[DamoclesX]

Does anybody know of a good way to generate real looking planet textures.

So far the only way I know of is using a photoshop plugin, and I"d like to maby kick it up a notch for the galactica mod

this is the best I have done with that plugin

http://starshattercentral.com/Core/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=displayimage&album=3&pos=4

[aldo_14]

All I can think of is getting ultra high-resolution earth / solar system photos and manipulating them, but I think that would be a pain in the arse to do.....

Maybe if you take that plugin (I presume you're generating a map and then cylindrical  /speherical uv-ing it on, yeah?), buy do it in greyscale or something, then use that as a mask to blend in craters, trees, etc (terrain stuff) taken from said real life planets.  could probably just use hi-res earth images, now I think of it; just need to sneakily recolour 'em.

[CmdKewin]

Well... Are these enough Hi-Res for you?






Look here: http://www.space-graphics.com

[DamoclesX]

Those are good, but, they are off earth:) I can make/find earth planet maps/cloudes and stuff easy enough. the problem is with new planets.

IE the 12 colonys.

[DamoclesX]

for a better idea of what i"m trying for, check the neb/planet pics here, I have no idea how those were done

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/expansions_screens_archive_1.jsp

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I've yet to find a planet map generator that offers decent results. They can act as a base, but to archieve good results you really need to do it by hand.

[Getter Robo G]

Hy guys I DL'ed that 2048 Earth cause I like the detail, but when I tried it in game it looks good BUT you got the black square around it

So I figure ok try copy and pasting the new Earth over the OLD Earth's pcx image and the transparency is already coded... Wrongo... I reduced it to 8bit pcx again but the Earth shows up with the green all around it! It's not transparent anymore??

What is the proceedure for making a planet from scratch or like what I did, use a pre-existing planet image but hot to get it in game? I searched the wiki but no info, just about background editor, nothing about actually MAKING backgrounds...

[aldo_14]

Check the green bg is proper true green (0,255,0), sometimes when you colour reduce an image with lots of other green in it, you end up losing that exact shade

[Kail]

Have you tried LunarCell by flamingpear.com? It's not expensive at all and gives you GREAT results!

[Deepblue]

3d planet maps, not 2d.

[DamoclesX]

Here
I took the time to learn how to do them by hand.

http://members.shaw.ca/DamoclesX/4.jpg


Now onto improving my nebulas!

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Couldn't resist It's an A+ map, nicely detailed

[Kail]

You can make those in LunarCell extremely easily, they also have SolarCell for stars and Glitterato for nebulas and starfields. I got the whole pack of them.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by Kail
You can make those in LunarCell extremely easily, they also have SolarCell for stars and Glitterato for nebulas and starfields. I got the whole pack of them.

Lunarcell should really be used only if you need tens or hundreds of planets with decent amount of time. The problem with all map generators is just that; they look like computer generated. Fractal continents and colors don't look neither realistic nor good. In my opinion, of course

[Kail]

Well, the planet above could just as well have been made using LC, IMO.

[Getter Robo G]

I'll monkey around a bit more but I am sure I don't know what I am doing with Photoshop 7. It's like giving a Ferrari to a kid who rides a big wheel... a BAD idea

I made sure to change color from index to RGB so I could select green slot and make it 255 and the red blue entries 0... Too many other numbers for color I didn't undestand otherwise...

I then tried using a circle copy and paste over the game pcx but it still changed the transparency to normal visible green... Wierd... That part  should not have been afected at al besides beign changed to 24bit from being altered (I noticed no matter what you edit pics tend to do that so you have to always check before saving to reduce color depth to 8 bit...

[DamoclesX]

lol

luna cell is a hacke program

you couldnt even get close to the texture I made:)

Thats a nice map, but I need to make textures without any lighting on them that are used in the game lol, if I was just making skyboxes then ya, I could make some wickedly amazing maps, but... has to be 3d(damn)

[Kail]

Actually, you could, play around with the params some and you'll see.

I see no need to make it more complicated that it has to be. Waste of time using UV texture/material wrapping on a sphere in 3DSMAX or Maya and then render it as a bitmap, you'll get the same results anyway.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I disagree. You can't beat handmade textures with any texture generator. You can prove me wrong, but I doubt it.

Using a 3d prog to render the bitmap is a personal preference. I can easily change almost everything I want, starting from the huge variety of lightning controls and surface properties. And it really does not take that much time.

[Kail]

Wasn't going to argue the point of handmade textures but rather final result. I think LC saves a lot of time, happy?