[Black Wolf]

Well, Aldos request for background creators has inspired me to try and make a few backgrounds myself, and I've gotten this far on a spiral galaxy



But obviously that's not going to work due to the shape. What I was hoping to find was a way to get rid of the crappy bits around the end and get rid of that horribly sharp circle, without making ittoo sharp. I'm using PSP 7, but might be able to adapt some PS techniques. So, any suggestions?

[Riven]

how about a bit of gaussain blur? does just about anything! I suggest just selecting the edge tho. Great galaxy though, really cool:yes:

[Stryke 9]

Either get something with a particle gen, or get the Universe plugin. Or do pretty much everything by hand. I don't use PSP, and I doubt my Photoshop shortcuts would work for you, so them's your options.

Or make it a much thinner, flatter sunburst with two or four rays, and then swirlie-thing it.

[Star Dragon]

Tooo   Fast.... Can't hang  .. On...



obviously this race has no technolody to speak of cause they can never sit down and BUILD anything!
   

[DragonClaw]

Originally posted by Star Dragon
Tooo   Fast.... Can't hang  .. On...



obviously this race has no technolody to speak of cause they can never sit down and BUILD anything!
   

What?

[Xelion]

I use PS6.1 so assuming you have the tools it might work...

You can either use the Lasso tool to cut out the edges and create the galaxy effect, then you can blur filter on the image or zoom filter to change prespective slightly, you can even use the blur tool.

no other ideas yet...

[Cannikin]

I have no clue how to render anything so this won't be very helpful, but spiral galaxies always have distinct arms protruding from them, rather than just an elipse.

[Black Wolf]

I know. That's the point. I need a way to get rid of the circlyness. Which I have sort of done...maybe. I tried some of the suggestions, didn't get too far, then I sort of started guessing, and came up with this



Which, in case you're interested, was done by flood filling the entire image with black, set on burn, with an opacity of 22%. It's not perfect, but it's a definite improvement over my last two galaxies. What do you think?

[Star Dragon]

Better, though I still get a sense of immense speed from it. Also it occurred to me that it looks like a Galaxy in the beginning stages (all gaseous and nothing formed yet)...

[Stealth]

Don't know why i posted it, just for the hell of it

[Taristin]

I would say talk to Psycho, because he's reeeeal good at it, but alas, he's busy with DoE, the 'Bastonian Too', and some side projects me and him fool with... Keep trying, is all I can say... :-/

[Riven]

wow, looking good. How did you do the galaxy to start with though?

[Sesquipedalian]

That looks good, BlackWolf.  Personally, I've gone over to using actual photographs to make backgrounds.  Editing one well enough produces results like this (screenshot1 and screenshot2) and this (screenshot3)  (Note that these are on angelfire, so right-click, copy and paste the address to get to them.)

[Black Wolf]

Real NASA photos are probably easier, but they sort of look...messy, if you know what I mean. I think it may be the 256 colours, or the fact that they're always stretched. Are those 256x256? You can crank them up to 512x512 and possibly 1024x1024, but that's untested.

As for making it, I mostly used Axion and twirl, to varying degrees, and over and over again. That's probably where the speed is coming from . I got the colours using one of PSPs photo correction tools, Automatic colour balance at about 8000K. The shape was originally Circular, and made oval using various perspective tools when I was satisfied with the overall effect. As mentioned earlier, Burn at 22% got rid of the circular outline.

[Black Wolf]

OK, now this is irritating. I made it, pcxified it and put it in game. Everythings fine in FRED, I load it up in FS2 and bang -



Grey lines? Now I know there are no Grey lines on my picture (I've been over it with the eyedropper tooland everything), and yet here they are...does anyone know why? This is really irritating considering the trouble I had making it look even vaguely acceptable.

[EDIT] Just realized, they're quite faint on the jpeg, but very noticeable in game. You can see them on the jpeg though...

[Ace]

Look at the sides of the second image you posted here at HLP, that has grey lines on the side too.

Just delete the grey spots from the image and it'll work right.

[Darkage]

Grey lines can be fixed by using a brush and paint them black.

But it usualy means that the thing inside the canvas is to big.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Real NASA photos are probably easier, but they sort of look...messy, if you know what I mean. I think it may be the 256 colours, or the fact that they're always stretched. Are those 256x256? You can crank them up to 512x512 and possibly 1024x1024, but that's untested.

They look a bit messy in those shots because of the JPEG compression.  In-game they are absolutely stunning.

471*471 pixels and 451*451

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Ace
Look at the sides of the second image you posted here at HLP, that has grey lines on the side too.

Just delete the grey spots from the image and it'll work right.

I'm a moron. I must have been going over the wrong version or summat. Anyway, all fixed now, and it looks acceptable as far as I'm concerned. Thanks everyone .