Author Topic: Skyboxes  (Read 5666 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Zane, where'd you get that background bitmap? By the way, that pic showing the Hatshepsut is my new desktop wallpaper. After months, the Ouranosaurus nigeriensis got replaced...[/color]

It's the Earth skybox from the Age of Aquarius director's cut.

 

Offline Mobius

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Who made that pic?
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Offline General Battuta

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Commander Zane took the screenshots.

The skybox itself is not a 'picture', it's a skybox by HerraTohtori. Skyboxes are very different from background bitmaps, and involve 3D rendering.

 

Offline Mobius

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I know, I know... but who actually created the Earth texture for the skybox? Herra Tohtori himself?
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Offline General Battuta

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I believe Herra created it from NASA imagery.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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I believe Herra created it from NASA imagery.

Correct. The texture is a slightly edited version of NASA's Blue Marble imagery (September image from here. The main change was re-colouring the seas so that they blended more or less seamlessly to the photographed areas near the coastlines.

The height- and specular maps are likewise found from NASA.

Night time city light map is an enhanced version of a map likewise found from NASA (I wasn't too worried about accuracy as it's the future... basically I enlarged the map, applied it to a noise layer as a mask and then adjusted brightness and contrast as I desired to create individual pixels of light as opposed to huge blobs of illuminated areas.

If you want to know more, go here, that's the tutorial I used to re-build the photo-realistic Earth.

By the way, anyone know how to easily map an icosphere to use eight textures instead of a single spherical texture? Basically so that the main texture would be divided into a 2x4 array of eight square textures. If I could adjust the model that way, I could potentially use even higher resolution textures which would of course result in even better skyboxes...

Is there no other way than UVmapping it? :nervous:
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Offline Mobius

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Thanks for the detailled explanation. :)

About your request: a new thread in FreeSpace Modding will be enough, IMHO. If there's a lot of potential, things will come to fruition. ;)
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Offline Snail

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TBH I really dont like the Earth skybox...

 

Offline General Battuta

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I'm actually not a huge fan of it either, but according to Herra this is a consequence of the realistic techniques employed.

 

Offline TopAce

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I find it pretty good. Of course that's only part of the skybox that I can see.
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Offline Mobius

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The only real problem I have with planet skyboxes is that you have to stick with fixed dimensions without any chances of altering. Well, the fact that you can't use nebulae (they end up covering the planet) is also discouraging.
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Offline Droid803

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I'm actually not a huge fan of it either, but according to Herra this is a consequence of the realistic techniques employed.
If real doesn't look as good as fake, then I'll go with fake.

The only real problem I have with planet skyboxes is that you have to stick with fixed dimensions without any chances of altering. Well, the fact that you can't use nebulae (they end up covering the planet) is also discouraging.

You can use nebulae, just make sure you're not placing them too close to the planet.
(´・ω・`)
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Here's how it is: The Earth from TBP got used up, so I built a new one.

Anyway, the old Earth skybox (which was privateered from TBP - can't remember who its original creator was) had a lot of flaws. Basically it was just an image/render of Earth that was plastered on a very, very large plane on the skybox, and the apparent diameter of the planet was grossly larger than what the actual surface features visible suggested.

For those interested in the geometric problem, basically the issue was that as you view a sphere from a distance you see very much of the surface facing you, but when you get closer, the amount of surface visible will drastically decrease while the apparent diameter approaches 90 degrees asymptotically as the view angle tangents the planet's surface, defining the visible circular area of the surface...


However, as the new skybox was basically purpose-built for a single scene in AoA - namely the Lucifer cutscene - it needed to match the apparent diameter of the old skybox Earth for cinematic purposes.

As a result, I was required to position the camera close (too close in my opinion) to the surface so that the planet would correctly fill the required amount of apparent diameter out of the 3D scene.

Now, this would not have actually been an issue since technically NASA's Blue Marble textures stretch all the way to insane 86400x43200 resolution. This would have been more than sufficient to offer 1:1 or lesser scaling factor on the visible portion of the surface, which is always desireable in renders like this (results in crisp, sharp rendered image). However, software and hardware limitations forced me to only use puny 21600x10800 resolution textures on the planet, and this of course reduced the quality of the final skybox renders.

Fortunately, in it's intended use in AoA, the camera never really looks very much at the area immediately below the camera, which is worst affected by texture stretching. As a result I and the rest of the team deemed the quality of the skybox sufficient for its intended use, although I have to agree that it is barely passable for other uses.

Ideally I would have mapped the planet sphere so that it would be divided into eight sections, each using a single 21600^2 texture as required. Unfortunately, my practical skills with Blender are not so hot and I don't know if there's a feature to simply do this or if it requires UVmapping, which I know even less of.

In fact, I'm going to post a request for an icosphere model with subdivision 5 or greater mapped in a described fashion.

Anyway, now you know the most likely reason as to why the AoA Earth skybox has sort of blurry textures on some parts.
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Offline Mobius

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Very special thanks to whoever made the Earth bitmap for TBP, but I noticed some of the flaws Herra's just mentioned here. :(

You can use nebulae, just make sure you're not placing them too close to the planet.

A serious problem in large backgrounds featuring dozens and dozens of nebulae... :nervous:
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Offline General Battuta

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Very special thanks to whoever made the Earth bitmap for TBP, but I noticed some of the flaws Herra's just mentioned here. :(

I'm pretty sure TBP uses a skybox, not a bitmap.

A serious problem in large backgrounds featuring dozens and dozens of nebulae... :nervous:

Take the Blue Planet approach and put the nebula in the skybox itself. Have you seen the skybox in the Director's Cut Vishnan missions? It has a nebula backdrop that simply couldn't be done with the normal FS2 nebula system.

 

Offline Droid803

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Wouldn't using the Jupiter skybox from TBP with the bulging planet solve some of this?
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Offline The E

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Except that using TBP assets outside of TBP is impossible.
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Offline Mobius

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What do you mean?
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Offline Dragon

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TBP team members don't like if somebody uses their assets outside TBP.
Also, BP Jupiter will be much better than TBP one.

 

Offline General Battuta

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You cannot legally or morally use TBP assets outside of TBP. The team has forbidden it.