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FreeSpace Releases => Asset Releases => Topic started by: fightermedic on July 24, 2014, 04:02:56 pm

Title: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on July 24, 2014, 04:02:56 pm
Title says it all, in this thread I'm going to show the skyboxes I've created

preview of all the skyboxes: (select skyboy at the upper right corner)
https://dev.tproxy.de/fs2/skyboxes/

download links for the first solar system + all those from homeworld2:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/i8ltyw82514qjg8/skyboxes.part1.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gp716rzh4q4527k/skyboxes.part2.rar

assados solar system download (roughly 20 high resolution skyboxes, all in the same solar system)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ogiygg1cls2pfc5/assados.rar


as usual if you want to use any of my work, you have every right to change it in any way you like, and redistribute it wholly or parts of it as you wish (that is of course not true for the stuff from homeworld  :shaking: )
furthermore there is no need for credit of any form, just take whatever you need
if somebody has need for any of the development files, like blender files or uncompressend and higher resolution textures, just give me a call and they'll be yours


remember: because of P3D limitations these previews use very small 1k*1k .jpgs as textures, the real ones use 8k*4k and look much better, this is just a preview
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Axem on July 24, 2014, 05:11:30 pm
Glorious.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Spoon on July 24, 2014, 05:13:23 pm
Very noice  :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: swashmebuckle on July 24, 2014, 05:24:10 pm
So want! :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Colonol Dekker on July 24, 2014, 05:59:06 pm
Revolutionary way to show em off :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Nyctaeus on July 24, 2014, 06:09:46 pm
I sense something...

It's awesomeness :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Droid803 on July 24, 2014, 07:20:52 pm
luuks guud
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: IronBeer on July 26, 2014, 08:58:35 pm
Hot damn. P3d *is* a nice touch for showing those off.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on July 29, 2014, 02:50:57 pm
i'm designing a whole solar system (in fact i already have) and will now render something like 15 skyboxes in different locations in the system
this will be a LOT of rendering  :shaking:
damn blender and it's missing capability to render volumes on gpu :(
i need to find a better way to render the nebulae
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Ulala on July 30, 2014, 11:59:35 am
These look awesome!
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Lorric on August 04, 2014, 10:02:58 am
Oh wow, these are just gorgeous. I especially like the second one. Managed to miss this thread, so credit to Axem for putting it in his newsletter. :)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: coffeesoft on August 04, 2014, 12:26:03 pm
Really useful and beautiful, many thanks  :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 04, 2014, 04:08:28 pm
thanks for all the praise, and especially to Axem for putting it in the newsletter :)
got myself a new 4GB memory module today, so my renders will be better in the future, yay!
(seriously, blender needs 8GB of RAM + 32GB of virtal memory for compositing 4k*8k images? WTF?? )
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: The Dagger on August 04, 2014, 06:26:38 pm
Wow, these are great! I especially like the ones with the clouds, they seam so real. The 3rd one looks perfect for that final mission against the Aesdherians in ASW1, so grim.
The only thing that comes a bit off to me are those yellow glows in the red giant skybox... Can you turn them down a bit maybe? Or make them more orange? I feel the bright-yellow red contrast is a bit too intense.
And kudos for presentation. Your way of showing the skybox through p3d is awesome.  :yes:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: WorldsDawn on August 05, 2014, 09:29:58 pm
*Drools*

Sooo beautiful :O
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: mjn.mixael on August 13, 2014, 03:45:27 pm
Dude, you were totally highlighted by P3D on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/p3d_in/statuses/499649343457349634)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 13, 2014, 04:10:25 pm
Dude, you were totally highlighted by P3D on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/p3d_in/statuses/499649343457349634)
what?
i feel a little bit cool right now
*erm*
this is pretty awesome
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 18, 2014, 11:39:00 am
i've rendered the first of the set of skyboxes in the solar system that i am designing in full quality
(http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b590/lolaldanee/screen0021_zps9b0d84be.png~original)
i'm not really satisfied with the result, looks a bit too artifitial, and i need to render it in even higher quality, the planets are showing a lot of pixelasation
that doesn't show on this low resolution, but in full quality the pixels are clearly visible  :banghead:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: procdrone on August 18, 2014, 12:05:52 pm
...
Quote
i'm not really satisfied with the result, looks a bit too artifitial

Looks great in my opinion. (But maybe i haven't seen that in this high-res so dunno, very good work anyway.)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 18, 2014, 12:24:34 pm
i don't now, it's just looking a bit too much like a render and not enough like the real deal
post processing helps a bit though, so it's actually looking better ingame than in blender
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 19, 2014, 03:07:06 pm
rerendered with twice as many samples!
last p3d updated, i think it looks a bit better now - although the difference is probably not visible in this preview
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 21, 2014, 01:05:35 pm
i'm now really in the process of rendering all the various locations in the system
here's moaaaaaar
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Rodo on August 21, 2014, 05:20:29 pm
wow! cool stuff around here. I lost this thread completely!
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 22, 2014, 04:08:55 am
thank's Rodo :)
and here's the next 2, slowly grinding away at them
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: peterc10 on August 22, 2014, 07:39:54 am
Great work, keep it up! :)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Herra Tohtori on August 22, 2014, 08:24:52 am
This topic is relevant to my interests and you are doing good work. :yes:

thanks for all the praise, and especially to Axem for putting it in the newsletter :)
got myself a new 4GB memory module today, so my renders will be better in the future, yay!
(seriously, blender needs 8GB of RAM + 32GB of virtal memory for compositing 4k*8k images? WTF?? )

Sounds about right, big images take a lot of memory and when you run out of RAM the paging to HDD will slow down process quite a bit. This happens especially if your Blender scene uses layers and compositing in render settings, which pretty quickly causes cumulative memory use at high resolutions and high anti-aliasing settings... and especially if you use high-resolution textures for the render scene itself.

This is one of the reasons I would advocate (and why mods like Blue Planet) use cubical skyboxes instead of spherical textures.

I don't know what workflow you are using, but assuming you have your scene set up in Blender, you can always render it in cubic format as well as spherical. The amount of work to set up the skybox is a bit higher, and I'm not sure if the cube can be used in p3d to show them off quite so conveniently, but the benefits are significant.

The best thing is that you don't need to deal with monumental individual files. Six files sized 2048² will offer about the same visual quality as a single 8192x4096 texture, while using 25% less memory in total - and I think you'll note that six 2048² files are probably faster to render than a single large render, because the individual renders will not be hampered so badly by the page file use.

Another major benefit is that a 8192x4096 sized texture requires a video card that supports at least 8192² texture size, while a cubic skybox of same quality can be rendered on a video card that supports meager 2048² texture resolution - which is practically all of them by now.

The added benefit is that you can also render a cubic skybox at 4096² resolution per side, which will provide effective resolution comparable to using a single 16384x8192 spherical texture... without the need to render such a massive texture (although you may still need to use textures of such resolution FOR rendering). I'm sure you can appreciate the possibilities... :p


But keep up the good work, any spherical texture you make can be pretty easily converted to cubic format any time someone would like to use them in game.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 22, 2014, 08:45:32 am
Thanks for the feedback Herra, i've played around with all the different ways to render quite a bit, and ended up using single spherical equirectangular textures because that's what blender renders for 360° camera options, and i have not been smart enough to bake the scene to a cube with cycles at first, so i had to refer to camera rendering
by now i know that all you have to do is to set up a cube with a 100% glossy material and bake glossy maps, but i'm sticking with what i've got now ;) especially since it allows for better post processing in gimp if you don't have to worry for so many edges
also, one problem i've always had with textures on cubes is this: if you have a lot of lines in the texture that go over an edge at a 90° angle, then you very clearly can see the edge, as all the lines appear to have a kink

the render process is rather slow since i'm using billions of polygons in this scene, i think there are something like 300k high resolution asteroids alone - memory consumption is quite ok for rendering in fact, but the compositing is abysimal in that regard
and honestly, i don't care for older graphic cards at this point, even my seven year old radeon that i replaced 2 months back could load 8k textures, so there's that...

here's the next one, quite hot so near to the sun:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Herra Tohtori on August 22, 2014, 11:17:13 am
Thanks for the feedback Herra, i've played around with all the different ways to render quite a bit, and ended up using single spherical equirectangular textures because that's what blender renders for 360° camera options, and i have not been smart enough to bake the scene to a cube with cycles at first, so i had to refer to camera rendering

I've always just used camera rendering - six different shots with 90 degree FOV - and naming the renders appropriately for the mapping of the skybox.

I think you can also render an envmap from blender, and that would be directly compatible with FreeSpaceFreak's GIMP script (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67899.msg1551361#msg1551361) that outputs properly aligned and positioned textures for the seamless skybox (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67899.0) which was made specifically for FSO purposes. But I see you've posted in that thread so if you have other reasons for your workflow, I'm not judging.  :)

Quote
by now i know that all you have to do is to set up a cube with a 100% glossy material and bake glossy maps, but i'm sticking with what i've got now ;) especially since it allows for better post processing in gimp if you don't have to worry for so many edges

Well, yeah, with cube maps you would need to take care not to edit edges directly, but with spherical maps you have to avoid editing the polar regions because you end up creating visible distortions quite easily.

Quote
also, one problem i've always had with textures on cubes is this: if you have a lot of lines in the texture that go over an edge at a 90° angle, then you very clearly can see the edge, as all the lines appear to have a kink

Only if those edges come from post-processing. I prefer to do all stuff bigger than one side of the cube in Blender, and not mess with that in the ready renders. What I do in GIMP is colour/levels editing mostly, and that's uniform across the surface so it causes no distortions.

Quote
the render process is rather slow since i'm using billions of polygons in this scene, i think there are something like 300k high resolution asteroids alone - memory consumption is quite ok for rendering in fact, but the compositing is abysimal in that regard
and honestly, i don't care for older graphic cards at this point, even my seven year old radeon that i replaced 2 months back could load 8k textures, so there's that...


Yeah, if you have good reasons for doing things the way you do - by all means keep doing what you're doing. I just wanted to make sure you know the options available for you.

And, also, since you're making a spherical map (or equirectangular cylindrical as the exact definition goes), your skyboxen would be easily converted to cubic form as well - whoever wants to do it would just need to import your skybox into blender, and render the scene with no lighting onto six cube textures.


Keep up the nice work!
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Lorric on August 22, 2014, 11:41:46 am
Just beautiful.

And I love how they're actually going to be a solar system, they're not just by themselves.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 22, 2014, 03:27:06 pm
it seems with the very recent release of CUDA 6.5 by Nvidia, it will soon be possible to render volumes on GPU in blender, this will make Nebulae so much cooler without having to resort to super slow CPU rendering! YAY!

also:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 27, 2014, 03:47:29 am
this one took 22 hours to render, with only 500 samples
ouch
volumetrics are not fun
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Boomer20 on August 27, 2014, 03:54:33 am
Your work is amazing fightermedic
I swear If there's something I'm interested in to customise my mod, I just need to find one of your threads and bam, you done some really good quality stuff.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 27, 2014, 01:36:00 pm
the last 2 backrounds
solar system complete!
yay!
i will upload all the skyboxes sometime during the nex days
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on August 28, 2014, 11:25:55 am
download links for all the skyboxes in this thread + all those from homeworld2:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/i8ltyw82514qjg8/skyboxes.part1.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/download/gp716rzh4q4527k/skyboxes.part2.rar
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Rheyah on August 28, 2014, 11:30:53 am
You are an amazing creature, Mr Medicfighter.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on January 13, 2015, 03:34:19 pm
yo folks, news:
i'm very much in the process of rendering all the boxes for the 2nd star system:
here is some glimpse at the first bunch that is already finished:

too bad the image resolution is so low at p3d for free accs :/
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: wookieejedi on January 13, 2015, 06:35:11 pm
So ridiculously awesome!!
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: ngld on February 08, 2015, 01:23:21 pm
I had some fun with JavaScript and WebGL...
Now you can preview these skyboxes in their full quality: https://dev.tproxy.de/fs2/skyboxes/
Just select the skybox in the upper-right dropdown menu. You can click and drag to look around and scroll to zoom.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Spoon on February 08, 2015, 02:11:26 pm
Axem reminded me these existed, thanks to that cool link of ngld.
These skyboxes look great, gj fightermedic!

Can I use some these? (Though I'd probably cut down those 8192x4096 png maps down to size a bit)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on February 10, 2015, 08:59:36 am
I had some fun with JavaScript and WebGL...
Now you can preview these skyboxes in their full quality: https://dev.tproxy.de/fs2/skyboxes/
Just select the skybox in the upper-right dropdown menu. You can click and drag to look around and scroll to zoom.

woah, awesome dude!
gonna include the link in the first post

@Spoon
you can use and change them however you want, as is actually stated in the OP ;) use those imported from homeworld at your own peril, however ;)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on July 01, 2015, 05:13:58 am
I am happy to present the download link for the Assados solar system, roughly 20 skyboxes all in the same solar system, at different positions, some of which are previewed above :)
happy downloading:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ogiygg1cls2pfc5/assados.rar
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: niffiwan on July 01, 2015, 04:27:38 pm
Awesome work & thanks for the release :)
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: procdrone on July 01, 2015, 06:03:17 pm
Im going to exploit them skyboxes without any mercy!

Love ya, medicfighter!
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: ngld on July 02, 2015, 05:41:41 pm
Nice! I've added the new skyboxes to the preview link.
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on July 03, 2015, 03:29:42 pm
Nice! I've added the new skyboxes to the preview link.
awesome! thanks a lot
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: Lt. Spanks on July 21, 2015, 03:23:44 pm
 :nod:
I want more
 :nod:
Title: Re: Skyboxes
Post by: fightermedic on July 22, 2015, 06:32:50 am
sure! soon (in one or two years  :shaking:)