Author Topic: Looking for Sol starfield skybox  (Read 15434 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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:







Hang tight...
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Darius

  • 211
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
...aaand here's a standard resolution version with six 2048^2 resolution textures.

Sol Skybox 2048 DDS

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

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:
« Last Edit: August 23, 2009, 08:44:03 am by Herra Tohtori »
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Spoon

  • 212
  • ヾ(´︶`♡)ノ
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
Looks awesome  :yes:
Three Hurrahs for Herra Tohtori
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
My God Herra, its full of stars.

Simply awesome skybox. :cool:
17:37:02   Quanto: I want to have sexual intercourse with every space elf in existence
17:37:11   SpardaSon21: even the males?
17:37:22   Quanto: its not gay if its an elf

[21:51] <@Droid803> I now realize
[21:51] <@Droid803> this will be SLIIIIIGHTLY awkward
[21:51] <@Droid803> as this rich psychic girl will now be tsundere for a loli.
[21:51] <@Droid803> OH WELLL.

See what you're missing in #WoD and #Fsquest?

[07:57:32] <Caiaphas> inspired by HerraTohtori i built a supermaneuverable plane in ksp
[07:57:43] <Caiaphas> i just killed my pilots with a high-g maneuver
[07:58:19] <Caiaphas> apparently people can't take 20 gees for 5 continuous seconds
[08:00:11] <Caiaphas> the plane however performed admirably, and only crashed because it no longer had any guidance systems

 

Offline peterv

  • 28
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
Perfect Herra, just PERFECT  :yes: :yes: :yes:

 

Offline Fury

  • The Curmudgeon
  • 213
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
Awesome, much thanks Herra. :)

 

Offline Ziame

  • 28
  • ED ftw
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
Oh my God, Herra - you have just won the internets
Rabbinic Judaism had a good start with the Old Testament but kinda missed the point about 2000 years ago

ALL HAIL HERRA
/fan of BlackHole

 

Offline pecenipicek

  • Roast Chicken
  • 211
  • Powered by copious amounts of coffee and nicotine
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
    • PeceniPicek's own deviantart page
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
any screenshots? PLEASE?!?
Skype: vrganjko
Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go
to heal my heart and drown my woe!
Rain may fall and wind may blow,
and many miles be still to go,
but under a tall tree I will lie!

The Apocalypse Project needs YOU! - recruiting info thread.

 

Offline Fury

  • The Curmudgeon
  • 213
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • 800k tris ships achieved!
    • Exile
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
:bump:

Sorry for the necro. All links are dead and I cannot find them anywhere else. Can someone reupload?
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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

  

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • 800k tris ships achieved!
    • Exile
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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.

Quote
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...



Quote
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.

Quote
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.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • 800k tris ships achieved!
    • Exile
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
...aaand here's a standard resolution version with six 2048^2 resolution textures.

Sol Skybox 2048 DDS

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

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.
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • 800k tris ships achieved!
    • Exile
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
Aww, You reuploaded them. I haven't noticed. Thank You so much!
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Looking for Sol starfield skybox
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". ;)
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.