Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 07:28:52 pm

Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 07:28:52 pm: Don't you just love IW2 style backgrounds?
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/new_background.jpg)

it was rather easy and adds a whole new dimension to the visuals
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2003, 07:30:24 pm: hmm, background pof eh?
does it interfere with exsisting background bitmaps
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 07:32:29 pm: i imagine it does since its all additive so i can put the sun in there. i just want to test something like this and the results were pleasing when i first saw it
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Deepblue on October 19, 2003, 07:45:26 pm: Now try doing a planet and its rings.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 19, 2003, 07:47:12 pm: it's wonderful but the background looks a bit warped
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 07:49:35 pm: yea. im gonna need a new background sphere made. spherec.pof (which is what is used for nebula backgrounds) is only 32 polies
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: IceFire on October 19, 2003, 08:02:24 pm: Hey pretty cool...how big do the bitmaps go? It'd be pretty nifty to setup a single giant PCX file with all the nebula layout already done. That'd be neat.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Stryke 9 on October 19, 2003, 08:06:11 pm: I-War 2-style was a bit darker, and this needs to be too. The heavy aliasing in FreeSpace isn't so noticeable when you've got black backgrounds, but when they're 33% gray or brighter, ugh... probably just bump up the contrast a ways, it'll bring out the stars and colors and solve the jagged-edge problem.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 08:15:55 pm: Quote
Originally posted by IceFire
Hey pretty cool...how big do the bitmaps go? It'd be pretty nifty to setup a single giant PCX file with all the nebula layout already done. That'd be neat.

The map i had was 1024x1024, most cards would support 2048x2048 textures. the background model seems to be a problem though.

Quote
Originally posted by Stryke 9
I-War 2-style was a bit darker, and this needs to be too. The heavy aliasing in FreeSpace isn't so noticeable when you've got black backgrounds, but when they're 33% gray or brighter, ugh... probably just bump up the contrast a ways, it'll bring out the stars and colors and solve the jagged-edge problem.

not to mention the 256 color limitation of the maps themselves. which is soon to be fixed :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2003, 08:30:29 pm: "which is soon to be fixed "

muhahahahahahahahaha!!!
(all hail RT)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 19, 2003, 09:12:03 pm: I took Stryke's advice and darkened it along with boosting the contrast.

(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/new_background02.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/new_background03.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/new_background04.jpg)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2003, 09:18:30 pm: higher resolution background maps
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 19, 2003, 09:19:49 pm: :yes:
nice
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Black Wolf on October 19, 2003, 09:26:56 pm: Meh. I'm sure it has potential, but at the moment, it just doesn't look real.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: mikhael on October 19, 2003, 10:52:13 pm: Using a Hubble photograph isn't a good idea. Otherwise that's pretty damn sweet.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2003, 11:24:32 pm: find one of those nice full range star maps
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 19, 2003, 11:37:00 pm: It doesn't look like the Arcadia's in space anymore, though...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Trivial Psychic on October 20, 2003, 12:28:15 am: I agree... the stars just don't look like stars anymore.

Later!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: diamondgeezer on October 20, 2003, 01:31:30 am: Damn those are pretty. As for starfields, try GRIN (http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/). I've been making half-arsed attempts to get some of the deep-field images in, without much luck...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on October 20, 2003, 02:10:11 am: I've never been keen on backgrounds like this. Space is empty, and as such is black, not full of all sorts of stuff.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 20, 2003, 02:12:19 am: Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
find one of those nice full range star maps

yup. if you have max5, you'll have a quite awesome "stars only" map to use, and with a pretty good resolution :)

anyway you can do better than that, matey :D :
(http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/variouspics/afp03.jpg)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on October 20, 2003, 04:58:28 am: :lol: Show-off :p

Lookin' good, Phreak.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 20, 2003, 05:14:42 am: the bright background also remind me somehow the backgrounds of homeworld, wich I always found wonderful.
btw in those kind of images the 256 colour limitations could be really a problem
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on October 20, 2003, 06:00:52 am: hmm maybe its better if the backgrounds are in tga because of the color limitation ?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 06:55:13 am: Try something like this
;)

http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/us/images/mods/snipes/Background.jpg :D:D:D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on October 20, 2003, 07:02:21 am: Not to put a downer on it but it looks very dodgy... (the original stuff that is). Very blurred and such. I know it's only in the first stage but I thought I should mention it. It'll have to look much sharper in the end, right?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 08:34:25 am: yea we need a better background sphere as the current one is only 32 polies. we can also specify a custom one so you can put multiple images on it, but it doesn't work that way right now. the changes should be trivial, however.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 20, 2003, 10:45:51 am: you know, you only really need a huge pof, that's what I did, works fine.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 10:58:03 am: we can't do that now since if its diameter is over 30km or so it'll get clipped by the far clipping plane. if its smaller, its gonna look bigger if you have to cover a certain distance.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Lightspeed on October 20, 2003, 11:08:14 am: take a look at the freelancer backgrounds.... some of them really 0wn :)

okay, someone finish true-color backgrounds and a new pof ;7

Adding eye-candy like that to FS2 would spice things up even more :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 20, 2003, 11:36:01 am: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
we can't do that now since if its diameter is over 30km or so it'll get clipped by the far clipping plane.

what? who did that? what for?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Terorist on October 20, 2003, 11:36:18 am: Your run-of-the-mill space telescope false color images don't make very good background images if they're just glued on like this - that's simply not quite what it looks like up there. :)

Then there are the points that brighter light sources like local stars and planets reflecting that light drown the backround stuff, but let's not take a too purist approach.

(false color image = images where different elements, like hydrogen, oxygen and so on are colored differently to bring out those details in the nebulae)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flaser on October 20, 2003, 11:40:46 am: What kind of pof did the subspace tunnel use?
How about the skybox?

I believe it is time to replace the said box with a higher poly sphere - as well as adding the ability to layer all the background components.

What are the aims I think of?

You should be able to set a base background image.
You shoulb be able to add suns,, nebulas planets and any other picture onto that layer - and determine their order.
It should still allow the usage of the old (and recently tweaked) star system.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on October 20, 2003, 11:45:36 am: Quote
Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Try something like this
;)

http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/us/images/mods/snipes/Background.jpg :D:D:D

convert it before in 256 colors :doubt:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 20, 2003, 11:49:06 am: Hmmmm my thought is more that the problem lays in the foreground. I'm not talking area dependant nebulas here, but could you add a general 'fogging' effect to the game, where the Modder specifies Ambient Fog density and Distance and it applies to the whole play-area. That would stop the foreground ships looking so stark against the background :)
Also, if you did the sphere with two different materials, one for each hemisphere, you could effectively double the resolution of the Background?
Looks really really nice Phreak, shows promise! :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 11:56:25 am: Quote
Originally posted by FreeTerran

convert it before in 256 colors :doubt:

Nah. Just make it a Targa file :p
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 20, 2003, 12:02:59 pm: Or DDS, which would be a smaller file size with just as many colours?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 12:04:27 pm: And how does one do that? Is it a standard extension in PSP/PS?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 20, 2003, 12:32:34 pm: There is a Save plugin for Adobe products, theres also a converter proggy, I'll just go get the plugin and post it......

Flipside :D

Here....http:\\www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com\images\DDS.8bi
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: kasperl on October 20, 2003, 12:34:27 pm: 3d exploration can read, and possibly write dds files IIRC.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 12:40:49 pm: Thanks Flip :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Woolie Wool on October 20, 2003, 12:46:48 pm: Does anyone have any idea of the other possible ramifications of this texture-mapped skysphere idea?

ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT AT LAST!:D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on October 20, 2003, 01:17:44 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Woolie Wool
Does anyone have any idea of the other possible ramifications of this texture-mapped skysphere idea?

ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT AT LAST!:D

See also my idea about nebula flight effecting the way a ship handles and boom - you're away :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Unknown Target on October 20, 2003, 01:21:59 pm: It looks like you're in a sphere. You need to touch it up, but it's a great start ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Deepblue on October 20, 2003, 01:24:56 pm: Crap thats huge!!! :eek:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on October 20, 2003, 01:30:24 pm: Quote
Originally posted by kasperl
3d exploration can read, and possibly write dds files IIRC.

argh it can't save as dds :(
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 20, 2003, 02:56:23 pm: I'll download the DirectX9 SDK, it's got a converter program that will change BMP to DDS. I'll post the program once I have finished downloading :) Or if someone else out there already has it......?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 03:11:25 pm: i have it

http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/DxTex.zip
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 03:16:14 pm: Now how do we get FS to use it?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 03:29:15 pm: the dds, i assume? i dont know if it works in d3d, but it does in opengl. data/maps.

if ur talking about the background sky thingamabob, ur gonna have to wait until i can perfect it.

does anyone know where the flip normals button is in TS 3.1? nm found it.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 20, 2003, 03:34:59 pm: Heh... Well do the dds files take precidence over the pcx's? And do TGA's work?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 03:52:46 pm: yes they take precedence. and i dont think tgas work
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 20, 2003, 04:00:07 pm: DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface, so I would admit, I'd be very very surprised if DirectX couldn't use it.

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 04:02:48 pm: its more of a lack of impelmentation of it in the d3d engine rather than unsupported. its a messy hack and i want to redo the way it works anyhow
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Turnsky on October 20, 2003, 06:50:40 pm: what about making your own star maps?...

Observe.. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,18295.0.html)

one could see my point, if somebody made thier own, stellar fields, nebulae, and planets... well, you get the idea ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 20, 2003, 08:56:39 pm: that was the inital point ;)

i have zero art skills. and a stick figure is the limit of my talent so i ripped a pic i google searched for and tested it
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Turnsky on October 21, 2003, 02:57:40 am: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
that was the inital point ;)

i have zero art skills. and a stick figure is the limit of my talent so i ripped a pic i google searched for and tested it

hey, whaddya know... i might be actually able to help put planets, starfields and nebs into freespace..;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on October 21, 2003, 05:22:50 am: Boo.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 21, 2003, 05:24:36 am: that would help if it was tiling, I suppose :p
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on October 21, 2003, 05:38:09 am: The main thing is that stars realistically will always be pinpoints of light - single pixels of light. The thing that makes some brighter and some dimmer is that some will not be 100% white (dim stars), and others will have variously-sized glows around them (brighter stars).
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 21, 2003, 10:07:50 am: ill be releasing an exe within the next day or so that will demo this. i would have had it up yesterday but FRED wasn't compiling right. i hate fred. this exe will also have inital opengl HT&L stuff
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 21, 2003, 12:22:25 pm: (http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Skydomex.jpg)

This was my first attempt and it is very very big (It was created for movie rendering). Help y'selves :)

Flipside :D

Oh no, it's not as big as I thought :) only 1024 x 1024 :D

I still think there will be something needed to blend the models into the background a bit, very dull 'real' ambient light or ambient fogging or something?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sheepy on October 21, 2003, 01:06:11 pm: sandy could i steal that star map prwitty please?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on October 21, 2003, 01:26:22 pm: Git on ICQ, Baabaa.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 21, 2003, 01:49:43 pm: sandy & flip: i'll test your backgrounds in a few hours. i have some errands to run. if you can link a 256-color version, it would save me some time too :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 21, 2003, 02:35:17 pm: I might have to do it as DDS even Bright gives the BMP a case of the measles, too much fogging gradient, I'll try it on the JPG and see if the slightly lower quality image will make life easier :)

Flipside :D

Heres the DDS - http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Skydomex.dds

Wow! It's considerately smaller than the JPG!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sheepy on October 21, 2003, 03:58:08 pm: not used ICQ in year, will have to download it again ... now what was my password?

[pause]

Ok sorted, come find me sandy
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 21, 2003, 06:41:25 pm: well i had to convert it to pcx anyways, dds didn't like TnL it wasn't all that bad.

(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/flip_sky.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/flip_sky2.jpg)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on October 21, 2003, 06:48:03 pm: Sheepy, I sent you a message.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on October 21, 2003, 06:53:49 pm: PhReAk, that's more like it!!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 21, 2003, 07:55:47 pm: ohhh nice.
you will still be able to use the regular backround nebulea and stuff right?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 21, 2003, 08:14:21 pm: its gonna be specifiable in the fred background editor wether you want one or not. im doing that now
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 21, 2003, 09:46:53 pm: maybe you should alow a number of background bitmaps/pofs
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Ulala on October 21, 2003, 10:00:31 pm: Hmmm, it looks great, but it seems like it almost takes a little bit away from the models. I think the backgrounds might need a little more black... or maybe I'm just used to the way FS2 does it. :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on October 22, 2003, 04:31:51 am: Phreak, what resolution image is that? Because I think if that was doubled it'd be perfect - right now the stars are still a bit blurry.

And what kind of mapping is it applying to the sphere?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 22, 2003, 04:44:08 am: actually it just needs a bluish sun thrown in the mission.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on October 22, 2003, 05:13:59 am: 1024*1024 is far too small for the size of the sphere it's being stretched over, I think - if you want to avoid the blurry stars.

Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich
Boo.

Very nice for a render, Mike. :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on October 22, 2003, 05:15:18 am: Is there much of an effect on performance by increasing the size of the map? I mean you can guess where I'm going - if there's no performance hit then have the largest map possible for the best possible effect. Seems logical?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 22, 2003, 08:49:24 am: right now its at 1024x1024. the next step up is 2048x2048 which is the upper limit for textures on most cards these days. i may want to have the user model a low poly sphere or box or something and have them apply maps in truespace. this way there wouldn't be much streching and stuff. once again, im gonna need a model and textures. just a note: the normals must be pointing inward for it to work ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Nico on October 22, 2003, 08:56:35 am: make it so you can use 4 1024 maps.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 22, 2003, 02:10:19 pm: i have it now so that you can use as many maps as the model requires. once i figure out this fred stuff i should have it uploaded.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 22, 2003, 02:33:01 pm: Woot! I'll remember it's Open GL this time ;)

Flipside :D

Heres a crazy thought, if you could make the skybox a modder specified pof, you could make all sorts of wierd effects, Black holes dissapearing into the distance, for example, by placing a 'spike' on the sphere, as long as it is geometric and all the faces are pointing inwards, it would allow for the most flexibility, and some really whacky backgrounds ;)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: mikhael on October 22, 2003, 03:29:43 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
Woot! I'll remember it's Open GL this time ;)

Flipside :D

Heres a crazy thought, if you could make the skybox a modder specified pof, you could make all sorts of wierd effects, Black holes dissapearing into the distance, for example, by placing a 'spike' on the sphere, as long as it is geometric and all the faces are pointing inwards, it would allow for the most flexibility, and some really whacky^H^H^H^H^H^Htacky backgrounds ;)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 22, 2003, 03:41:10 pm: LOL Sometimes yes, experimentation is yet another mother of innovation :D

Flipside :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Lightspeed on October 23, 2003, 08:45:25 am: make it use 6 bitmaps (one per direction), that should keep texture sizes down to what most cards can handle without decreasing the quality of the background images.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 08:57:38 am: im letting the modeler decide how many and what size bitmaps to use. its easier that way. all i need to do at this point in time is change one line and test if everything works as planned (which it should)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 02:37:51 pm: ok i've uploaded this stuff. its up to the modder to create a background pof and accompanying textures.

some ideas to do:
use animating textures for pulsars
make halos or something around the sun, i can't really describe it
random comets

the new pof is the spherec.pof with different textures that flipside supplied. to enable this, you need to go into the background editor and type in the filename of the background pof
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 23, 2003, 03:00:16 pm: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
ok i've uploaded this stuff. its up to the modder to create a background pof and accompanying textures.

some ideas to do:
use animating textures for pulsars
make halos or something around the sun, i can't really describe it
random comets

the new pof is the spherec.pof with different textures that flipside supplied. to enable this, you need to go into the background editor and type in the filename of the background pof

Sorry, don't quite understand how to enable this. The FRED version is from August 30th, and has nothing of the sort in the background editor.:nervous:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 03:09:44 pm: it is? aw crap, must have not zipped it

it was there: you sure its not the inferno version?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 23, 2003, 04:06:56 pm: *redownloads*

Well what do you know, it's there. Sweet...:)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 23, 2003, 05:57:28 pm: Thanks Phreak, having a slight problem with this build of Fred though, hitting CTRL + LeftClick doesn't seem to want to add a ship to the scene :( Oh yes, and drag select doesn't seem to want to work either?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 06:10:19 pm: odd. i replicated it. to fix it, close out of editor windows by clicking the close window "X" instead of hitting enter or something
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Post by: Flipside on October 23, 2003, 06:13:38 pm: I'll try that, but it wouldn't let me add new ships from the start :( I've also, I'm sorry to say, got a problem when loading starry.pof, despite the fact it loads fine in model view, and looks rather nice ;7
This may be a corrupt download though, I'll try it again, and see if that fixes the model problem :)

Flipside :D

Sorry, No luck, the error message is :-

Error: Can't open file
File:C:\fs2_open\code\Model\ModelRead.cpp
Line: 1419

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
fs2_open_r.exe 004d0acc()
fs2_open_r.exe 00424dff()
fs2_open_r.exe 00422a77()
fs2_open_r.exe 00401d3e()
fs2_open_r.exe 004021c4()
fs2_open_r.exe 00407a51()
fs2_open_r.exe 004d659b()
fs2_open_r.exe 00406adf()
fs2_open_r.exe 004d688e()
fs2_open_r.exe 00409105()
fs2_open_r.exe 00409179()
fs2_open_r.exe 0060bd3e()
kernel32.dll 77e814c7()
------------------------------------------------------------------

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 06:17:07 pm: i'm assuming you read the instructions :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 23, 2003, 06:22:26 pm: LOL Yes, all unzipped to correct directories, and the texture went into maps as well, just in case ;)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 06:26:32 pm: heh. you forgot the ".pof" extension on the model filename
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 23, 2003, 06:33:46 pm: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
heh. you forgot the ".pof" extension on the model filename

Yeah, figured that out the hard way. 'Course when it said it was missing not I figured I needed the extension.:D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 23, 2003, 06:34:36 pm: i should fix that

edit: i fixed the extension problem and the "unable to add a ship" prob

edit #2: zip updated. have fun
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 24, 2003, 11:53:31 am: LOL It seems 2am testing works about as well as 2am coding ;) I thought of that at work today, I'll check it all out tonight :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Woolie Wool on October 24, 2003, 02:01:35 pm: Whenever I try to load the first mission of Starforce with your EXE, it crashes to desktop with no error message. The Inferno build works, and my table is not large enough to fux0r FS2 up. Any suggestions on making it work?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 24, 2003, 02:29:53 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Woolie Wool
Whenever I try to load the first mission of Starforce with your EXE, it crashes to desktop with no error message. The Inferno build works, and my table is not large enough to fux0r FS2 up. Any suggestions on making it work?

Does it work with the standard fs2 stuff?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 24, 2003, 02:56:05 pm: (http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/bground.jpg)

It works! Groooovy! :D This is DirectX non-HTL version.

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 24, 2003, 03:13:40 pm: ooh looks like I-War2

Where's mik?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Woolie Wool on October 24, 2003, 03:14:39 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Solatar

Does it work with the standard fs2 stuff?

Haven't tried it.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 24, 2003, 04:06:58 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Woolie Wool

Haven't tried it.

Well....try it and see if it's just your MOD or the SCP's fault.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 24, 2003, 04:33:54 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
*snip*

It works! Groooovy! :D This is DirectX non-HTL version.

:eek2:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Woolie Wool on October 24, 2003, 05:03:39 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/bground.jpg

:eek::eek2:

Holy ****!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 24, 2003, 05:26:42 pm: Stop cursing! *smacks woolie* :p

But yes, it is a thing of beauty. :) I may actually try it... If I can find my sound card's driver...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on October 24, 2003, 06:42:23 pm: ...:( I can't get it to work... Is there something special I have to do besides enterring starry.pof in the editor in fred?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Lightspeed on October 24, 2003, 06:42:27 pm: Could you host the .pof you used for the sphere? ;7
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sticks on October 24, 2003, 10:14:47 pm: How's this for a background?

(http://www.muranowak.com/newstars.jpg)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Kamikaze on October 24, 2003, 11:08:26 pm: O_O

I really, really, really need to check this forum more
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 24, 2003, 11:08:34 pm: schweet
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 24, 2003, 11:19:59 pm: ****.............................

:eek2: :eek2: :eek2:
DAM THATS AWESOME!!!

EDIT: Herrs my version

(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ksickafoose/avatars/boxscreen.jpg)

its warped around the edges, and there is a considerable slowdown when the mission opens up, probably cuz Fs2 is rendering all the crap ingame....
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Knight Templar on October 25, 2003, 12:18:20 am: Wow.. this thread is awesome. Really reminds me how bad the canon FS ships are too.. poly wise.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Ulala on October 25, 2003, 02:49:06 pm: Muy bueno. :nod: :yes: :nod:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Deepblue on October 25, 2003, 09:46:44 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Sticks
How's this for a background?

(http://www.muranowak.com/newstars.jpg)

Mind posting the image you used for that?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: StratComm on October 25, 2003, 10:05:54 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Drew
(http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ksickafoose/avatars/boxscreen.jpg)

That has to be a simple cube with a planet modeled in. I can see the corner of the box plain as day.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sticks on October 26, 2003, 12:00:12 am: Star Background (http://www.muranowak.com/starry_flip.zip)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 26, 2003, 01:09:05 pm: Quote
Originally posted by StratComm

That has to be a simple cube with a planet modeled in. I can see the corner of the box plain as day.

ermmmm no.
i just edited the mission "Greyface" to use the skybox. :doubt:
thats the regular backround for the mission + the skybox

EDIT: Sticks's skybox :P, you must be seeing things.
EDIT: that 16 fps is a lower than normal speed i got when running it. it usueally runs alot faster.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 26, 2003, 07:51:48 pm: *bump*
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Ulala on October 27, 2003, 11:48:23 pm: [Crazy addict voice] More... must see..... more..!! [/Crazy addict voice] ;7
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 29, 2003, 09:00:12 am: LOL Heres another hit :)

(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Ast1.jpg)
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Ast2.jpg)

I've made a higher rez Skysphere here, and it has a top/bottom area and a band around the middle for a second bitmap ;)

I'll make available once I have zipped it all up :)

Flipside :D

Here :) Feel free to tinker with the textures, the current ones were kind of rushed ;)

Background POF Zip (http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/Ships/SkyBox2.zip)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 29, 2003, 09:15:54 am: woah. :yes: :yes:

it also looks like we got some more exposure
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 29, 2003, 10:50:55 am: LOL Good :) And once 24 Bit texture support and compressed files for animated background images (Thanks Bobboau) is finished, we may really be able to let things rock with the backgrounds for relatively few polygons :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Darkage on October 29, 2003, 10:54:08 am: Wow! this is realy cool!

Allot better then the old way!:yes:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 29, 2003, 01:43:27 pm: (http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/Astblue.jpg)

Variations on a theme :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 29, 2003, 02:08:53 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Sticks
How's this for a background?

(http://www.muranowak.com/newstars.jpg)

may I suggest to add this to the screenshot page of the hlp site?:)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: J3Vr6 on October 29, 2003, 02:14:48 pm: It's already there I think...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: an0n on October 29, 2003, 02:23:09 pm: Make it accept gif's and/or ani's as backgrounds, then I'll be impressed.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 29, 2003, 02:24:17 pm: it isn't, but it should
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: kasperl on October 29, 2003, 02:36:24 pm: ani backgrounds are already available AFAIK. as for gif, well, read the FAQ.

but ani backgrounds &textures are available, so you could in theory, make this thing with animated textures.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: wEvil on October 29, 2003, 02:53:22 pm: You people have almost convinced me to start working on more ships :p
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on October 29, 2003, 03:23:44 pm: ok but where could i get the exe ?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Goober5000 on October 29, 2003, 04:38:10 pm: See Phreak's signature.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: SKYNET-011 on October 29, 2003, 06:45:24 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Nico

(http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/variouspics/afp03.jpg)

What mod is that from?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 29, 2003, 06:59:10 pm: Quote
Originally posted by an0n
Make it accept gif's and/or ani's as backgrounds, then I'll be impressed.

doesn't it?
it should, if it's useing a pof as the background.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 29, 2003, 07:01:46 pm: Ewwwwwwwwww!! I Wouldn't want to animate an image of the size of a starmap, we are talking 1024 x 1024. Though what Bobboau has already done with being able to use animations for the background animations provides us with lots of possibilities :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Drew on October 29, 2003, 07:15:11 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
I Wouldn't want to animate an image of the size of a starmap, we are talking 1024 x 1024.

depends on how fancy you wanted it to look methinks.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 29, 2003, 07:25:11 pm: just make a sub part of the sky that you want animated
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Styxx on October 29, 2003, 07:29:50 pm: Quote
Originally posted by SKYNET-011
What mod is that from?

Just something Venom did for fun, I think.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 30, 2003, 12:52:48 am: (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/starmap.jpg) (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/starmap.tga)

try me!
WARNING, big file, that pic is a link

based off of images aquired from here (http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Tolwyn on October 30, 2003, 02:18:55 am: Quote
Originally posted by Styxx

Just something Venom did for fun, I think.

ah yes, I remember... is that planetary mission available for download somewhere?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on October 30, 2003, 03:07:31 am: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
woah. :yes: :yes:

it also looks like we got some more exposure

You're welcome. :D

Just added Sticks' background screenshot to the featured pic circulation. You know, you can do this yourselves too, guys. ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Starks on October 30, 2003, 09:51:47 pm: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html

JACKPOT!!!!!!!

Astronomy Picture of the Day ARCHIVES!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Starks on October 30, 2003, 09:55:24 pm: Remnants of Capella... (YAY! I'm finally a Bakha!)

(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/9911/crab_vlt.jpg)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 30, 2003, 10:20:05 pm: flip, it looks like there is some streching going on your two new backgrounds. i'd check the UV maps or something
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 30, 2003, 10:24:42 pm: I like this one better
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0007/ngc2440_hst3_big.jpg)
seems more suited to being a bacground, though not entire bacground like most of the picks here.

and nobody liked my background?:(
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 31, 2003, 04:35:31 am: I like it a lot...always loved star photos:)

I remember I had a shot of this one http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950724.html in higher resolution, but I can't find it:(
(edit: I found this, thought it is probably too small http://www.guidescope.net/galaxies/andromeda.htm?large )
I also remember a couple of nice giant images of cygnus' veil nebula wich were really cool, if I find em I'll post it
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on October 31, 2003, 05:48:40 am: I made some searches, and I found some sites with decent resoultion images :
http://www.koyote.com/users/bobm/astro2.htm
http://www.af9y.com/astro20.htm
http://www.af9y.com/astro40.htm
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/bestof.html and http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/ (high res images)
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/ (high res images)
http://www.eso.org/outreach/gallery/ (high res images)

some of my preferred (althought not all of them are suited to become background images, or at least they may require some work first):
http://www.koyote.com/users/bobm/M42nebulosity.htm (this is wonderful)
http://www.koyote.com/users/bobm/m31.htm and http://www.af9y.com/m31.htm (better image of andromeda)
http://www.af9y.com/rosettew.htm
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/m20castano.jpg
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0042.html

btw remind most of those files are copyrighted, but usually free for non-commercial
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on October 31, 2003, 06:56:08 am: Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
I like this one better
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0007/ngc2440_hst3_big.jpg)
seems more suited to being a bacground, though not entire bacground like most of the picks here.

That is seriously pretty...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: ZylonBane on October 31, 2003, 03:11:31 pm: Holy twilite zone-- that's my current wallpaper.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Ashrak on October 31, 2003, 03:54:49 pm: you should get some greg martin style stuff into the game :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 31, 2003, 04:20:23 pm: go ahead. here's the limit of my drawing abilities

http://www.swooh.com/peon/phreak/pain.jpg

uh... what's Mr. Martin's webpage?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Solatar on October 31, 2003, 04:23:11 pm: http://www.artofgregmartin.com/
:D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on October 31, 2003, 04:25:44 pm: that guy is beyond human. thanks for the link
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on October 31, 2003, 04:32:00 pm: It's not so much your images Bobb, it's the way the Bitmaps are used, they are mirrored on both hemispheres, so having the same galaxy above and below you would look a bit odd. That, however is a beautiful picture and should certainly be made available as the first full-colour background decoration ;) One question Bobb, would your Shockwave.pof be able to use multiple textures as well?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on October 31, 2003, 09:12:21 pm: yeah, it should, if it doesn't there's a problem, it's just like any other POF
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Kazan on November 01, 2003, 01:48:41 am: Ok this affect kicks arse
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on November 01, 2003, 04:07:59 am: Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
that guy is beyond human. thanks for the link

Don't forget copyright... :sigh:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: kasperl on November 01, 2003, 05:05:18 am: ask him, you could perhaps p1mp his site/name in the exe somehwere.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on November 01, 2003, 09:43:03 am: Quote
Originally posted by Setekh

Don't forget copyright... :sigh:

i wasn't even going to do anything with it :nod:. the guy is just plain .... uh i cant descibe his sweetness
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 01, 2003, 11:55:19 am: Is there a version of this that supports .JPG yet Phreak? I've made a new one, and I think I've fixed the stretching problem, it's just a matter of tiling the central band image, but it's using Bobb's image and a planetary nebula, and it just looks mad when I convert it to 256 colour :(

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Lightspeed on November 01, 2003, 02:09:59 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
Is there a version of this that supports .JPG yet Phreak? I've made a new one, and I think I've fixed the stretching problem, it's just a matter of tiling the central band image, but it's using Bobb's image and a planetary nebula, and it just looks mad when I convert it to 256 colour :(

Flipside :D

yes. use the new 32bit build. It also supports sky boxes :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 01, 2003, 02:25:12 pm: Oh yes, so it does ;) .....

(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/NewSky1.jpg)
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/NewSky2.jpg)

Hmmmm.... I think the tiling is more or less fixed, just do a little bit more bugtesting and put this one up for d/l :)

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on November 01, 2003, 02:28:08 pm: someone p1mp those at a FL board
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 01, 2003, 02:34:53 pm: Jesus H Christ...

FS2 is on a roll baby!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on November 01, 2003, 02:46:23 pm: someone should try this one too, if you can avoid the tileing prob:)
(http://www.koyote.com/users/bobm/bgsM42Combine27Final.JPG)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 01, 2003, 02:49:42 pm: I'll look into it Karma, that way may need the Skybox to be mapped a little differently, but I'll see if it can be done ;) The graininess of the picture may be a problem too :(

Ok, the tiling works, the only problem at the moment is there is a slight contrast difference where I have merged the telescope images with the starry background, I'll remake the JPG's and post them at some point this evening :)

Flipside :D

Edit : This may take longer than I thought, the nebula images continue off of the edge of the Bitmap, making for sudden drop-offs between textures.....
Gonna have to start learner how to create my own nebula ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on November 01, 2003, 05:59:24 pm: Quote
Originally posted by KARMA
http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/m20castano.jpg ...

btw remind most of those files are copyrighted, but usually free for non-commercial

Does anyone else see the Shivan in the cloud? :p

And they copyrighted the universe? :wtf: :wtf:
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 01, 2003, 06:26:32 pm: Just a thought, but wouldn't this leave both the current Freespace stars and Background decoration images obsolete? I mean, if someone wanted to have an animated image on the sky, as has already been mentioned, you could just change the material of a few polys on the Skybox and do it that way?
How much CPU time would it save if there were an option to turn of stars completely in Fred for a particular mission? You could do the same with background decoration, since it would now mostly be useful for animated images for those who didn't want to start playing around with the sky models?

Flipside :D

Edit : LOL and yes, I see he little devil ;) They're coming!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on November 01, 2003, 06:49:01 pm: it shouldn't be that hard. just have fred set Num_stars to 0 if there is a skybox
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 01, 2003, 07:04:17 pm: Can Fred do that? I thought it bottomed out at 250 or something?

Flipside :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: phreak on November 01, 2003, 08:03:31 pm: the slider bottoms out at 500, but its probably trival to have it go down to zero
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on November 01, 2003, 10:48:03 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
Oh yes, so it does ;) .....

(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/NewSky1.jpg)

Into the featured pic cycle with you. :)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Sandwich on November 02, 2003, 01:08:19 am: For test purposes, can someone try a BG with true single-pixel stars and post a screenshot? I wanna see how big they appear to be in-game.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on November 02, 2003, 05:04:16 am: Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich

And they copyrighted the universe? :wtf: :wtf:

no, they just copyrighted the tools to view the universe:p

about that background, I should be able in few minutes with photoshop (as long as I find a star background that fit the one of the image) to prepare the image so that it could be tiled. This would be necessary even if you don't want to repeat it. About the tileing, I may be missing some parts of the thread, but can't you simply use different images for the two emispheres (if one single image for the whole sphere is too blurry)?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 05:33:56 am: ok could someone explain what i must do ?
I WANNA TEST IT ;7
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 08:56:33 am: *bump* hey c'mon i want try it too :(
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 09:01:04 am: He's right, it looks fantastic but I have no idea how to play with it myself!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 02, 2003, 09:01:46 am: LOL Well, you need to download the latest .exe, the one from the 32Bit colour thread works well, so does Bobb's new missile trail build :)

The POF that comes with it requires one bitmap, any size up to the limits of your graphics card, just use Modelview to change the texture name. Oh yes, and read earlier for how to activate the backgrounds in Fred.

One last thing, remember you can use .JPG files with the new build, but you need -32Bit -t32 in the command line :)

Flipside :D

I'm currently trying to create a skysphere that uses 3 Bitmaps, but having some scaling problems, I might have to use just two :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 09:07:31 am: it isen't an pof in the zip :(
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 09:16:01 am: http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/Ships/SkyBox2.zip

I think that's it... but do we have to add it to the ships.tbl and such? Explain for my stupidity! ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 09:17:49 am: ok thx i will try it ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 09:32:17 am: Well, my curiosity compensated for my lack of understanding. I got it working.

Lets assume you have the latest build from Phreaks signiture.

Take the zip link I posted above and place the files in the /data/models directory.

Now open the FSO version of FRED2 and create a mission (or load another one and remove all its backgrounds). In the backgrounds selection box you'll notice a field at the bottom right. Into that enter the name of the model file you just placed in the /data/models directory (omit the .POF extension - this is added automatically).

Save the mission when you're done with it.

Open and play!

And a great job to all who worked on this, it looks fantastic!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 09:44:38 am: How cool is this?!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 10:21:12 am: the bg looks **** but now take my 4 awesome screenshots

here is number 1.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 10:21:57 am: here number 2
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 10:22:29 am: now the 3th.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 10:23:14 am: and the final one ;)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 10:33:53 am: Someone really needs a FSO catagory of screenshots!
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 11:17:57 am: Does anyone have a high-poly sphere with only one map on the inside? The one in the link I downloaded is much more jagged (and therefore won't look as good I imagine...)
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: FreeTerran on November 02, 2003, 11:23:18 am: make for the second texture an green pcx 256 colors file i think this will work
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Fineus on November 02, 2003, 11:47:31 am: It didn't :(
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Taristin on November 02, 2003, 11:47:39 am: I made one with 400 polies, but the mapping is horrible. I can't get a decent UV map on it...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on November 02, 2003, 12:27:39 pm: Bu I don't think you need an ultradetailed sphere, or am I wrong?
btw for the screenshots it seem that a single 1024x1024 map isn't enough to cover all the background sphere, and probably even 2 maps aren't enough, with images of the complexity of star photos you risk to see odd grain effects, as flipside said.
you should try with 4 or even 8 maps in my opinion, lithunwrap can help a lot to unwrap the sphere, and probably the best solution would be to have one (or two) star photo covering a relatively small portion of the screen, with a tileable starfield background covering all the other areas.
This could require some work, in order to don't see the borders of the star photos
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: StratComm on November 02, 2003, 12:44:37 pm: ugh, please no tilable backgrounds... I think having the original starmap there still and having that shine through is a much better alternative to that.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 02, 2003, 01:19:54 pm: The problem comes when it gets to scaling all the Bitmaps. It's just a question of getting all the scaling sorted out so that the stars look the same size on every texture, easier said than done, I'm not very up on this kind of UV Mapping, Box or Planar is no good unless you are dividing your sky up into bands, and then you come across the scale problem :( So It's circular mapping, which tends to stretch the textures in unpleasant ways :(

Any advice anyone?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: an0n on November 02, 2003, 01:27:47 pm: Am I the only one who thought "Event Horizon" when looking at FT's shots?
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: StratComm on November 02, 2003, 01:28:23 pm: The best skybox for simply mapping a picture to is inherently a cube. That way you just need 6 maps of equal scale and everything lines up fine. However, with a cube, unless your textures are done VERY well, you will run in to things like being able to see the corners (the map I called out for being a box really wasn't, but you can see the line across which the map was mirrored clear as day) and some scaling issues related to distance. The sphere option fixes that problem, but opens a new can of worms in the mapping, as you can't really get a clean spherical map out of a normal picture.
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Bobboau on November 02, 2003, 01:44:22 pm: this sort of makes environment mapping usefull now, I'm going to look into setting up cubic environment mapping
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on November 02, 2003, 03:04:16 pm: the only problem with circular uvmaps may be at the two poles.
personally I would use it if I'd have to use a single texture
you may want to use it even if you use a tiled starfield as background, before applying an image over a specific area.
The specific area could be mapped with planar (expecially if small or at the poles) or using a portion of the same circular uvmap.
The scaling problem should be not too hard to avoid if you use lithunwrap:
to set-up the tileing in Lith you just have to make the uvmap bigger than the map, the problem is to decide how much bigger.
If I have, example, a starfield of 400x300, and the stars are at the same scale of a 800x600 photo that I'll use for a specific area, the uvspace for the tileing should be (proportionally to an equivalent area) double than the space used by the 8x600 image.
And to be sure of the result, you can use the preview window and adjust the UVs until you obtain the desired result.
There is a strategy that you may find very useful:
create a new image, fill with white, draw circles filled with different colors at the 4 verts of the image, and one in the center; and maybe draw the 2 diagonals to connect the 4 verts.
Then you can use this test map to verify that you are uvmapping correctly (the colored circles must be not distorted and in the desired position).
In my example, I could create a 8x600 test image and then a second 4x300 image with the circles of the same size of the one before. If my mapping will be correct, the coloured circles will all be of the same size, then I'll have to just substitute the test maps with the real ones
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Flipside on November 02, 2003, 04:33:57 pm: Hmmmm... Then possibly the best way to go with the new 32 Bit textures is this....

The FS2 Star system would be used for your one pixel stars, I heard there was some work underway for grouping/colouring/Depthing them?
The background POF would be used for some special effects, nebulaic glow, etc.
The background decorations would be used for more special effects (including possibly animated ones), galaxies, distant planets etc.

This way would mean you would not have to worry about stretching textures with the stars, the background could be 'in the style of but not replicating' Homeworld 2, as in they add ambience to the scene, but there are practically no stars in them.

That would make the best use of each background feature?

Flipside :D
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Grug on November 05, 2003, 05:39:20 am: Don't spose some1 could put a tut or an explaination on how to do this? It would come in handy when trying to implement Homeworld style backgrounds...
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: KARMA on November 05, 2003, 05:45:10 am: still have to try, so I may be wrong, but...
check phreak's siggy and download his version of fso
an example of background is already there
substitute it with your own
launch the game enabled for 32bit and play a mission with this background enabled
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Setekh on November 05, 2003, 05:55:53 am: Quote
Originally posted by Kalfireth
Someone really needs a FSO catagory of screenshots!

:nervous:

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~freespace/hlp/category_show.php?cat=15
Title: ooooh pretty colors -- Fairly large JPG
Post by: Grug on November 05, 2003, 06:17:34 am: ta thanx for the quick help
:D