[Lt. Spanks]

In the campaign I am currently working on, I plan on having many of my missions take place in close proximity to planets.
I don't want to use the stock FS2 background planets, as this is what one would consider "lame".
How do you make a kickass piece of skybox to be used in FRED out of say an internet picture of an awesome looking planet?
Can I even do this using an internet picture or do i need to create this resource myself?

Thanks,
-Spanks

[wardog300k]

There are few good user made planets and skyboxes available for download,you can find some on the freespace files.As for creating them,you'll need GIMP to change them to .PCX files.I don't know how do you make it work,however.

[The E]

There are few good user made planets and skyboxes available for download,you can find some on the freespace files.As for creating them,you'll need GIMP to change them to .PCX files.I don't know how do you make it work,however.

Only if you are using retail. FSO has no such silly restrictions.

[Black Wolf]

There are two ways to get planets into FSO. One is to build a skybox. This isn't difficult, if you're reasonably familiar with 3D software like Max or Blender - there are some useful links  here - but it's not trivial either, since creating the assets can be time intensive.

For what you want, which I'm assuming is to turn an existing planetary picture that you've made or found online into an FSO background, there is an easier way.

You simply need a piece of image editing software that will allow you to edit the alpha channel - I'm sure Gimp can do it, there will be tutorials online that will show you how to do it far better than I could as Gimp is not my image software of choice. The alpha channel is used to define transparency - You need to make it do that the space around the planet has an intensity of zero, the space inside the planet has an intensity of 100% (or 255 in most software), and a gentle gradient exists between them where you want the atmosphere visible.

You then need to save it as aDDS file using DXT5 compression (pcx is only for retail) and give it an entry in stars.tbl (or use a modular -str.tbm file)

This is considerably simpler than making a skybox, and the end product is very nearly as good in most circumstances - for very large planets(I.e. Close, low orbit missions), it doesn't work so well, but its pretty good.  Of course, if you're not very familiar with image editing software, this may still be challenging, but not excessively so. It's a good project to learn some slightly more advanced image editing if that was something you wanted to do.

If you're really struggling, there have been multiple planet packs released, both on their own and as part of campaigns. Using these assets would get you away from retail very quickly and easily.

[procdrone]

Or you can try out my tutorial for ingame planets. Its not quite the background, but you maybe will like the idea

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=88309.msg1762427#msg1762427