Modding Discussion Avali 1.0 Reboot Discussion

Just methane, I'd presume; that's what the seas are made of. Avali themselves most likely inhale hydrogen and exhale methane.

Whether the clouds would have the same form or act the same as here depends on the properties of the compound(s) they're made. Probably fluffy still, like their planets' most enlightened race.

*avali kit rolling around on floor and squeaking, anticipating cuddles*

 

It's doubtful they'd be fluffy, unless Titan has similar clouds, which I doubt. If fact, the atmosphere is so thick that it must be in a constant state of fog.

*Sprays the avali kit with the hose*

 

Here's an interesting theorey: Since Avalon's system sun is so weak, wouldn't we have constant low hanging clouds since the sun wouldn't be able to lift them up? We would have peaks on the planet poking through that small second atmosphere made out of methane clouds... As they're pushed away by light winds on the surface making a pretty swirly pattern of clouds throughout the surface...

 

I really must emphasize that I don't think Avalon's atmosphere would be as dense as Titan's. It'd probably still have lots of fog and decreased visibility as you describe, at least farther away from the equator, but not completely covered from on the surface or from space. The kind of atmosphere Titan has simply wouldn't be able to foster a life form like the avali.

*sniffles, looking extremely dejected*

 

I entirely agree, I was just talking about semi-transparent clouds...

 

Hmm, all that inert nitrogen won't be much to work with. Unless there was some way to 'breath' nitrogen... although amusingly enough, we talk about methane gas a lot, but did you know that there's plenty of liquid ethane there? It's a good thing the oxygen levels are lacking.

 

Sorry, I was still thinking about Titan when I said that.

 

The evolutionary relationships between birds and reptiles (and remember, birds are reptiles) aren't really relevant to classifying avali. They aren't avian exactly because you can't be avian unless you evolved on Earth, but they are aviform. Functionally, avali more closely resemble birds (biped, flight-capable, feathered, endothermic) than lizards, snakes, or crocodiles (quadruped, terrestrial or aquatic, scaled, ectothermic). Crocodiles, by the way, are more closely related to birds than to lizards,

Exactly.

Well if Avalon's atmosphere is about 1.5 times as dense as Earth's then it is very similar to Titan's because Titan's atmosphere is 1.45 times as dense as Earth's. Also, I should note that while Titan's atmosphere blocks visible light, it doesn't seem to block all light, otherwise we wouldn't have these (almost certainly false color, probably UV or IR) images of its surface:

I was operating under the impression that Avalon's seas were made of ammonia, since that's the solvent Avalonian life is based on.

There are also water oceans under the surface ice. Avalonian volcanos spew water.

This one, right?

Lovely concept art, but inconsistent with just about everything. Even discounting the likelihood of an opaque atmosphere, that star is much too big for a planet this far away, and if there was that much like I find it doubtful that the avali would have the low-light eyes that they do.

 

Also, handy trick to tell rogue and rouge apart, rouge is the color of your blood after a rogue stabs you.

 

You can't tell from this picture, but everybody in this film dyes.

 

Actually you're right, my memory and scientific common sense fail me.

 

And with ammonia seas, there could be ammonia clouds; which Jupiter has, appearently.

 

You're a horrible horrible person.

As for the whole "avian vs reptilian" thing, yeah, I've got to echo what's been said. Not only is the answer a simple "no", due to the whole non-terrestrial lifeform thing, but avian is a subset of reptilian.

As for the atmosphere, eh, there's too many variables, until we get an official answer, just go with artistic liberty, draw something vaguely like Titan, maybe with a touch fewer clouds.

 

Seems i provoked some discussion i wasn't expecting, i can say that the reptilian thing is just way their ships look, http://m.imgur.com/a/oHSgO, and i would say that they look a lot like i expect avali ships to look like, at least compared to Ryuujin's "Leviathan" not so much on the new Illuminate frigate though.
Now as to what Avali are, they're not reptiles, since i'm fairly sure they're warm blooded, they're more like the late dinosaurs and early avians, maintaining many reptilian features but dropping others and gaining feathers and other bird bits.

 

Reptiles = any descendant of the most recent common ancestor of lizards and crocodiles. Crocodiles are closely related to birds, since archosauria = crocodiles + (pterosaurs + dinosaurs). Therefore, if the whole "they're not from earth, therefore they can't be considered any of the taxonomic groups we traditionally use" didn't apply, they would definitely be reptiles, since they would also be considered birds.

 

Okay, I'm gonna give up using Concept art. We've got to ask outselves a few questions then...
1- What's the composition of Avalon's atmosphere? ("Nitrogen, Methane and Hydrogen gasses" I'm going to take titan's configuration of 98.4% of Nitrogen, 1.6% of Methane and Ethane.)
2- What is the sun of the system, what type? What wavelengths of light does this sun emmits?
(We're going to need these to apply Rayleigh Scattering)

It's probably in the wiki, I don't have time to look for I have work.

Now something we've got to take into consideration is that atmosphere density doesn't equal opacity. It's the density of the elements inside the atmosphere that change the aparent opacity. Changing the density of the atmosphere will only change how fast light will travel through it (AKA the Index of Refraction). Although a 1.5x increase would change how it looks, it's small and is not worth the 4x addition in render times.

From this point on, we're entering a level of simulation Blender can only imitate, we've got to think this thoroughly before recreating the planet in-software.

On an unrelated note, do you guys use Discord? I feel like it would be better if we spoke. Sharing ideas and corrections would be faster and the general flow of conversations would be vastly improved.
Just my thought.

 

^ 1024 samples with simulated refraction, no atmosphere. The image is noisy and took way too long to render.

^ This is without simulated refraction. render is cleaner with a lower sample rate.


Fancy "Animation" cuz fancy.

(The sun is yellow, I know, but it doesn't change the point I'm going at)

I've found this picture on the Titan wiki:


These are true colors.
I've studied a bit more on Rayleigh Scattering, here's the english Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
From there, I can assume that the blue we see is the nitrogen scattering the light.
If we look at the image again, we can see the transition between the layer of clouds of Methane/Ethane and the Nitrogen.
Here's why knowing what type of sun the system has is useful. If there's a sun like ours, we would indeed have a very blue atmosphere around the planet. But if the sun is a Yellow Dwarf, there's going to be no blue light to refract. We'll have a orange-yellow tint on sunrises and sunsets and a pretty clear upper atmosphere.

Now when it comes to that layer of Methane/Ethane clouds, we've got to sort this out. Opinions?

 

Wow, some really nice info here HuskyPup.

I used to be on Discord all the time, but I don't think I'll be back 'til summer at earliest because real life circumstance has gotten in the way for now.

 

That's totally fine! I'll keep this updated if ever there's comms on Discord. Could maybe record sessions... that's an Idea