Oolite Bulletins

I updated my Pangloss Major image, because the polar regions were showing inland lakes look at Antarctica - that does NOT happen) so I retouched the image to fill in any inland water at the poles. If you're seeing lakes top and bottom, reload the page to see the correct version.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

@Pangloss
Look into a photoshop plugin (can be used with GIMP also, with a photoshop plugin-adapter software) called Lunarcell.

Hell's teeth. Here's a planet I'm caling 'Freo' for the moment, just because the colors remind me of Western Australia.



The full version's only US$29. I might have to bu it after the 30-day trial, so we have a resource for planet creation. Or we can rush through creating the planets in 30 days!

Pangloss wrote:

WOW! That looks incredible! What did you use to render it?

And are there any programs for OS X that help you fractally design worlds?

It wasn't rendered I used a graphics package (paint shop pro) and just hacked another texture around a bit.

I should post a cloud image from the program, so people can use it as a Layer (and set it to Lighten or Screen).

The plug-in is really fast, but the land masses all look somewhat TOO random. I might experiment with a mix of this Plug-in and actual satellite imagery to get some slightly different results.

Here's something I'm calling NeoDarwin.

Ok Arexe in HD Is fixing needed on this? EDIT yes, at the right
BTW why can't we use jpg's in Oolite? This would reduce the filesize enormously.

EDIT 2 now fixed an re-uploaded

I re-uploaded it in a small size. As it's just for reference. Texture is 4088 by 1988 though.

I thought png was the best for compression?
Go into Photoshop's File section, down the list it says 'Save for web'
Try different combinations, you may only need 256 colours, maybe less.
That will be under png 8bit,
but there's also png 24bit if this leaves visible steps in the colour changes, but you should be fine if you choose maximum dither.

Besides JPG's are a very 'lossy' format, the more you copy it, the more it loses or misplaces information, dropping the quality each time.

A general tip on getting good atmosphere.> After applying a cloud layer play with the opacity and fill settings of that layer. Otherwise you end with very sharp and outlined (IMO) not realistic clouds.

Like this: Here you see pangloss_major with a cloud layer from the earlier mentioned cloud site with the opacity toned down. Moving the slider gives very different results. After that I often flatten (only do this if you are content) the image and then play with the contrast and brightness settings.





I also use the colour balance and Hue saturation options to get very different coloured planets. Tianve was made in this way.

And then you get a result like this. It's very easy. Just try it out.



Sorry Pangloss for misusing your first texture for this mini-tips.

And then it has to be made circular. The above picture still has a seam when wrapped around a planet.

Ok I did use the polar coordinates option to fix the planet. I must say that's a very handy option. Thanx guys. I can now probably fix all seams in the Famous Planets using the options: rectangular to polar, then fix the seams and then back to polar to rectangular.

Pangloss_major final result with this:

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pagroove wrote:

BTW why can't we use jpg's in Oolite? This would reduce the filesize enormously.

JPEG is a lossy (destructive) compression algorithm. More than that, it’s optimized for viewing straight-on at a fixed aspect ratio. The artefacts it introduces are much, much more visible when it’s used as a texture, with geometric distortion and lighting.

Besides, file sizes aren’t all that big an issue. JPEG compression would not affect the amount of texture memory used, which is a much trickier issue. I’ll be looking into adding S3TC compression in 1.74. (A patch has been submitted, but I’m finicky.)

pagroove wrote:

And then it has to be made circular. The above picture still has a seam when wrapped around a planet.

Also polar pinching. Get with the programme! :-)

Also polar pinching. Get with the programme!

Just did that but the System Redux planets still have a black spot at the poles while Simon B made a moon in Wings 3d.[/quote]

Some great textures being created here!

It must be time to touch-up the polar regions on the textures within System Redux following Ahruman's tutorial.