Normal map

[Alessandro]

Ciao

I have 2 questions.

1. Why the normal map you find in the Celestia matherload site when
displayed are not in 'really' color for example mars is not in the tipical
red of mars surface, all of them are blu ? Are these maps in 3d ?

2. When you go to a planet and look at it using Shift + arrows or simply
arrows you are any more on our terrestrial elliptic plan, (north pole up
north and sud pole down sud), is there a function that by pressing a key
all bodies are again displayed based on terrestrial elliptic plan?

I hope second question is clear ? Sorry for my bad english.

Thanks for all answer will receiv.

Ciao
Alessandro

[selden]

Alessandro,

1. "Normal maps" is an abbreviation for "Surface Normal Vector Maps"

They are used to draw shadows on surface textures. The values in them are not colors. They are stored as color images only for convenience. They specify the directions of the "surface normal vectors". They describe how the surface is sloped.

In Celestia, you can use them instead of "bumpmaps".

Please see http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/textures.html#3.2.2


2. You can change how the arrow keys work by typing Ctrl-F

Please see q/a19 of the preliminary user's faq at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=21807&highlight=#21807

[Alessandro]

Selden,

thank you for your immediate answer... but

1. I insert a line in MarsNormalMapDXT3.SSC file :
NormalMap "Mars.DDS"
do not work or I insert
NormalMap "Mars.JPG"
do not work, I have mars.DDS in medres directory and Mars.JPG in
lores directory. I can see only some zones of the planet and always
in blu-grey color the rest is completely black.
What I do wrong please ?

2. I will try to explain with an example what I mean :
if you start Celestia ( ) and go to the earth
then press END key to go back out of solar planet system you can see
the orbit of eart 180° and the other planets orbit inclinate respect to
that of earth with Pluto very inclinated. Now if you return to earth and
rotate by Shift + up-arrows since you see the south pole in face and go
back out solar system with END key you can see all orbits like circle.
At this moment if you want to put again Earth orbit to 180° and see all
orbit like when you start you have to look at Earth and try to find the
right inclination with the Shift + arrows. The question then was is there
a key that puts again all planet at that inclination of start point?

Hard to explain sorry. Dont esitate to say I'm crazy with this idea.

By Selden.

Alessandro

[selden]

Allesandro,

1. You probably are doing nothing wrong.

Please tell us what kind of graphics card you have
and what version of graphics drivers you are using.
Maybe the drivers are buggy.

(How to find this is described in the Preliminary Users FAQ. It is near the top of the User's Forum. Please read it.)

Please tell us where you got the files that you are trying to use as NormalMaps.
Maybe the files are damaged.

2. I don't think there is a simple Celestia command to restore the viewpoint the way you want.
However, there are several ways to do something similar.

For example, you could save a Cel:// URL and use it to go back to the original viewpoint. Also, a script command probably could be written to do it.

Another thing you can do is to turn on the Celestial Grid. It's in the Render/ View Options menu. That will make it easier to see where up and down are.

Finally, you probably should spend some time reading the User's Guide. The original Guide is in English, but it has been translated into several other languages. They can be found at http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
and http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/documentation.html

I hope this helps.

[Alessandro]

Selden,

ciao again

My Hardware :

Windows properties saying :

Video card : GeForce4 Ti 4200 w AGP8X PCI 128 Mo integrated RAMDAC
Drivers installed : Nvidia 61.77 package from Nvidia site
Processor : Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz
DirectX : 9.0


Celestia openGL box saying :

Vendor: NVIDIA corporation
Renderer: GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X/PCI/SSE2
Version: 1.5.1
Max simultaneous textures: 4
Max texture size: 4096

The files I istalled for normalMap of Mars comes from celestiamotherlode and are 4 files :

32k VT Mars NormalMap, Level 0,1,2,3 creator DBrady.

Alessandro

[selden]

Your hardware and software looks OK.

What did you put into your SSC file for Mars?
Remember these are VirtualTextures. The file type that you specify in an SSC file is .CTX (or .*) not .DDS or .JPG.


Here's the AltSurface SSC file that I use:

Code: Select all

AltSurface "MarsFlat" "Sol/Mars"
{
   Texture "MarsFlat.ctx"
   NormalMap "MarsNormalMapDXT3.ctx"

   Color   [ 1 0.75 0.7 ]
   HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
   HazeDensity 0.45
}


If you have not read them already, you probably should spend some time reading Bob Hedgewood's "Virtual textures for Dummies" at http://home.earthlink.net/~bobhegwood/id19.html and http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/textures.html.

[Alessandro]

That's ok Selden

I found the way also because I re-read your documentation and Bob Hegwood's "VT for Dummies" document (I promize you I had already read), but is your piece of code you put in msg that opened my eyes.
Two CTX are needed, for sure!

Can I make a consideration however?
You need two set of files, first MarsFlat (c.a. 120Mo) second MarsNormalMapDXT3 (c.a. 950Mo) and this are a lot of files.
The file Mars-shaded-16K.DDS (89 Mo) give more beatiful details
only one file very much less Mo on disk.

A little problem found on downloading MarsFlat :
Extracting the 5 files FlatMars_l0,1,2,3,4 a directory named FlatMars is created but the MarsFlat.ctx point to ImageDirectory MarsFlat.
Should I insert a msg in Celestia Bugs forum?

Thank you for your patience and time spent for me.

Ciao
Alessandro

[selden]

Alessandro,

The Celestia Bugs forum is for bugs in Celestia.
This bad filename is a bug in FlatMars.
I'd suggest reporting this bug in the thread where DBrady announced the FlatMars virtual texture. I think it is in the Addons forum.

[Bob Hegwood]

I found the way also because I re-read your documentation and Bob Hegwood's "VT for Dummies" document

Just a note here...

Apparently, the VT's for Dummies Guide now also needs to be updated.
Seems that much of the original download information has been modified.

A thorough look through the directories referenced in the Guide will show
you the latest files, but I'll be updating it just as soon as I can get around
to it. (Am working 6 days a week now, and have little extra energy at
the moment. )

Take care, Bob