Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Fury on August 10, 2009, 07:01:29 am
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Has anyone made a good looking starfield skybox that shows stars as seen from Sol?
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I have one with the milky way that uses the dual-layered nebula skybox made by HT.
I think ShadowGorrath made it - ask him.
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They have it, but obviously not using it.
And it wasn't me alone that made it.
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Here.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003572/
8192x4096 would probably be sufficient resolution for a single spherical texture. This one has a 16384x8192 resolution texture available. :lol:
You will want a simple spherical skybox for these ones.
Or, if you want to preserve compatibility with older computers (with maximum 2048^2 texture size), you need to do the following:
-map the texture into sphere in 3d modeling program
-take 90 degree field of view images into all cardinal directions (up, down, front, rear, left, right) and use the traditional skybox approach with 6x2048^2 texture size.
Which ever approach you choose to use, this is certainly possible.
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I'm going to suggest using Celestia as a base.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html
Free program, AND it's open source! If you crank up the starfield to the desired level, manage to merge the images from each direction, etc., etc., you should have the ability to generate fairly realistic "skyboxes" for most of the visible regions we're aware of in the Milky Way galaxy. Consequentially, this should also work well with the FS universe.
After you've used the said "base" to generate the skybox, you can apply various filters to make it visually appealing, etc.
-Thaeris
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This one has a 16384x8192 resolution texture available. :lol:
:eek2:
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Ooo, cool. It's slightly higher res!
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I have one with the milky way that uses the dual-layered nebula skybox made by HT.
Could we see this skybox?
They have it, but obviously not using it.
If we have it, I've never seen it. It's possible it was not used for a reason, but either way I'd like to see it.
Edit: Nevermind. Darius says the skybox was horribly pixellated and wasn't on-par with the mediavps starfield or better.
blah
If we had someone on the staff who can remap pofs, I wouldn't be asking specifically for a skybox. :D
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Bump.
(http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/928/solstarfield2.png)
:p
(It's not ready yet.)
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:jaw:
Herra.
Have my children.
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NICE!
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cool! hey maybe you can write a wiki entry on how to make a good skybox... later on, of course ^^
I'd like to give it a shot myself sometime.
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*shiv wants!
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A little request here.
I need a skybox. I mean, just a model. Specifically I need an actual box-shaped model with each side having it's own texture (front, rear, left, right, top and bottom respectively) uvmapped onto it. I have the textures themselves pretty much ready, I just need a POF file to get them in FS2_Open.
Thanks in advance already. :)
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Here you are Herra.
[attachment deleted by Tolwyn]
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And here's a spherical one, using a map based on the Nasa's 8192x4096 version. Note that the .dds size is ~43Mb. Obviously someone who can texture better than me can do much better.
(http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/9504/sbtest.jpg)
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=a4313875899462c7af924764f9977b1de04e75f6e8ebb871
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Here you are Herra.
Thanks, but the cube is mirrored... I can probably work with it but it would be significantly easier to have it so that the faces would be non-mirrored when viewed from the inside.
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Give me 10'
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Here! :)
[attachment deleted by Tolwyn]
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Mirrored (http://game-warden.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=104) :D
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Jumped the gun a bit there... it's pretty much finished now though.
Upper resolution for insane people goes to 6x4096^2 textures. Which is good down to about -fov 0.35 or so. I'll still need to get feedback from some people to adjust the milky way's level of visibility to what they want, and I'll also make a slightly more realistic bare eye view version, but here are some tasters from the raw version:
(http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/4826/orionstarfield2.png)
(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/193/otava.png)
(http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7834/tauruspleiades.png)
Hang tight...
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Masterfully done, Herra. You've really got making skyboxes down to an artform. :)
I'm definitely partial to the middle version, but the bottom visibility one works as well.
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...aaand here's a standard resolution version with six 2048^2 resolution textures.
Sol Skybox 2048 DDS (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?znyiz3wrzyr)
Includes three versions: FANTASTIC, RAW and REALISTIC. Basically, RAW is the direct renders downscaled to half the resolution, FANTASTIC has the colour levels edited so that the milky way is rather visible, and REALISTIC is an approximation on how you would actually be seeing stuff with bare eyes - at least brightness-wise. Size-wise the big stars are a bit too large but I don't really know how to avoid that since they are like that on the source. Nevertheless the starfield works quite well.
The RAW version also has my old double-layered skybox on there with "invisible" on the tiled layer and 8192x4096 resolution variant of the starfield on the spherically mapped section - just for comparison on how it works compared to the actual box-shaped skybox.
Also, credit where it is due...
Source textures courtesy of:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
box model courtesy of:
peterv
My thanks for such speedy help. Without it, this would still be unavailable.
Insanity variant (with 6x4096 textures :nervous:) will be available soon.
EDIT: It's here.
Insanity Variant - Sol Skybox 4096 DDS (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?f1yjq2gqmgt)
Directed for insane customers with insane quality requirements. Works on both normal and narrow fields of view since the textures have one mip map which kicks in in case you want to use default or thereabouts field of view values, but the higher resolution really starts to work on narrow field of view values such as -fov 0.35.
Use with care, these ones are rather... big. :shaking:
@Darius - the images three are all from the same sky box, just different regions of the space. :drevil:
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Looks awesome :yes:
Three Hurrahs for Herra Tohtori
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My God Herra, its full of stars.
Simply awesome skybox. :cool:
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Perfect Herra, just PERFECT :yes: :yes: :yes:
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Awesome, much thanks Herra. :)
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Oh my God, Herra - you have just won the internets
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any screenshots? PLEASE?!?
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Eh, just rename the pof to StarField.pof and put it in data\models and maps to data\maps and you have just replaced mediavps starfield. Then oggle at the sight in-game.
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:bump:
Sorry for the necro. All links are dead and I cannot find them anywhere else. Can someone reupload?
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I too would like these.
Although, for me the links are not specifically dead/broken - the files are just "private" on media fire.
Which is the same effect really, but possibly releasable?
Bh
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Isn't this just the Sol skybox that shipped with BP2? There's even a cinematic up-starred version used in the Fedayeen dreamscape. Extract it from there*.
*I could be totally wrong, but Herra did do that skybox
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Thanks for the heads-up, mediafire likes to do random things occasionally.
I'll probably upload these files to Dropbox too, just to have some redundancy. Mind you, these are pretty old and if I were to re-make them NOW I would do some things differently, but for archival reasons I like to have old things accessible.
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Isn't this just the Sol skybox that shipped with BP2? There's even a cinematic up-starred version used in the Fedayeen dreamscape. Extract it from there*.
*I could be totally wrong, but Herra did do that skybox
AFAIK the WiH skybox is something different. It has more stars and is a cube. The HT's skyboxes which I want are spherical. As for Milky Way panorama from Dreamscape, I think it's coming from Syrk Demo. Rodo was the author if this is the same skybox.
Both of them are cool, but I wanted something darker for my Sol :P.
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AFAIK the WiH skybox is something different. It has more stars and is a cube.
All War in Heaven skyboxen are fundamentally cubes. These are cubes too, and there's three different brightness levels supplied for both 2048 and 4096 resolutions.
However I don't remember if Blue Planet ended up using exactly these textures, or if I made some with increased brightness. It's entirely possible.
The HT's skyboxes which I want are spherical.
I don't think I ever released these in spherical form. If you wanted a spherical skybox, you could just grab the raw file from NASA, apply brightness/contrast/level edit it to your satisfaction, and simply apply it to a sphere and call it a day.
But I would counsel against it. Spherical skyboxen are not as memory efficient as cubic skyboxen.
8192x4096 spherical texture corresponds quality-wise to a cubic skybox made of six 2048² textures.
8192 * 4096 = 33 554 432 pixels
6 * 2048 * 2048 = 25 165 824 pixels
What that means is an arrangement of six 2k textures uses 75% of the memory a single 8192x4096 texture, with practically identical quality.
And if the performance argument fails to convince you, there's also the fact that smaller textures are more accessible by low end hardware. For example, if you have a graphics card that has maximum resolution of 4096², you simply cannot use a spherical 8192x4096 texture because it's just too large. However the graphics card could be perfectly capable of using six 2048² textures...
As for Milky Way panorama from Dreamscape, I think it's coming from Syrk Demo. Rodo was the author if this is the same skybox.
No. The Milky Way in Dreamscape is my work. It uses an edited version of HTSB starfield on the background, but it has an additional galactic plane overlayed with it to make it a bit more unreal. There have been similar skyboxen elsewhere, but that one is mine.
Both of them are cool, but I wanted something darker for my Sol :P.
If you insist on using a spherical skybox, then NASA's Tycho-Hipparcos maps are already in correct format as far as dimensions go. However you probably want to apply some kind of edits to them to get the effect you want - black level, white level and gamma, most likely.
You can also take the cubic skyboxen I have provided here, and edit them to create your own version. It's not like I did much else than project the original texture to the sides of a cube... just remember to credit NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio for the original textures. The POF model for the skybox was provided by peterv.
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Actually there is no difference for me, I can take both spherical or cube skybox. I had no idea who made them so kudos to You for Your great work :yes: . I actually tried to edit Tycho-Hipparcos maps, but all the results was blurry and I wasn't satisfied. Nothing I've made is even comparable to your work. Could You reupload the Realistic version of your Sol Skybox? No matter if spherical or cubic. I dunno which version was used in War in Heaven, but as far as I know BP, I think it was the Fantastic one :P
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...aaand here's a standard resolution version with six 2048^2 resolution textures.
Sol Skybox 2048 DDS (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?znyiz3wrzyr)
Includes three versions: FANTASTIC, RAW and REALISTIC. Basically, RAW is the direct renders downscaled to half the resolution, FANTASTIC has the colour levels edited so that the milky way is rather visible, and REALISTIC is an approximation on how you would actually be seeing stuff with bare eyes - at least brightness-wise. Size-wise the big stars are a bit too large but I don't really know how to avoid that since they are like that on the source. Nevertheless the starfield works quite well.
The RAW version also has my old double-layered skybox on there with "invisible" on the tiled layer and 8192x4096 resolution variant of the starfield on the spherically mapped section - just for comparison on how it works compared to the actual box-shaped skybox.
Also, credit where it is due...
Source textures courtesy of:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
box model courtesy of:
peterv
My thanks for such speedy help. Without it, this would still be unavailable.
Insanity variant (with 6x4096 textures :nervous:) will be available soon.
EDIT: It's here.
Insanity Variant - Sol Skybox 4096 DDS (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?f1yjq2gqmgt)
Directed for insane customers with insane quality requirements. Works on both normal and narrow fields of view since the textures have one mip map which kicks in in case you want to use default or thereabouts field of view values, but the higher resolution really starts to work on narrow field of view values such as -fov 0.35.
Use with care, these ones are rather... big. :shaking:
@Darius - the images three are all from the same sky box, just different regions of the space. :drevil:
I've made the files publicly available, if they're still not working gimme a shout and I'll upload them to dropbox. Cheers.
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Aww, You reuploaded them. I haven't noticed. Thank You so much!
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Aww, You reuploaded them. I haven't noticed. Thank You so much!
I didn't re-upload them, I just had to go to Mediafire and manually set the files to be publicly available after for some reason they had changed to "private". ;)
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oh wow, THANK YOU SIR.
I've finally got rid of those irritating FS star smears.
Now it truly feels like im in deep space.
Much thanks.
BH