Author Topic: Celestial Objects Thread  (Read 321802 times)

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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Yep, if you make the shadow as a big enough oval selection that extends way over the borderline of the planet, then the problem with the grayish blurred atmosphere effect is wiped out because the shadow indeed covers it. And you can of course manually wipe out the dark side atmosphere effect.

But, by blurring the sharp-edged compsition of surface, cloud and shadow layer as one bunch and then blurring it, you do get an atmosphere effect onto the shadow side - but it consists of blurred black so instead of shining against black background, it should somewhat darken the stars behind it.

How do you make starfields? I simply put uniform noise on black background, then adjust the brightness and contrast higher... Usuall Brightness value is somewhere around 70-90 and Contrast on 110-120, depending on picture size and other things, like how dense a star field I want.

And yeah, those nebulae seem to need some work. I see you used much similar method in creating them as I do. Plasma clouds are very useful. Did you use the Colouring tool to make them blue? If so, I think you need to boost the colour saturation and reduce brightness. Or just blur the nebula layer, and place some stars inside (->below) the brightest areas, so that there's an actual reason why the bright areas are bright. Like here:



I put this nebula pic together back last winter. It's a rather good default background for space objects, though I often use just starfield.
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Offline USS Alexander

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Well here's 1 hour in photoshop, not that to much detail though. ;)

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Offline watsisname

Re: Celestial Objects Thread
It seems both methods for making atmospheres work quite well.  The disadvantage to making a blurred layer surrounding the planet is, as you said, that it requires and extended shadow layer to cover it for the nightside.  I think your method sometimes works wonderfully for planets where the surface and/or cloud layer are not very highly contrasted.  Meaning that, for example, if the surface has very high contrast between dark areas (like land) and light areas (ice or snow), then those contrasts will be carried over to the atmosphere as well, so an extra step or two is needed to correct it.  (Not really a problem, just takes a bit more time.)  Of course, it may work awesomely if you're trying to get the atmosphere effect to match to surface features.

As for the starfield, I used noise > hurl, then desaturate, colorize, and then used layers > colors > curves to choose a specific number/brightness of stars to show up.  A little experimenting will show some cool ways to change the starfield's density and randomness. 
For your starfield, how did you make the larger stars?  I've tried a few settings but I must be missing the technique you use.

And yeah, I used colorized plasma clouds for the nebula, and changed the layer mode to "hard light".  I'll try your suggestion of altering the brightness/contrast and see how that works out. :) 
Hmm... I just realized that with a little editing, those last background nebulae I used might make a very nice galaxy band effect (as in it looks like the Milky Way when viewed from Earth).  Maybe throwing in an extra layer with some small red emission nebulae could improve the effect?  Ooh, something extra for me to experiment with. :D
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Big stars:

- make a new (transparent) layer, then I put some white differently sized flecks on the layer with the "P" tool, whatever it is in English version you get it via P key. Choose the fizzy edged pencil, try different sizes and click the mouse on same location for a few times if you want more defined stars... The more clicks, the sharper edge, but you can also choose the sharper edged tool and try with that.

Choose the locations for stars according to bright parts of the nebula, but don't put in too many stars, it ruins the effect usually.

Then duplicate this layer, blur it some amount. Adjust contrast so that the blurred round flecks are little more visible than what they initially are after the blur.

Now colour the blurred stars with same hue that you used to the nebula. This is quite important... the brightness is usually good as it is, but change the saturation to maximum or near maximum.

Now, if you have the starfield as a background and the nebula layer on top of that, move the initial star layer over the starfield, then move the blurred layer on top of that, below the nebula layer.

I use normal mode on all the layers whenever I can, and I rather just change the nebula's black colour to transparent than fiddle with layer modes. I feel it give sme more control over the final result.

Oh, and btw I think you may want to try a simpler and faster method to create a star field. Just make the default noise (with united RGB channels, so the noise is gray), then simply adjust contrast and brightness according to your preferences. Why the need for hurl? And colorize? AFAIK most stars are quite... uniform white, with just the brightest ones making a notable exception to human eye.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline aldo_14

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
aaaaah, how come there are never any tutorials to make planet textures?

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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    • My old squad sub-domain
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Offline aldo_14

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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Just use the skybox technique, Its still wrapped around a ball, Just the inside of the ball.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
CD... you seem to have no clue what you're talking about... :lol:

The tutorial by MarvinX doesn't concentrate very much on creating the actual texture. It's a very simplistic method in fact. And regardless of using background or skybox technique, the images must still be made. And that's what this thread is about...

I'll post something considering my experiments on the subject later today. But as a tip: using plasma, colorize and brightness/contrast you can create continents from the bright areas of plasma cloud and thencoulour the continents gray/light brown. Then use freehand selection to choose which areas are forest, which are mountains etc. If you want, create valleys and stuff onto mountain areas, and perhaps some rivers onto mainlands.

If you want to avoid exessive spoilage around poles, simply put ice caps or open sea there. They are the easiest way to avoid ugly thingsies from forming on the pole.

Besides, I don't think it would even be good to always use similar method to create planet texture. It would result in massive amounts of generic planets, something I personally am against. Different kinds of methods create variety.


Though, creating gas giant textures is easy compared to earth-like planets or plain barren rocks. Just create a background layer of arbitrary colour, then put one or two cloud layers on top of it. IWarp works well in creating belts and zones on cloud layer, just slowly move mouse vertically, clicking occasionally. Then move to other zone, change the direction of swirl and move to other direction, still clicking. Cover the whole planet like this. Shadow layer goes on top. This creates a nice, Jupiter'esque planets; other gas giants in Solar system are much less detailed. Saturn has rings, but Uranus is just a blue blob and neptune is not much better. The other one of them has some white storms on them, but that's it. They look dull... and that makes it more difficult to make them look interesting. ;7

One more thing that is easier with gas giants. Atmospheric effect is so thin that it's usually not noticeable, because the planets themselves are so frakkin huge that the width of atmosperic effect would be about <1/1000 of the planet's apparent diameter, so it's just not visible. They are just sharp edged spheres or ellipsoids, making them much easier to create. I might do some gas giants next...
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline aldo_14

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Just use the skybox technique, Its still wrapped around a ball, Just the inside of the ball.

a)This is an earth texture;


b)And this is an earth;


Try replacing a) with b), see how far you get.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
No you sillyperson, I assumed you knew how to join edges spherically already.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Yes we do...

But I don't really understand what you want us to do.

<iron wire>

It doesn't matter whether or not we use skyboxes or traditional backgrounds as long as it looks good.

But, I say again, regardless of the technique to use the images in-game, the images must still be created.

It is easy to map a texture to sphere.

Before mapping the sphere, you must create the texture or use existing one.

It is not as easy to actually make that texture.

That's what this is about.

How to make a texture that looks like a planet when it's mapped to a sphere.

</iron wire>

 ;)


EDIT: And, if you just toss the planet texture onto the skybox, it'll look like you are flying inside the planet. It would look rather stupid, in my opinion. Considering there's quite hot lava and liquid and solid iron-nickel core... :D
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Wobble73

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/A-Better-Planet-Tutorial-5221-1.html



Read the first post  :P

Have you guys even read this link??? It's all about creating realistic textures for planets?????
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
...no, it is not.

It is a simplistic method and if you do like on the tutorial, you don't even get any water onto your planet, just differently coloured ground. IMO that's not (always) very realistic.

There are other glaring simplifications in the tutorial; mainly the cloud layer being practically misused to "create colour variation" to planet texture.

In my opinion, you should first create the actual surface - including colour variations, surface types and water and all the stuff like that, then put the actual clouds on top of that.

If you want to say that the pictures produced by following the tutorial as is resemble actual planets (refer to images of planets in Solar system), go ahead. I don't find them actually realistic, cool as they might look.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Try this then.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/14519017/

BAsic arty stuff i know, but it works, and can be expanded on.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Hey, thanks for the linky. I'll give it a look... :)
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline aldo_14

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/A-Better-Planet-Tutorial-5221-1.html



Read the first post  :P

Have you guys even read this link??? It's all about creating realistic textures for planets?????

Make a texture with that.  Map it to a sphere.  You'll find it doesn't work well.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Well, it *works* until you want to take a look at the poles. With the tutorial, there will be some nasty things going on around the poles.

I took a look at the other tutorial that Colonel Dekker linked to. First of all, it starts with some previously created texture. It's not something you can create from a scratch; you need the starting texture first, and it doesn't say anything about that.

Secondly, it seems to be made using something else than GIMP... perhaps a German Photoshop. It might give me some ideas, but I think I'll prefer to experiment on my own, trying to figure out things by myself.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline aldo_14

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Well, it *works* until you want to take a look at the poles. With the tutorial, there will be some nasty things going on around the poles.

Exactly.... and quite often, people place planets to the bottom left/right of the screen, or in the classic earth-from-moon style top hemsiphere over horizon (not sure why, seems to be a common aesthetic preference which I, admittedly, share) when rendering, etc.... not to mention the issue of symmetrical textures for wrapping it round. 

Also, I'd wager in general that planet textures will be higher resolution (which adds other concerns regarding detailing), as the nature of having an actual model usually hints at getting a bit closer to it than just the bitmap alone.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Celestial Objects Thread
Surely it depends where, the texture meets though, Ditortion only really applies to the poles, Which are often in the case of M-class (i hate trek) are snowy, gas goants are normally uniform swirl, and rocky ones are just rocky.......


This is one to add to the K-Faq once we master it..........
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png