Celestia Forums

Isaid I would post any new worlds when I put them into Celestia;
here is Nova Terra, by Anders Sandberg;
http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Nova_Terra.html

This is Bolobo, by me;
http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Bolobo.html

I would like to make the surface of this world shiny, by the way, as the green part of this world is covered by a worldhouse;
and also use the bumpmap to show that the central strip is lower and in vacuum..
how do I activate these functions?

Errai has a planet already; here is its new moon Anomie
http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Silence.html

Anders' excellent Penglai;
http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Penglai.html

And Ceres;
http://www.orionsarm.com/historical/Ceres.html
(here I have added the lights in Paint; how do I activate the nightside lights?)

Sorry to ask so many questions all at once; I have been having great fun with this program, and have lots of plans for its use...
steve

Steve,

You can create specular reflections using the SSC directives
SpecularTexture
SpecularColor
SpecularPower

If you create a surface texture that has an Alpha channel, that Alpha channel is treated as a specular reflection texture and you don't need a separate file for it.

Specular reflection textures are grey-scale images which are white where reflections are greatest and black where there should be no reflection.

For BumpMaps, use the directives
BumpMap
BumpHeight
Provide a grey-scale image that's white at the highest altitudes and black at the lowest.
Bumpmaps are broken in Celestia v1.3.0.

An alternative to bumpmaps are normal maps, which can be much more accurate. Use the directive
NormalMap
Provide a full-color image. NormalMaps can be tricky. See other Forum postings.

For Nightlights, use the directive
NightTexture
Provide a colored texture that includes an Alpha channel.
Just as with a CloudMap, this Alpha channel defines the transparency of the texture map. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not so sure if nightlignts include a transparency effect due to an alpha channel. I suspect Don Edwards would know for sure Experiment and find out.)

See http://members.fortunecity.com/guilpain/Fichiers%20ssc_uk.htm for more details about .SSC directives.

Does this help?

That is excellent; I'll apply those commands, play around a bit, and see what happens. Thank you.