Cube mapping

[JensAyton]

Moderator: split from here.

Nasty deprecated lat/long texture maps make me sad. :-(

[DaddyHoggy]

Nasty deprecated lat/long texture maps make me sad.

Which is why I asked to see the poles...

[Smivs]

Nasty deprecated lat/long texture maps make me sad.

Having something which is obviously very useful downloaded and sitting on my desktop with no instructions or user-guide makes me sad.
Please tell me how to use it!

[another_commander]

Use the Force, Smivs, use the Cube Maps.

[JensAyton]

Having something which is obviously very useful downloaded and sitting on my desktop with no instructions or user-guide makes me sad.
Please tell me how to use it!

The thread I linked to quotes the tool’s built-in documentation, and links to the longer documentation on the wiki. How does this constitute “no instructions”?

In the example from the first post of that thread:
planettool --input latlong [i]my-latlong-map.png[/i] --output cube [i]my-cube-map.png[/i] --flip --size [i]512[/i]
the lat/long texture map my-latlong-map.png is converted to a cube map my-cube-map.png of size 512 (meaning each of the six sides is 512 × 512 pixels). The game will recognise it as a cube map based on its shape.

This glosses over the issue of putting the tool where the command line can find it. How to do this varies by platform. An alternative is to specify the path to the tool; for Mac OS X and most Linuxes, that would be ~/Desktop/planettool if the tool itself is on the desktop. I don’t know the equivalent for Linux.

If you have any other issues with the documentation, please be specific.

[JensAyton]

Which is why I asked to see the poles...

It’s not just the poles. If you look closely at the rings, you’ll see that they form smoothed pentagons:


A similar deformation exists along all six vertex axes of the underlying icosahedron.

[DaddyHoggy]

So they do. Never really noticed, or perhaps I did, and it just wasn't as obvious as the neat pentagon in the centre...

[Smivs]

The thread I linked to quotes the tool’s built-in documentation, and links to the longer documentation on the wiki. How does this constitute “no instructions”?

OK, thanks. The 'in-built documentation' is starting to make sense after my fifth read of it, so I'll probably understand it eventually. The first read through left me baffled, so much so I didn't even realise this was the 'instructions'.
I hadn't read down to the second post on the second page, so I missed the link to the Wiki altogether.
I'll see how I get on. I expect I'll be back.

[JensAyton]

Mind you, smoothed polygons at the poles of gas giants aren’t necessarily a bad thing.

[DaddyHoggy]

Mind you, smoothed polygons at the poles of gas giants aren’t necessarily a bad thing.

I saw this effect on a programme about 20 or 30 years ago (Horizon, QED or something similar) - they also recreated Jupiter's Red Spot in the same show.