[FlamingCobra]

What are the suns exactly? (Not IRL)

I know they are light sources but are they also models or what? And how do we make our own?

because SunGold looks ok, green stars don't even exist but SunGreen looks ok, and SunViolet looks ok. But SunBlue and SunRed look ****ed up.

But SunBlue and SunRed look ****ed up. Mostly because the white spot looks pasted on top of the star. It needs feathering. Really really bad. So... How is this done?

And how do we make suns that have no white centers (like carbon stars)?

[Nighteyes]

suns are bitmaps, not models, they cast the main light in missions, to edit them people usually use a program called photoshop

[Droid803]

or gimp.
or whatever image manipulation program you prefer.

[FlamingCobra]

Paint Shop Pro.

Where are these bitmaps located and how does that tell FRED what color light to produce? Does the color of the bitmap determine the color light rendered in-game?

[headdie]

It's the effects folder.  you will also need to read up on stars.tbl on the fs wiki

[FlamingCobra]

I swear to God, if I ever get everything figured out, I'm going to write a "Everything Newbies Need To Know About FREDding" guide.

[NeoKnight]

Please do exactly that. It would be a great reference For the Rest of Us.™

[headdie]

you mean something like

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships_and_General_Mod_Creation

[Droid803]

Its not really a FREDding guide anymore if you're messing with assets.
You're wandering into general mod creation

[CenturionModel0005]

I swear to God, if I ever get everything figured out, I'm going to write a "Everything Newbies Need To Know About FREDding" guide.

http://fredzone.hard-light.net/freddocs/

But it would be really nice to have one of these for Diaspora only

[mjn.mixael]

I swear to God, if I ever get everything figured out, I'm going to write a "Everything Newbies Need To Know About FREDding" guide.

http://fredzone.hard-light.net/freddocs/

But it would be really nice to have one of these for Diaspora only

Like this? http://diaspora.fs2downloads.com/FREDDocs/index.html

[karajorma]

If you have Diaspora, you have those already, just check the Help menu in FRED. I put those up mainly for people who don't have Diaspora.

[yuezhi]

suns are bitmaps, not models, they cast the main light in missions, to edit them people usually use a program called photoshop

does that also cover lighting colour?

Spoiler:

and is a black sun that emits black/no light possible?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

does that also cover lighting colour?

Spoiler:

and is a black sun that emits black/no light possible?

For that, you'll want to take a look at stars.tbl. By setting the RGBI to 0,0,0,0 it should even be possible to make a black hole sun...

[The E]

Black holes, despite their name, are not actually invisible. Most of them will have an accretion disc of some sort, which will be highly energetic and thus visible.

[General Battuta]

Black holes are in fact some of the most energetic, bright objects in the universe!

[Trivial Psychic]

They're only visible if they're absorbing material, generating the accretion disk as mentioned, but also sometimes polar jets.  An inactive black hole should however be identifiable, even in space, by how it distorts the light of stars and other bright objects that it passes in front of.

[BritishShivans]

Also radiation, as black holes are radioactive as ****. I'm not kidding, you'll be before you even reach the event horizon unless you've got really good radiation shielding. Needless to say, black holes are actually pretty obvious, just not on human terms.