Feature Request: many selectable textures per object

[selden]

It'd be really nice to be able to quickly select among multiple textures on each object. Having only 3 options (low, medium and high) is turning out to be a little too restrictive.

I just downloaded and converted three maps of Mars from NASA's MOLA mission pages (http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/MOLA/): topography, gravity and moho. I'd like very much to be able flip back and forth between any of them and the surface image to compare the results.

I've made the textures (2k jpegs) available on my Gallery page at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/gallery.html or select the "WWW" button under my sig below. I'm sure someone else must have converted them before, but a search of the forum didn't find any mention.

[MKruer]

selden, you should re check out, this topic was brought up by Chrishttp://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1076

A way that could implement this system is to simply assign a numbering system to the textures fields, the higher the number, the greater the texture

Texture1 “mercury.jpg”
Texture2 “mercury.jpg”
Texture3 “mercury.png”
Texture4 “mercury4k.dds”
Texture5 “mercury8k.dds”
Texture5 “mercury16k.dds”
Etc...

[selden]

Well, this isn't quite the same the textures I'm interested in are all the same resolution (which might permit some optimizations). It's just that potentially there are quite a few of them.

but the same solution might work.

It'd also be nice to be able to project texture "movies" onto a model. I'm pretty sure that's been mentioned in another thread, too.

[Thilo]

Now you want to tell us that you want animated textures, huh? :D

[MKruer]

ok i get it now, i totaly miss understood you, but i will see if i can come up with a scheema that could be incorporated into the existing structure

[chris]

It'd be really nice to be able to quickly select among multiple textures on each object. Having only 3 options (low, medium and high) is turning out to be a little too restrictive.

I just downloaded and converted three maps of Mars from NASA's MOLA mission pages (http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/MOLA/): topography, gravity and moho. I'd like very much to be able flip back and forth between any of them and the surface image to compare the results.

I've made the textures (2k jpegs) available on my Gallery page at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/gallery.html or select the "WWW" button under my sig below. I'm sure someone else must have converted them before, but a search of the forum didn't find any mention.

How about something like this:

Code: Select all

Map {
    Type "Gravity"
    Image "marsgrav.jpg"
}

Map {
    Type "Topographic"
    Image "marstopo.jpg"
}


(mentally convert to XML if you like)

From a programming standpoint, this is an easy feature to add. Somewhat more difficult is coming up with a user-interface for showing the different maps . . . Perhaps there could be a maps submenu in the context menu that appears when you right click on an object? Other ideas? What sort of keyboard interface would work for selecting one of the 'extended' maps from a set of map types that presumably isn't fixed?

--Chris

[MKruer]

That works for me. As for putting into XML don’t worry about it yet. But I would like to clarify it a little more first.

Default Way (current)

Code: Select all

"Mercury" "Sol"
{
Texture "mercury.jpg"
}


Extended (Planed)

Code: Select all

"Mercury" "Sol"
Map {
   Type “Default”{
      Texture “mercury.jpg” }
   Type “Funky”{
      Texture "funkymercury.jpg" }
   Type "Gravity" {
      Texture "marsgrav.jpg" }
   Type "Topographic"
      Texture "marstopo.jpg"
   }


Mixed (Assumed the texture outside of the Map branch is the default)

Code: Select all

"Mercury" "Sol"
{
Texture "mercury.jpg"
Map {
   Type “Funky”{
      Texture "funkymercury.jpg" }
   Type "Gravity" {
      Texture "marsgrav.jpg" }
   Type "Topographic"
      Texture "marstopo.jpg"
   }
}


This will assume that the first texture(s) listed are the default and everything else is optional. In addition you can have multiple resolutions of the extended textures, and include other types of textures, more night textures, etc… I also think this is a little easier to understand because you get rid or having multiply Map(s) in the structure

While I was writing I though of a really neat trick you could do with the Map method. If you added an additional data command to the structure, you can have the images “flip” over on that date automatically; let me give you an example. I will use the nighttextures because that would the greatest amount of change in the shortest period of time.

Code: Select all

Map {
   Type “Nightlights of Earth in the year 2000” Date “2000”{
      NightTexture “earthnight8k2000.dds” }
   Type “Nightlights of Earth in the year 2015” Date “2015”{
      NightTexture " earthnight8k2015.dds " }
   Type " Nightlights of Earth in the year 2030" Date “2030”{
      NightTexture " earthnight8k2030.dds " }
   Type " Nightlights of Earth in the year 2045" Date “2045”{
      NightTexture " earthnight8k2045.dds "
   }


This would be extremely helpful when you add cosmic events such as the impact that killed the dinosaurs. With in the map structure you give the date of the impacted and walla the map change to a post impacted earth.

[MKruer]

Thinking more deeply about the date change, scratch it. If you were to add it any where, put it up by the planet tag.

"Mercury" "Sol" "2000"

This would allow the entire planet to be changed at that date more so then just the textures. But this is way way in the future. When you add scripting.

[selden]

Chris,

I'm greedy: I'd like both keyboard shortcuts and contex menu entries.

A pair of adjacent keys (next/previous map) would make it possible to switch back and forth between two textures quickly. As with a blink-comaparator, it'd make it easier to see the differences between two similar maps.

Having menu options would let one select the appropriate starting point without ambiguity. Maybe it'd be reasonable for the popup to give a choice of key pairs? I'm thinking that at some point it might be appropriate for keyboard functions to be "overloaded" as Celestia becomes more comples. Geing able to associate a particular key with a particular map would be quite useful, too, for when one wants to compare maps that happen not to be adjacent in the list of maps. That's an improvement that could wait, if necessary, I think.

Showing the name/description of the current map with the new hud state message facility would be appropriate, too. I dunno if you've designed it to be fast enough, though

I have no strong feelings about the details of the syntax of the ssc or xml code to support this functionality. Of course, it'd be nice if it could be used for any of the various types of maps that could be applied to a model: surface, bump, cloud, etc. Hmmm. Maybe even to the model itself?

Thanks for considering it!

[abiogenesis]

While we're on the topic of UI, why don't you just make the key maps user configurable. Then all you have to worry about, Chris, is the default config. And if someone doesn't use some of the more esoteric Celestia features, they can re-map the keys to do something else. I haven't looked at the source recently but, from what I remember, the input keys seemed pretty hard coded. I don't know how hard it would be to modify it, but it might be worth it. Especially if Celestia's feature set keeps growing at the current rate.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -