[watsisname]

Here we go, final updates to the surface texture, clouds/dust, and a transparent background so it's good to go in Freespace.  The texture is 2000^2, so that should be good enough to use as a background planet taking up <~15 degrees of the field of view.




When I get a chance I'll update this with the fixed lighting direction and a few extra phases.

[Herra Tohtori]

The previous one looked better to be honest.

Also, by texture being 2000^2 (better practice would be to use 2048^2 though, better memory utilization) do you mean the surface texture wrapped around the sphere, or the actual planet bitmap? I'm hoping for the latter. But anyway, this latest one looks like you reduced the contrast (and brightness for clouds) or something like that, and the atmosphere effect obscures the surface significantly more than before.

[TopAce]

I disagree. I like this one better.

[watsisname]

Herra:  I refer to the texture before being mapped-to-sphere being 2k.  I'm not sure what "planet bitmap" means exactly, could you explain?  The width of the planet itself after being mapped is 1448 pixels (1500 with atmosphere) if that's what you were looking for. 

Also I think I'm letting my personal preference of having thick/obscuring atmospheres sneak in there again.  I can make a brighter/clearer one as well.

[Herra Tohtori]

Herra:  I refer to the texture before being mapped-to-sphere being 2k.  I'm not sure what "planet bitmap" means exactly, could you explain?  The width of the planet itself after being mapped is 1448 pixels (1500 with atmosphere) if that's what you were looking for. 

Also I think I'm letting my personal preference of having thick/obscuring atmospheres sneak in there again.  I can make a brighter/clearer one as well.

By planet bitmap I mean the end result, ie. a round image of the planet. The file that can be used by FS2 as a background image.

Anyhow, if the width of the texture is only 2000 pixels and you wrap it over a sphere, you only get 1000 pixels for a side, and the central area facing the viewpoint is stretched even more, so having the planet 1500 pixels wide will probably show some texture stretching and would probably looks better at half a size (750 pixels wide, the whole bitmap being 1024^2). But as I haven't seen the high-res versions, I can't really say anything certain about it.

Also like I said, it's good practice to use power of two textures. It hardly matters with GIMP (though it well might, who knows...) but it's a good habit to have.




^
TopAce: The last one is not actually better or worse in itself, but it differs from the above image more than the former version, where there was more contrast between surface features... so for the purpose of replacing that in the game, the former one is, in my opinion, somewhat better.

[watsisname]

Thanks, I understand now.  I'll keep a habit of working with power-of-two textures and mapping to a smaller sphere in the future.

Tried making the contrast and coloration a little more like the original here.  Also, atmosphere on nightside actually darkens the background.  Woot. 

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Proving that feedback does work:

Before: (the original was even more bright & colourful, as can be seen on the previous page)



After:



- Should I keep doing the coastlines or not?
- watsisname, how did you do the polar icecaps?

[Topgun]

*snip*

that planet looks oddly familiar...

[Herra Tohtori]

that planet looks oddly familiar...

Yeah. took a shortcut with a lot of the planets...

planeta1 = something that looks like either water planet or very low res Neptune
planetb = Callisto
planetc = Europa
planetd = something clouded, either Venus or some gas giant. No detail to speak of.
planete = not immediately identifiable. Might be a heavy re-colouration of some solar system planet or moon, but might jsut as well be original work.
planetf = Mars, with some re-colouration to more yellow.
planetg = violet Jupiter.

And the same substitution was used in current mediaVP planets, so you see why I kinda want to get them renewed... Four out of seven were just ripped from solar system imagery and re-coloured slightly. Remaining three might be original or not, can't really tell.

[Aardwolf]

Planet E has that big martian canyon system on it (but some of the other features I'm less sure about).

But the canyon is clearly from a picture of mars.

[Herra Tohtori]

Yes, it is. So there's two planets originating from Mars...

And PlanetH is Triton, or at least very heavily based on it.

[Aardwolf]

Also the blue one (I think it's a1) is a recolored venus. (or it was in retail, before it got high-res-ified)

Also I made a nebula.


I did a lot of tweaking, and for the most part I like the outcome, although there are still some bits that look a little off to me.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

I definitely want these in-game.

Hey, why didn't anyone say anything about my planet? If you don't like it, tell me please. (If you do, tell me too ) So,

- Should I keep doing the coastlines or not?
- watsisname, how did you do the polar icecaps?

[watsisname]

FSF:  To be honest I think I like your planet better with a little atmosphere around it.  Also consider putting back the haze effect near the limb that you had earlier, but placed below the clouds instead of above them.  Aside from those minor things (which are up to personal preference, really), it looks pretty well complete in my opinion.  The land and clouds are good.  Maybe with a little shadow and bumpmapping to the clouds and it'd be perfect.

About the icecaps on the martian planet: those were painted on with the sand-dune and small-galaxy brushes, then bumpmapped, and distorted with the ripple tool.  Then the center of the caps were filled in with an extra brushing.

Aardwolf:  Nice nebulae.  All it needs now are a few stars put in the brighest regions.  Maybe a slight bit more blurring to the sharper areas as well.

[Herra Tohtori]

FSF: I don't really know what you mean by "keep doing the coastlines"...

I do notice that the continent facing the viewpoint in the latter version seems to be somewhat stretched equatorially. If it's what you want, that's fine; however, I've noticed that a more balanced continent shape comes from taking into account the fact that the texture is mapped into sphere; which means that on the equator, a square or sphere would need to be twice as tall as they are wide in order to appear as square or sphere... and then there's the matter of polar distortion. I've posted this image before, but it's a good example:



...looks like this in a "world map" ratio (2:1 instead of a square):



...looks like this wrapped on sphere:



Polar caps are rather easy to make; just pick either white or very very light grey, aquire some kind of "coastline" to work as the edge of the ice cap (drawing it freehand can be quite tedious and difficult, since coastlines tend to have fractal-y structure), and colour the ice caps with the colour you selected. If you want, put some floating ice on some bay (galxy brushes in GIMP can be fairly useful for this) or stuff like that, but basically you just need to get the icecap's edge on texture and fill the polar region with uniform colour after that.

[Stormkeeper]

The nebula is sweet.

[Wobble73]

The nebula is sweet.

A few work colleagues seem to agree with you (not that I don't). These are ladies in there 50's who haven't a clue what a Space sim is, never mind having heard of FreeSpace2, they were just passing my desk and caught sight of it, said that looked good and sparked a small debate on the nature of nebula's (nebulae ?  )

[FreeSpaceFreak]

True, you can't see the coastlines in the above picture. Take a look at the picture below: notice the lighter blue/cyan around the coasts. I've seen it somewhere on an actual earth pic (which I can't find anymore), but it looks a bit funny in full-planet view.

watsisname, is this what you meant with the haze effect below the clouds? Should I put it under the cloud shadow layer as well?

[attachment deleted by Tolwyn]

[shiv]

Also the blue one (I think it's a1) is a recolored venus. (or it was in retail, before it got high-res-ified)

Also I made a nebula.


I did a lot of tweaking, and for the most part I like the outcome, although there are still some bits that look a little off to me.

I love those Nebulas. Do more, add alpha channel and release to the community to use along with Ligtspeed's ones

[Herra Tohtori]

I love those Nebulas. Do more, add alpha channel and release to the community to use along with Ligtspeed's ones

Nebulas don't have alpha channel, they use black as transparent (additive blending as opposed to alpha blending used on planets)...