[Lightspeed]

As i said, mission uses 20 background images to create the shown constellations ~ overlapping works wonders

I havent modified the stars slider so I guess... uhhh minimum?

[Fineus]

Cool beans - I'd like to see some stars (though the FS2 star code really needs an overhaul at some stage.. but thats another thread).

Anyhow, enough talk. Release! Release! Release!

Edit: Oh, and welcome to the highlights once again

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Nico
about the distorsion, increasing the polycount of the skybox sphere should help, too.

yes and no
I'm using a sphere of ~560 triangles, and I can't see many differences compared to a sphere of more than 1k triangles
BUT I can see many differences compared to a sphere of like 120 triangles.
Also the uvmapping is important.
All the ppl doing skyboxes (and me too) worked with cubic uvmaps, which means 6 sections. While planar is good 90% of the times, with curved meshes it creates some warping at the edges of the mapped area, caused by the texture being projected to the polys from a different direction than the polys normal....well I may be not completely clear but I think you already know what I'm talking about:)
I finally was able to use spheric uvmaps in a way that satisfied me, and the warpings disappeared almost completely,  except for those caused by the FOV.

[Rictor]

You're taunting us. Arent you? AREN'T YOU!?

Release it. Realease it. :D

[c914]

wow:eek2:
that nebula look realy good like background for shivan ships:)

[Bobboau]

has anyone tryed makeing a simple 6 sided cube for the background pof (hint, if that were to become standard it would make environment mapping incredably easy)

[KARMA]

I never did personally but others tryed and I remember they reported odd results (weird warpings and noticeble edges).
BTW if someone want to give it a try but don't want ot bother with uvmapping/conversions I may just upload an already correctly uvmapped sphere with 6 different sections.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Rictor
You're taunting us. Arent you? AREN'T YOU!?

Release it. Realease it. :D

I am evil, aren't I?

...

ookaaayy....

Nebula dev thread coming up

[Kazan]

Karma and Lightspeed's nebulae OWN

(I actually like Karma's better -- but that's preferance, they're both well done and extremely realistic)

You two OWN

[Bobboau]

karma's came out better than I thought it would, but LS's is just great

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I know this looks like crap after seeing LS work, but I spent too much time working on this. I don't want all that time go to waste

[Lightspeed]

There's one thing you did wrong (IMO):

you didnt remove the stars. Do it and you'll see how much better it looks

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
There's one thing you did wrong (IMO):

you didnt remove the stars. Do it and you'll see how much better it looks

Oh trust me. I tried. For hours. And was an inch away from seriously injuring myself

As you can see, I'm not that experienced in PS. The actual image was completely done in LightWave with three nebula images. I only added couple of lens flares (LW is excellent with those).

[Lightspeed]

well, patience is the main word for good results

you could send me the image without the lenseflases and i can finish it off and implement in Set 2. This way, your time didnt go waste, and you'll have it in-game lookin fine.

[Nico]

I was about to say I can remove the stars for you, but Lightspeed beat me to it

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
well, patience is the main word for good results

you could send me the image without the lenseflases and i can finish it off and implement in Set 2. This way, your time didnt go waste, and you'll have it in-game lookin fine.

Thanks, LS. I'll do that. Let me just re-render it, might take some time

LW is really nice tool for blending the different nebulas. You can make thousands different variations with only a few images. The only problem is the render time.

[Nuke]

cubic skyboxes work fine if you render your scene. if you simply make a sphere and draw a texture on it you will get distortion. however if you render your bitmaps from an actual scene. warping gets compensated for by the field of veiw. warping gets greater twards the edge of the bitmap, but because its a cube the warping cansels out near the corners and the whole thing looks spherical.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Nuke
cubic skyboxes work fine if you render your scene.

Have you even tried? Guess not. So I'll answer by a simple: No, they don't.

[KARMA]

considering the warpings that you can see on very low poly spheres, I guess that a cube will just increase those warpings instead of reducing em, but I never tryed...
I'm using now a sphere of 288 polys, not triangulated.
Could be probably less, tho

[Bri_Dog]

What program were the original nebulas made with?