High Quality Texture Pack

[Rassilon]

Hey Ras, I almost overlooked this one over all this hassle;-)

The /only/ commercial software that I am using (every day since 14 years or so) is Maple, an algebaic math package that I need professionally. My lab has bought it and there is no real OpenSource alternative.

Now to Commodore. I just loved that little C64 machine, it is still in my cellar connected to a storage oszilloscope that I built many years ago. I developed all the necessary software in 6502 assembler code...Once I had learned assembler, the next project was to connect our new electronic typewriter to the C64;-), on which my wife then typed her thesis...

The C64 had this ingenious interface chip that simply provoked many people to connect it to whatever was around;-).

Honnestly, I cannot remember using, buying (or steeling) other commercial Commodore software. Certainly no games. Sorry;-)

Bye Fridger

Mine was the commodore 128...the best of both worlds...It had a machine language monitor much like a hex editor...was great for making 3d text and smooth scrolling text...

Then I got an Amiga...and saw my first mpeg type full length movie...Evil Dead II <<Yes it actually happened around 1990...but sadly only 256 colors...

[Avetikus]

I really do appreciate what Celestia is and what you all go through to create a terrific program. Don't get me wrong on that.

My contributions here have been mostly a comment here and there. Never criticism of people or their work, but praise rather that you guys who are actually creating the program are doing an astonishing job.

I do want to say though, that you are not working for /me/. I played in a garage band with a reasonably good reputation several years ago. Not once did I ever tell someone I was playing solely for their enjoyment. I played for myself and the other members of the band. Even when I played somewhere I'd rather not be (hospitals.. ew..) it was still for myself on a fundamental level.

The reward was in the creation of our sound and I couldn't think that I was oligating anyone to me for doing it. I can't think that anyone I would acquaint myself with would actually do that, so please don't tell me you're working for me alone. The love of the project is a nice reward in itself.

[t00fri]

I really do appreciate what Celestia is and what you all go through to create a terrific program. Don't get me wrong on that.

My contributions here have been mostly a comment here and there. Never criticism of people or their work, but praise rather that you guys who are actually creating the program are doing an astonishing job.

I do want to say though, that you are not working for /me/. I played in a garage band with a reasonably good reputation several years ago. Not once did I ever tell someone I was playing solely for their enjoyment. I played for myself and the other members of the band. Even when I played somewhere I'd rather not be (hospitals.. ew..) it was still for myself on a fundamental level.

The reward was in the creation of our sound and I couldn't think that I was oligating anyone to me for doing it. I can't think that anyone I would acquaint myself with would actually do that, so please don't tell me you're working for me alone. The love of the project is a nice reward in itself.

Rightly said: You played for yourself /and/ the other members of the
band.

I have never claimed that I or all the other people who actively
contribute something here, are working /exclusively/ for /you/,
but certainly /inclusively/. And "the members of the band", don't they
largely correspond to the members of this forum??

Moreover, there are activities that are beyond doubt of mere "service"
type. Like searching bugs, scanning peoples log files and other
related stuff.

But let's get it just straight now:

/I am through with the Celestia Bug department/, like I am through with
communicating any further results or advice on textures etc.

Reading sentences like this:

Textures:
---------
(Thilo):... this makes it seem that you rather put these nice
pictures on bruckner to proll round, and nothing else ;)

(Axel): ... warm thanks, Thilo!

Bug-department:
--------------
(Ignatz): ....sounds EXACTLY like bullshit to me....
....what kind of drugs are you smoking?
... well youre a persistent liar if not a convincing one...

is just a little bit too much...;-)). This is not exactly the kind of
environment I want to spend too much time in.


Bye Fridger

[chris]

But let's get it just straight now:

/I am through with the Celestia Bug department/, like I am through with
communicating any further results or advice on textures etc.

Oh no . . . is it my turn again?

Anyhow, I know it's been said many times, but there's a very good reason that the large DXT textures are hard to get: they're huge! I'd love to make them available for download on shatters.net, but I'm concerned that my poor DSL line would be completely saturated by people trying to download them. No one is deliberately making it difficult to get the textures, or just teasing with screenshots.

One solution would be to package high res JPEG versions of the textures along with a program to convert them into DXT format. I'd love to do this myself, but my spare time is dedicated to working on the core Celestia code. Maybe after comets are done, the scripting language is complete, the eclipse finder and half a dozen other patches integrated, and JPL SPICE data for spacecraft can be imported

--Chris

[Rassilon]

But let's get it just straight now:

/I am through with the Celestia Bug department/, like I am through with
communicating any further results or advice on textures etc.

Kudos Fridger...you didnt flame him once...More than I can say for myself...

It is far worse to be on the phone having them make ignorant comments but far better when you make them feel stupid

[Thilo]

Textures:
---------
(Thilo):... this makes it seem that you rather put these nice
pictures on bruckner to proll round, and nothing else ;)

Could you please rip my sentences WITH the context?

I said it is absolutely okay that you dont post these textures by TECHNICAL means ... I was merely not agreeing with the arguments you provided in the dispute. is it that difficult to understand?

As to the "proll around" thing i said it was rather making this impression to me and certainly makes to others at first after seeing those arguments if they don't know what is the reason for this. I mean if you create these pictures you should have known from the beginning that all people start to want it ;D

So, read my posts CAREFULLY before judging what im actually meaning!

I'm neither supporting Axel nor you, and the warm thanks from him concern to my compliments to openuniverse i think ;)
Well, i got the impression you two are hassling around without any result, and if you start with things like
"Axel, This sounds like the king and the folk .. try to post to the other blablabla" you are not better than Axel.

To the DXT textures, as i pointed out, it is maybe possible to create a script + gimp script to download the files and convert them to DXTs. So you give the users at least some tool in the hand to create files a bit more conveniently. The attitude "the user's got to find out howto do it himself or he's not worth it" is a deadly weapon in the opensource community. Remember, we're trying to get Users to COME to Linux and not stay with windows! That's actually why they're still paying for a crappy OS from a crappy company.

[Axel]

Hello Chris,

thanks for speaking out.

Anyhow, I know it's been said many times, but there's a very good reason that the large DXT textures are hard to get: they're huge! I'd love to make them available for download on shatters.net.

The problem is just that because of these screenshots people do naturally still try to get them from the source.

That was a situation I was trying to solve.

One solution would be to package high res JPEG versions of the textures along with a program to convert them into DXT format. I'd love to do this myself, but my spare time...

Suggestion: If we could use e.g. Phoenix' 256kbit/s-space to place a texture.zip containing the best available jpegs suitable say for a GeForce1(starting e.g. with Rassilion's). And Fridger would provide the dxt-convert tool he used and how. Then I'd do a text with describes in detail for a newbie how to convert them and to integrate them into /textures.

The whole could then be linked to from shatters.net.

Axel

[Guest]

Ok thanks that's very nice!
but heuuu...
how do I install them

well, actually i put all the 2k - 16k DDS high-res textures from mars / moon and earth on my ftp.
try:

ftp://dsl.wellsoft.org/textures/

i have only 256 Kbit/s upload speed so don't expect too much

greets
Phoenix

[Guest]

Experimenting with your own textures is much more creative at least than watching soccer on TV;-)

It is more like painting a picture or playing music. Some people at least insist that despite our generally high working load nowadays, one should try to reserve some time for such creative activities...

It's even good for your soul

Bye Fridger

There's other things to do than "Making Textures" or "Watch Soccer".
Thank to God !!
But I'd really like to use Celestia with better textures.
Can someone help us to make it kick and easy ???

Thank you

[Avetikus]

Axel,

That would be very nice if it could be done. I'd sure like to give it a shot. Over the weekend of the 4th maybe I'll find an hour or two to play with some textures and see how it works out. /shrug

Fridger,

Yeah, I can see how some irresponsible comments could really snuff the fire for helping folks. Hope you find the fire again, for everyone's sake.

[phoenix]

But I'd really like to use Celestia with better textures.
Can someone help us to make it kick and easy ???

Thank you

actually it IS kicky easy
a) download the textures to the celestia/textures/medres directory
b) just edit the solarsys.scc with your favorite editor , search for the planet (earth, mars, moon etc..) and edit this line (eg. for earth):

Texture "earthalpha8k.dds" <- put in here whatever you called your earth-texture

do the same for all other textures you might want to use:

NightTexture "earthnight8k.dds"
BumpMap "earthbump8k.dds"
CloudMap "earth-clouds2k.dds"

save file, run celestia and oooooooooooaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh
to pixel / fridger : i never got any bump-map working on earth, which one do you use?

to all others who are stressing my ftp right now,
i'm not the only one mirroring those high-res DDS files
look at:
ftp://ftp.dasmirnov.net/astronomy/celestia/textures/

greets
Phoenix

[Buzz]

Bump maps don't work well with dds,'s and not at all together with specular reflections, as I was told by Chris e.a. But I noticed a change in version 1.2.4: in the pre-release of 1.2.4 I did manage to get bumpmapping working in combination with jpg textures, but not in the final version 1.2.4... For earth the empty alpha channel in earth.png results in specularity of sea _and_ land, but Mars and the moon don't get bumpy either. I would like to be able to select either a dds and have specular reflections and high detail, or select another texture and be able to bumpmap. For now I can of course use the older release to bumpmap!

[Pixel]

Bump-mapping doesn't work correctly on textures bigger than 2k. And it also doesn't work together with specular lighting. We hope in the next versions of Celestia thist will be fixed. Meanwhile you can use earthAlphaBumped8k.dds wich has nice static relief shadows.

I send you all guys one Mars-Smile by me:

[Buzz]

Hi Pixel,

Your textures ar great, I had already downloaded them!

Buzz

[Rassilon]

lol@Pixel

Axel:
Why would you use my textures for dds when most of them are 1024 x 512? and the ones I make hi-res 2k for instance end up as PNG files now...but by all means use them anyway you like...with proper credits to the author of course

And I don't see Fridger today...hope hes only taking a break

[Guest]

actually it IS kicky easy
a) download the textures to the celestia/textures/medres directory
b) just edit the solarsys.scc with your favorite editor , search for the planet (earth, mars, moon etc..) and edit this line (eg. for earth):

NightTexture "earthnight8k.dds"
BumpMap "earthbump8k.dds"
CloudMap "earth-clouds2k.dds"

Thanks a lot !
Is that possible to put bump mapping on cloud texture ?
Do you have a complete list of parameters i can put :
NightTexture , BumpMap , CloudMap , ... ??? and waht else ????


Thank you

[Axel]

Hello,


I'm *really* sorry to bring up that topic again. But I just have to state that Fridger's quote of my reply to Thilo is *completely* incorrect:

Reading sentences like this:

Textures:
---------
(Thilo):... this makes it seem that you rather put these nice
pictures on bruckner to proll round, and nothing else

(Axel): ... warm thanks, Thilo!

My thanks went to him about OU, of course. PLease use my statements with context. You use '...' to remove it, from time to time.

We disagree, but don't create insults we there are none.


Thank you,
Axel

[t00fri]

Thilo, Axel:
----------------
Here you get what you asked for:

While if the reason is, that you simply don't have webspace and traffic to put it online I understand this fully, and in this case it is okay what you are saying, but these arguments dont count for me ...this makes it
seem that you rather put these nice pictures on bruckner to proll
round, and nothing else ;)

is this really all that different, given the "preamble":

"but these arguments dont count for me ..."

This was followed up by

warm thanks, Thilo! I hope you had a lot of fun with OU. If you'd like
to talk about it, my mail address is still there.

warm thanks for OU or trying to recruit allies as usual???;-)).

OU is dead since quite a while, Thilo's "proll" remark was just above.


Bye Fridger

[Axel]

Hello Fridger,


I hope Thilo isn't angry about me but you threw us into one bag (please DON'T). As far as I can see 'these arguments ' don't relate to 'don't have webspace and traffic but to your exclusivity and 'self-protection'. That is still clear to see, even though Thilo's sentence is not so straight. But he said that to you before twice.

Since you used booth lines of argument interchangingly you might have become confused.


Just follow me for a sec:

#1. Everybody accepted several times you can't upload large images.
#2. Everybody would like to have your textures, because you uploaded several large screenshots *promoting* them.
#3. Nobody will get them, except for the ones who redown and recreate them.
#4. While to recreate them is positive, educating and even entertaining, not everyone will wan't or be able to do so.
#5. These people shouldn't be exluded.
#6. We ought to be able to solve this situation.

So once again: Fridger, stop fishing for insults! Can't we just stop this? We're not making progress. I suggested to support each other and to finally do a high-quality texture pack for everyone.

Who is willing to help me?

Thanks,
Axel

[Buzz]

Hi Axel,

I want to help! I have experimented a little bit with the Photoshop dds plugin. My bandwidth is limited to 56k, but I don't mind uploading big files as long as they are not HUGE.

Buzz