Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 1:37 pm
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City night-lights
What if I just wanted to add night lights to say FPO Lave & FPO Zaonce? Or some of the Povray planets? Or some of your BPlanets?
Would I be able to use Blender/Planet Generator 2.0 (free version) to do so?
And would it be relatively easy - or a pain in the unmentionables?
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To this, I think I can answer quickly: it should be relatively easy.
To expand a bit, you would need only an image processing program (Photoshop, GIMP should do), and some knowledge on playing with the channels of an image.
The principle for city night-lights is simple: it is a mask that is written in the alpha channel of the "main" texture for the planet (think of it as of "another" image embedded in the original one). The alpha value of 0.0 (i.e. transparent) tells Oolite to shine a light through that hole, when the hole is on the dark side of the planet.
When creating the mask you would want to have in the background the main texture, to make sure the light splashes are not positioned over the seas, or too close to the poles. Also, concentrating them along the shores would naturally follow the tendency to show where the parties are
If there is not a clear demarcation water/ground in the main texture, you could go wild.