istic.

Building Version 4 of Voyager. Goal: realism like no other.

I actually seen your gallery before when you posted the link a couple forum threads back Brilliant material I've checked on it again just to make sure if you have uploaded new stuff

I still can't wrap my head around that "back lighting" method that's being used in the Artmatic presets. It's beautiful and simply amazing how just 30 components can do stuff like this. (Quite frankly Artmatic's renders are faster than FilterForge, lolz.)

ANYWAY as far as what I see, I just need to somehow convert each artmatic component into Filter-Forge components. Which honestly makes me want to make a ton of functional macros for later use.

I wonder if FF will ever implement functions like adding Macros into specialized component area so that you can just drag n drop and use it like any other pre-made components.