Oolite Bulletins

There's a great tip in the Skinner's Den on how to texture planets, and (for those of you with Photoshop or the free open-source program GIMP) instructions of how to make sure the polar co-ordinates aren't pinched (I can think of a few planets that look like that).

So I say we fix some planets, or make some more.

Images should be 1024 by 512. Flatten out those poles. And let's see your maps. It's a big universe out there...

It's nice but I have to many to fix. Most of the time I do not find the polar distortion very disturbing. I wil look at the tutorials. Not much energy atm. Feel a bit sick

Maybe someone can help me fixing when I have the next package ready. I don't use the GIMP a.t.m.

pagroove wrote:

Maybe someone can help me fixing when I have the next package ready. I don't use the GIMP a.t.m.

You post the graphics, I'll make sure the poles look OK.

Here's my first planet.



I see why they say "do it at double size first"... manipulating the image for polar fixing softens the image.

I’d actually suggest doing it at at least four times the size first. That way, you have a double-size version for the high definition version of your OXP. ;-)

Ahruman wrote:

I’d actually suggest doing it at at least four times the size first. That way, you have a double-size version for the high definition version of your OXP.

Yeah, please make high-definition and ultra-high-definition versions of your textures!

It is only one texture of so many - and going to look that good if you still see new details from the main station's orbit!

Yes nice, but filesize alert. Famous Planets current version on my HD is 249 MB

@Pangloss,

If you want it included in a planet for FP just give a cry

What if you could make a planet the definition of Google Earth's maps?

pagroove wrote:

@Pangloss,

If you want it included in a planet for FP just give a cry

I'll do a better resolution version for FP. Does anyone have a good cloud texture I can use?

@Pangloss- http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/clouds.php

@Wacky - I have a texture that's 8k x 4K, has separate diffuse, specular, height (greyscale), cloud, and cloud-height maps. I just have no clue what it all looks like when put together because I have no clue how to use a UV Mapper. I've started playing around trying to learn. Give me a few months, and I might be able to do a screenshot.

Here's another earth-like planet that might be useful

CaptKev wrote:

Here's another earth-like planet that might be useful

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?

OK, here's what I did.



The idea I had for this planet was like the planet Risa from ST:TNG. All the major land masses have a tropical feel to them, so everything would be Equatorial.

I wanted a planet that looked like it had been recently terraformed. So there would be impact craters from where large icy asteroids had been 'introduced' onto the surface (which would then have formed the ocean). So I found a map of Venus, and changed its color so it was blue. One ocean.

I also enlarged the image to 2048 by 1024 pixels.

I noticed there was a band of slightly lighter blue around the Equator. Perfect: areas of low sea level.

For the land, I Google searched for various Earth islands. Pacific and Indian Ocean, Channel Islands... the large Godzilla island (on the left) is three islands bashed into one... mainly Borneo.

For the ice, I used this fractal planet generator to create a planet of only water and ice. Copied the image, enlarged it to be the same size as Pangloss Major, copied only the white (ice) areas, and pasted it onto my design.

For the clouds, see Cmd. Cheyd's link above. I took a section of cloud, resized it, and added it as a 'Screen' layer so the land not covered would show (I set it to 85% screen, so the clouds have a certain transparency).

I pinched the poles using the Distort trick, making sure I didn't have a weird cloud formation at the poles. Reduced it in size to 1024 by 512. Then I Offset the image by a few hundred pixels. Reducing the size of the image had caused a line to be formed at the old border, so I used the Clone Stamp to carefully eradicate the line. And the image above is the end result. Less than an hour of actual work.

Opinions?

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