Draw Your Own Galaxy Contest

[Commander McLane]

Sure.




Yours nicely demonstrates the “squares” problem (and possibly gives an appreciation of how blobs are generated).

For reference, what I did was:

• Trim off some of the fat, leaving a generous border.
• Adjust levels so that the background was reasonably close to black.
• Paint out most of the background stars, producing a roughly circular pattern.
• Blur.
• Crop close to final area.
• Apply a new levels adjustment as an effect layer, with a radial-gradient mask, to ensure black edges.
• Crop away the black bits.

If I’d thought it through properly, I’d have avoided the first level adjustment.

Okay, I do see the "squares" problem now. Does it come from the black "frame" I made around the picture, which is the only really black thing? That would mean the main issue in adjusting the picture is actually to blend it nicely from the light center to the dark corners.

Unfortunately the steps described by you are way above the capability of my graphics software (I'm still using only Graphic Converter). But I'll try my best.

Because, in principle, I like these blurs way more than those made from galaxy-pictures.

[JensAyton]

Okay, I do see the "squares" problem now. Does it come from the black "frame" I made around the picture, which is the only really black thing?

Well… they come from the squareness of the rest, i.e. the fact that the rest isn’t black. :-) Everywhere the texture isn’t is effectively black, so you need to transition smoothly from completely pure black to non-black.

[Commander McLane]

Okay, that's what I meant and didn't put that way. Thanks for the confirmation.

[JensAyton]

Due to bugs in the old sky code, I’m working on the multi-nebula-texture sky for 1.69. Here’s a first peek:



The colour scheme is for debugging purposes – it lets me see whether it’s the stars or the nebulae that are messing up. Mostly it’s the stars at the moment… it seems to have stopped crashing, though.

Rather than one fixed star texture and four fixed nebula textures, the textures are specified in plists (startextures.plist and nebulatextures.plist), like so:

Code: Select all

(
    "oolite-nebula-1.png",  // Default probability: 1.0
    {
        texture = "oolite-nebula-2.png";
        probability = 0.5;
    },
    {
        texture = "oolite-nebula-3.png";
        probability = 0.1;
    }
)

These are merged in the usual fashion, so it will be possible for OXPs to expand the variety of the sky, as well as replacing the built-in ones.

Incidentally, I discovered a wee error in the sky code. When a nebula blob is generated, it interpolates between the two sky colours (generated randomly or specified in planetinfo.plist), and boosts the saturation. However, it also accidentally multiplies the hue component by 360. This may be useful to know if you’re trying to achieve a specific effect with planetinfo.plist. (I’m going to leave it that way to avoid changing the colour schemes).

Edit: Just for fun, here’s one with more evil red stars, and a bit of Secret Programmer’s X-Ray View:

[nijineko]

"beware, for when the threads which make this warp and woof that we call space begin to show themselves, and the stars blink like malevolent bloodshot eyes, then you are truely doomed, and your ghost will go screaming down the lost byways of witchspace, a dutchman of space, the marie celeste of witchspace, lost... forever."

----old trader tale, heard at bars throughout stations of known space.

[GoreLeech]

*runs screaming through the back ends of witchspace, as he has seen teh_evil red lights and lines*

*initiates auto destruct sequence*

*BOOM*

[stardotstar]

Since this is still a sticky and 1.70 is still a "test" I can post right?

I don't know if I have really understood what the implications of repetition and contrast are but this is an attempt at a reasonably random but star like cluster of black and white pixels



If this is any use I would be delighted to make more.

I hereby permit distribution under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license and the
GNU General Public License version 2.

[Star Gazer]

That's very nicely done, have you attempted to 'colorize' it...?

[JensAyton]

You can test a nebula texture by renaming it “galaxy256.png” and dropping it in your AddOns folder. And this one, sir, is bloody excellent. At least, once you brighten it up a bit. :-) More would be welcome.

[stardotstar]

Thank you for your compliments I am flattered indeed.

Here is the original one brightened up so that the spectral range is more evenly distributed between pure white and perfect black.


and another one... I will continue to work some up as the time permits me - please let me know when I am getting off the mark. For example the one below may be too square??


I have not attempted to preview them or colourise them yet.

If I drop one into addons does that make it appear in the skydome at lave? By putting it in the addons does it become one of the available ones for the game or become the only one rendered in certain circumstances to make testing easier??

Regards,
Will

[JensAyton]

If I drop one into addons does that make it appear in the skydome at lave? By putting it in the addons does it become one of the available ones for the game or become the only one rendered in certain circumstances to make testing easier??

The “multi-texture” sky isn’t in the game yet, due to some bug I don’t remember. Dropping a texture in (with that name) will replace all nebulae everywhere. I always go to Leesti for testing (one jump from Lave) because it has much brighter nebulae.

You’ll find that the second texture’s background isn’t black; see above re “squares problem”.

[stardotstar]

oopps I saw that as soon as I dragged my browser window onto my brighter monitor... [fixed]

I will do some testing at Leesti.

[JensAyton]

The “multi-texture” sky isn’t in the game yet, due to some bug I don’t remember.

Come to think of it, I think this was just because it doesn’t produce identical nebula layouts to the old one. Which is a very silly reason, since no-one but me is likely to notice, and the current trunk doesn’t seem to be generating the same layouts as older versions anyway.

[TGHC]

]

My favourite.

Excellent work, I like it a lot.

[stardotstar]

thank you. I will try to get away from the spherical look without things getting too square

the skull was an accident but I thought I'd put it up for fun



I think they are getting better - less uniformly round and yet not too 'boxed in'...

I'll just keep adding them as I get ones I like I guess.

Thanks for the encouragement