Introduction:

TerraDome2 is a revolutionary system for Poser. It features a 360° skydome with

sunlight and shadows that actually track through the sky. With fast rendering
atmospheres, realistic hills, and mountains, creating realistic outside
environments, daylight rendering has never been easier. Every aspect of the
classic Terradome system has been expanded, refined, rebuilt, and re-imagined.
No aspect of the original system was left untouched.

MATERIALS: Terrains materials are a mixture of photography and procedural

textures, giving you the best of both worlds. An expertly implemented shader
system easily mimics the ruggedness and detail of real world terrain. These
enhanced materials blend perfectly with TerraDome's outdoor lighting offering a
wide variety of terrain styles from lush green grass to rugged, detailed rocks and
technology that realistically blends multiple texture maps into one Terrain
material to add extra realism.

STRUCTURE: There two terrain zones to the Terradome 2 - Zone A or the Main
Terrain area and Zone B which forms the background elements. Each zone has its
own separate geometry and accompanying morph targets. Each zone is
completely rotating to a full 360° . Extra zones can be added to create bigger
environments up to a full 360° world. The zone system is constructed to use
"only" the amount of terrain you actually need in your scene. This does not just
apply to the zones themselves but the inject-able morph targets, and terrain
shader system.

MORPHS: Morph targets for each zone dramatically enhance each scene with
distant mountain ranges, low lying soft hills, and rough foreground Terrain. There
are morph targets that can be loaded seperately onto each zone and a set of four
full body morphs that encompass both zones creating huge areas of terrain.

ATMOSPHERES: All new Atmospheres based on Poser's internal Depth Cue

Atmosphere system add an impressive range of tools to the Terradome 2
workbench. These fast rendering haze, cloud, and mist effects have been further
enhanced with some material room science that greatly expands their usefulness.

SKYDOME: Using texture maps at 8000 pixels wide, the skydome renders at the
highest realistic quality, using photographic real world skies. The Skydome
texture sets come equipped with an innovative lighting system, that allows
sunlight to move automatically around the sky through 360° , casting natural
looking daylight shadows. The light sets and skydome texture sets load at the
same time from one material file for each TerraDome environment system. There
is no need to load lights and sky separately (Unless you want to that is... you also
have that option!) Each light/texture set comes with its own custom IBL light
probe to enhance the scene with natural diffuse light.

SCALE: The TerraDome System has been built so that it will encompass most
popular large architectural sets. It is large and expansive enough to render a
believable simulation of a large landscape, but it is not so large that poser gets
lost in the scene. Other touches include technological tricks, like making the
Skydome unable to receive shadows from figures or props in the scene. The all
new Terradome 2 is HUGH compared to the original - you can fit roughly 4
Terradome1's inside of Terradome2!

Welcome to Terradome 2
Installation:

Unzip the files to your Poser directory using the folders option of your unzipping
program. We have set up the zip so that the files are placed where they need to
be. Feel Free to move the Materials, Props, etc Folders around. Everything in the
package is externally called.

File Locations:

Geometries/Morphs: Runtime/geometries/RDNA/TerraDome2/
Characters/Poser8Scenes: Runtime/Libraries/character/! TerraDome2/
Lights: Runtime/Libraries/light/! TerraDome2/
Scenes: Runtime/Libraries/scene/! TerraDome2/
Morphs/INJ-REM: Runtime/Libraries/Pose/! TerraDome2/
Materials: Runtime/Libraries/Materials/! TerraDome2/(Type Subfolders)
Textures: Runtime/Textures/RDNA/TerraDome2/

The Basics:

We have simplified the Terradome2 system so that it is both easier to use, and
give you more rendering power! The basic system has a Skydome, an “Azone”
and a “BzoneLg”.

The Skydome is your sky/environment.

The Azone is the HUGE center plane that will make up the bulk of your scene.
The BzoneLg is a large strip of mesh that runs along the outside of ZoneA. This
is for mountain ranges or background terrain elements.

There are also optional add-on pieces included with the package : Matte (For
Background painted, photo, or rendered elements, Parametric (For
Atmospheric/Cloud Effects) and a Water Plane (A low rez giant plane for Water or
effects)

1. Load the Terradome2 Figure

2. Hide the Poser Ground Plane (Crtl-G)
3. Run the delete lights script from Scripts:Utilities menu
4. Set the YON on the main camera to 6000 (This fixes the dome from being
cut off)
5. Load the Sun and IBL Light from the 'Lights' library
6. Load a Skydome Material set of your choice from the 'Materials' library
7. Load a Morph Target (or targets) of your choice
8. Apply Materials to Azone and BzoneLg of your Choice
9. Build your Scene!
USING THE SKYDOME...

Before loading anything onto the Skydome it is

essential to load both the ‘Sun’ Light and the ‘IBL’ light
from the Lights library. If you are starting a new scene
you should delete all the lights by using the
'deleteLights' script in the Scripts:Utilities menu of
Poser.

Once that is done select the Skydome and enter the

‘Material Room’ and navigate to
Materials/TerraDome2/Skydome/Skydome Sets and
double click on any of the Skydome material files. This
will automatically load not only the skydome panorama
but the correct IBL light and corresponding image.

The seamless skydome panorama can be rotated

through 360 degrees using the 'Y' rotate dial on the
Skydome Parameters tab.
At this point it is essential to set your camera up
correctly. Select the camera that you are using in your
scene and on the parameters tab set the 'Yon' dial to
6000.0. Because TerraDome 2 is so big this will
prevent the edges of the skydome from disappearing
off the edge of Poser space.

USING THE LIGHTS...

There are only two lights in the Lights Library. The

‘Sun’ Light and the ‘IBL’ light. Once the IBL
light is loaded there is no need to change
anything unless you are loading another
Skydome set which will set up your ‘IBL’ light
automatically.

The most important light is the ‘Sun’ Light.

Select the 'Sun' light. In the Transform drop
down you will see two dials. The 'Time Of
Day' dial approximately simulates the angle of
the sun light in your render. By default it is set
at -45 degrees. This is about halfway between
the horizon and the zenith. So for example if
you changed this dial to -90 the sun would be
directly overhead. If you change it to -10
degrees it would simulate the sun just above
the horizon. So this would be good for a
sunrise or sunset render.

The 'HorizonPosition' dial will rotate the sun

around the horizon of your scene through 360
degrees. So this is the direction that the sun
light will be cast from..

The default sun light intensity is set at 110%

and the raytraced shadows are set to 1.000.
You should change these values to what is best
for your scene. This light also has ‘Ambient
Occlusion’ activated. Because of this you should not use IDL in your render
settings unless you are doing so for a specific reason. The Shadow Blur Radius is
set to 2.0 to give hard bright sunlight shadows. You may want to increase this
and decrease the shadow intensity if you are rendering an image of a less sunny
day to give softer shadows.
The ‘IBL’ light intensity is set at 20% which is quite bright and will fill most
shadows with a fair amount of light. You may want to decrease this value if you
would like your shadow areas to be darker and more intense or increase it if you
want your shadows areas less intense.

LOADING A LANDSCAPE...

Terradome 2 is made up of three high density geometric zones.

ZoneA is the main zone as it is the largest and is exactly in the middle of your
scene. You will use this in most of your Terradome 2 renders.

ZoneLg is your zone for adding mountain ranges in the distance. You would most
likely always use this in conjunction with ZoneA.

Please note that

you can load more
than one instance
of BZoneLg and
rotate [t around
different parts of
Terradome2. You
would most likely
only ever use one
iteration of ZoneA.

All Zones can be

rotated 360
degrees using the
'Y' rotate dial on
each.

Each zone has it's

own set of morph targets that you should experiment
with to find the type of landscape that suits the work
that you wish to produce.

To load the morph targets you should navigate to the

Pose library/Terradome2/Base Morphs.
In the 'All Morphs' folder you will find injection files to
load ‘All Morphs’ onto all zones at the same time
and/or remove them. WARNING!!! Loading 'All Morphs'
may cause Poser and your computer to slow down
dramatically. Unless you have a powerful computer it is
not advisable to do this. If you wish to remove them from your scene you can do
so with the REM file in the same folder. The 'Reset All' file will reset all morphs to
Zero on every zone.

There are individual injections for morphs in each of the Zone folders plus an
‘Inject All’. You could load all the morphs with the 'Inject All' in each individual
zone and see which one suits you best and remove the ones you don't require
with the individual REM files. Or when you are more familiar you may just load
the morphs that you want to use.

Each morph target is at it's full strength at 1.000 and does not work in the minus.

There is a 'Full Body Morphs' folder. This will inject

four full body morphs that span both the AZone and
the BZoneLg creating four very big landscapes.
These should only ever be dialed from the 'Body'
actor as both zones have to be manipulated at the
same time.

NOTE: The Full Body Morphs utilize the '!

TerraDome2' complete character only. All other
morphs can be used on this character as well.

The 'Utility Folder' contains 'Default All' that sets all

the zones to their default loading status.

In your 'Scenes' library you will find four ready to use scenes already set up for
you. Please only load these using the 'single' 'apply library preset' check-
mark. Poser 8 users can automatically load the same scenes from the
Characters/Poser8Scenes library.
MATERIALS...

Terrain (Type): Rocky, Desert, Grassland, Woodland

These materials are “blended” materials – in that they mix two or more
material/textures/effects together – based on Normals or Height. This is the true
material power of the Terradome2 System.

Tweaking The Terrains:

The Terrain material sets are very complex, but we have left in specific areas that
you can adjust on your own if you wish. While we can't cover every node and
setting, here are some easy changes you can make to alter the look of the
materials:

Changing the overall color:

Every material has a built

in Color Changer. Here you
can adjust the base color
of the entire material, shift
the hue, adjust saturation,
and the value.

If you wish to make a little

more variance in the color,
you can change the color
in either of the inputs on
the tile breaker node.

Adjusting the Normal Blending:

These three nodes control

the “Direction” and
strength of the normal
blending. You can adjust
the X on the top, Z in the
middle, and Y on the
bottom. Play around with
different values here to
change how much of the
primary texture shows over
the secondary texture.
Bump and Displacement:

On the main poser material node you can set the

Bump and Displacement values. If you want more
of a bump or displacement effect, simply raise the
values.

NOTE: High Displacement values on the A Zone can

result in black grid render artifacts.

Texture Tiling:

To Change how much the textures tile – or the scale

of the tiles, Change the U and V Scales on the
texture node of your choice. 1 is no tiling at all, and
0.01 would mean 100 tiles x 100 tiles across the
whole of the zone you are working with.

Another option you have on the texture nodes is

that you can change their orientation by 90 degrees
if you change the Texture Coords value from UV to
VU.

Terrain Basic:

This set are the basic texture tiles applied to the Terradome2 default material
node set up. While labeled basic, the material is quite complex.

Atmospheres:

These are a special set of materials that get applied to the Poser Atmosphere
Node. To apply these, enter the material room, and in the Object selector at the
top choose Atmosphere. This will be a special base node in the material pane. All
you have to do is then apply one of the 'Atmosphere' materials.

Water:

The Waters are Opaque - in that for large bodies of water you can't really see
"into" them because of the silt, etc that is in them. So these materials are
reflective only. They also use Bump rather than Displacement for
their texture effect - this is also for greater realism.

The Fresnel "Bonus" Materials do have a Transparent (Well Refractive would be

the correct term) Quality to them. These are for shallow waters that you would
see through. These are a little intense on the resources to render, so we suggest
that you only use them if you need that look.

Tweaking The Water Materials:

Feel free to try different numbers and colors in the various nodes. All different
effects can be made from the "base" materials.
Suggested tweaks include:
• Bump Strength
• Scales/Sizes on the various nodes used to add the bump (Clouds, Spots,
fBm,Turbulence, etc)
• -Any of the settings on the Spectacular Cluster
• -Colors/Values on the Edge Enhancers/Blends

GEOMETRY SMOOTHING AND INCREASING RESOLUTION:

All the zones in TerraDome 2 have 'Smooth Polygons' switched off in the object
properties. This is because of a Poser bug that causes ugly geometry lines to
appear on very large models. This may mean that at times you will see pointy or
boxy looking polygons in your render when you are rendering close to an area
such as small rock formations. You can switch Smooth Polygons back on in the
object properties window. It is possible that not many of these lines will show
depending on the material that you may be using.

Another alternative for Poser users that have Poser 2012 and Poser Pro 2014 is to
utilize the 'Poser Unimesh' subdivision method in rendering. You can access this
from the Figure menu under Skinning Method/ Poser Unimesh. When this is
selected you will be able to see on the properties window for the Azone and
BzoneLG a check box called 'Subdivide separately from figure'. Set the 'Render
Slider' to '1' and this will smooth out your geometries when you render.

RENDERING...

It is essential that you do not check the 'Indirect Light' box in the render settings
as Terradome2 uses ‘Ambient Occlusion’ on the ‘Sun’ light and IDL is not required
and could produce undesirable results. However you can set IDL to ON in your
render settings if you do not wish you use the IBL light as it will not render.

Below are some screen shots of suggested render settings for fast draft renders,
medium quality renders and final production renders.
Render settings for 'Draft Quality' Renders...
Render settings for 'Medium/High Quailty' Renders...
Render settings for 'Production Quality' Renders...

Thank you for your purchase of TerraDome 2. Please check back often at Runtime
DNA for more TerraDome 2 related products and expansions.

Colm and Traveler...