[LoneKnight]

I was looking into some cool user-made planets, and stumbled upon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hd9qYEMuvs&feature=player_detailpage#t=63s. This video contains several spiffy looking planets and I was wondering where they came from? The FS Wiki has a section dedicated to custom nebula backgrounds, but unfortunately nothing for custom planets. Can anyone shed any light as to where these planet files are from and how could one acquire them?

Thanks in advance!

[headdie]

I cant comment on the link because my bandwidth is ridiculously low but a trawl through the old Celestial Objects Thread might yield some useful results

[LoneKnight]

47 pages woot. Combing through them, but most are in image format. I'm assuming I'd have to process them myself, unless there are any actual planet mods.

[Snail]

47 pages woot. Combing through them, but most are in image format. I'm assuming I'd have to process them myself, unless there are any actual planet mods.

I'd ask the original artist for the original source image, which is likely to have an alpha channel and stuff to make it easier. That is of course if the artist still comes to the forum.

[Droid803]

turning image into planet bitmap is EZ
just make alpha channel drag circle fill white w/ some feather = profit

[Snail]

turning image into planet bitmap is EZ
just make alpha channel drag circle fill white w/ some feather = profit

Doesn't really work for atmo glows and stuff though (well yeah feather but not really)

[Droid803]

yes it does that is why you add feather

[Snail]

yes it does that is why you add feather

you suck

[Droid803]

it takes some playing around to get it to line up perfectly but it does work
also sometimes you get transparent pngs in which case they convert perfectly

[Aardwolf]

[/lurk]

Most of my planets had alpha channels

[lurk]

[Jeff Vader]

[/lurk]

Most of my planets had alpha channels

[lurk]

[/lurk]

Sweet.

[lurk]

[The E]

[/lurk]

*words*

[lurk]

You're really not fooling anyone, you know that right?

[Deadly in a Shadow]

turning image into planet bitmap is EZ

Well, I didn't found any tuts out there. How do I turn an image into a planet bitmap? With GIMP? How do I implement it into a mod?

[Rodo]

turning image into planet bitmap is EZ

Well, I didn't found any tuts out there. How do I turn an image into a planet bitmap? With GIMP? How do I implement it into a mod?

What I used to do is grab the original, cut the outer part and paste the planet onto a transparent layer, then delete the other layers and save as .dds with the dds pluggin for Gimp, format depends on what are you expecting from the image, I use DTX3 for alpha images and DTX1 for plain images (with no alpha channel).

check: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=64769.0
and check this, I found it really usefull in it's time: http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial

[headdie]

turning image into planet bitmap is EZ

Well, I didn't found any tuts out there. How do I turn an image into a planet bitmap? With GIMP? How do I implement it into a mod?

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/.DDS
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Stars.tbl

[LoneKnight]

1. Get VPView
2. Explore .vp files
3. ????
4. Profit/Know how things are done

[headdie]

1. Get VPView
2. Explore .vp files
3. ????
4. Profit/Know how things are done

problem is there is more to backgrounds than just placing the image in the correct folder because the stars.tbl needs updating to reference the file

[LoneKnight]

Right. Extract stars.tbl, add new fields for your new materials, put the background image files in the effects folder, put the stars.tbl in the tables folder, or just .vp them.

[Deadly in a Shadow]

Ah, figured it out. Thank you people.
BTW: Shouldn't the dds files go into the maps folder?

[Rodo]

Ok for the first time, but if you are planning on releasing your work in a mod somewhere down the line you'll need to learn how to use tbm's, using stars.tbl is not ideal.

BTW: Shouldn't the dds files go into the maps folder?

I think they go into effects folder, maps is for model textures IIRC.

If you have doubts you can open up a vp file and on the right left of the list you'll see the name of the folder where the file is supposed to be placed.

edit'd