Oolite Bulletins

FPO Zaonce

Actual version: 0.2.0
Uploaded 05 Dec 2020

The Galactic Register called Zaonce a tedious place. They didn't correct it in later issues. Zaonce is actually one of the best-guarded, fun-packed secrets of Galaxy 1. Tourists will find attractions like the monstrous Hurricane Kev, dominating a huge swathe of the northern hemisphere. The planet is also known for the Zaonce Aurodrome, Zanadoo Zoo, Chateau d'if, and the perpetual parties going on in virtually every hotel on the planet.

This OXP changes visual appearance of Zaonce using custom 4096 x 2048 textures for diffuse and normal/specular maps.
Zaonce has more rough terrain comparing with Lave, so terrain shadows are quite noticeable. Moreover, original terrain normal map already has exaggerated magnitude to provide more visual effect.

Conflicts and dependencies

Any packages using script to redefine Zaonce texture, such as Povray Planets, will overwrite FPO Zaonce texture.
In case of custom Zaonce textures redefined in planetinfo.plist result will be dependent from loading order. The latest planetinfo.plist in loading order has highest priority.
In any case having one custom texture for one planet, not several, is right.

Credits

Mask for continent was created using modified screenshot from Google Earth free software.
Textures for diffuse map from NASA Blue Marble open project.
Normal map was created using Earth normal mosaic map (author jestr from Celestia community)
Changes made to original normal map include the addition of an alpha channel, a swap of red and green channels and inversion of original green channel.
Zaonce description is based on Famous Planets v 2.5 manual (author Pagroove) and Rough Guide to Ooniverse (author Blaze O’Glory aka Disembodied).
Thanks to another_commander for inspiration and invaluable technical advice and commander vasig from Roolite community for initial testing.

Very cool Earth-like, compliments. Is the lack of clouds over land deliberate?



Here it is again, this time with some experimentation from my side: airColorMixRatio is 0.7, airColor is blue and airDensity is set to full (1.0):

another_commander wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:48 am

Very cool Earth-like, compliments. Is the lack of clouds over land deliberate?

Thank you!
Yes, after adding cloud layer (Screen overlay mode) I reduced cloud transparency over ocean to 0.75 and over land to 0.5 or so. I'm disappointed by look of clouds over continents - it has greenish tint, so I decide to make clouds over land less prominent.

I think there is something funny going on with the normal map. In this pic, plenty of the ripples seem to be lit from the wrong direction.



Not sure what the original format of the normal map used for Zaonce is, but if you take a normal map, decompose it to its rgb elements in Gimp and take a look at the r and g channels, the red channel will be showing how the shading will look if lit directly from the bottom to top direction, while the green will be showing how it will look when lit from left to right. You should rearrange (and possibly invert) channels as necessary to achieve the same result in your normal map. At least this is how I fixed the Lave is Earth normal map, which you can use as an example.

It looks wrong indeed.
Seems I need to check normal map orientation again. Thank you!

Version 0.2.0 - swapping red and green channels and inversion only green channel. Evidently inversion of red channel in version 0.1.0 was bad decision.
I was fooled by regular ripples.
There is stiil odd shadow orientation near terminator (may be due to regular ripples again), but I hope this version will look more realistic.
In case of Moon with prominent circular craters it was easy to find right solution - exactly as another_commander did with Earth normal map.