Cyl. Textures from Photos HowTo. Who would be interested??

[t00fri]

Hi all,

I might be willing to prepare and present a step-by-step tutorial about how to perform cylindrical projections from available photos (Cassini...) and about the process of assembling these pieces of texture into a mosaic, usable in Celestia. I would also illustrate how to colorize the resulting texture with GIMP, using a color-mapping technique from a 'natural color' photo template.

There is a catch, however.

We do need Matthew Arcus' projection software. I may find the time to port it to Windows in form of an EXE file.
Matthew's program is a command-line utility and thus should be very easy to port. Clearly, people having installed CYGWIN do not need any porting. The code just compiles under Cygwin without any problems.

Moreover, for reasons of saving time, I cannot tell people the required steps BOTH for GIMP and Photoshop. I do prefer GIMP. Anyone knowing some basics of image manipulation can easily translate my instructions from GIMP tp Photoshop.

Finally, I am only ready to invest this considerable amount of time, if there is a sufficient number of people seriously interested. Certainly, I will not prepare such a tutorial for just 2-4 people. I hope everyone understands this.

So people /seriously/ interested, please push the YES button...

Let me know... And please, you do not have to do me a favor by pushing YES . Just let me know honestly...

Bye Fridger

[maxim]

Of course we're interested - what do you think?

maxim

[ElChristou]

Great... everybody: to vote !!

[selden]

A freeware Windows program that can be used to reproject many mapping formats into simple cylindrical format is "Iris" by by Christian Buil. It's available for downloading at
http://astrosurf.com/buil/us/iris/iris.htm

Getting it to do the right thing takes some study, however.

[Bob Hegwood]

Fridger,

I'd be interested simply for the education you could give us...

Currently, I have absolutely NO idea how to do these kinds of things
with photos. Big surprise, I know.

Again, I think this would be worthwhile if for no other reason than
the education.

Thanks very much for the offer.

EDIT: I have a little practice with GIMP, none with PS. I have Cygwin for
Windows installed. The latest version of the Gimp and ImageMagick are
also part of my system, and the rest is detailed in my signature.

Thanks once again, for all that you do for Celestia. Is much
appreciated.

Take care, Bob

[ElChristou]

The fatal question: is there a soft on osX to do this kind of manipulation?

If not, equal, like Bob say it's always good to learn...

[t00fri]

The fatal question: is there a soft on osX to do this kind of manipulation?

If not, equal, like Bob say it's always good to learn...

Can you run Windows command-line programs?
Do you have a compiler a board?

Bye Fridger

[trenner]

I definitely would be interested. I would even get a couple more bottles of Aspirin to try and learn something

Terry

[Brendan]

I'm interested.

I use Windows XP and Linux. I have the GIMP 2.something and ImageMagick. I have some experience with the GIMP and a little with Photoshop.

[jdou]

I'm interested too

Thanks Fridger.

jdou

- I know Unix, Linux, Shell scripts...but I don't use these at home (for the moment ).
- I use Photoshop to make textures

[ElChristou]

Can you run Windows command-line programs?
Do you have a compiler a board?

I don't think so... but Unix command-line yes.
For now I haven't but guess there is all I need in the dev tools from Apple...

*****************
Wizzard PS newbie Gimp (not for long... I will download it tomorrow)
osX
*****************

[t00fri]

Can you run Windows command-line programs?
Do you have a compiler a board?

I don't think so... but Unix command-line yes.
For now I haven't but guess there is all I need in the dev tools from Apple...

But then you should have a Unix compiler (gcc?). That would be fine.

Bye Fridger

[ajtribick]

I would definitely be interested, and giving pointers which allow more people to contribute real-world data to Celestia can't be a bad thing can it?

EDIT - additional information requested by t00fri

I have experience with using GIMP and know the interface well. I do not have access to Photoshop.

[t00fri]

Hi all,

it looks as if I have to do some work .

I would urgently need some feeling about how many of you have no, little or much experience with image manipulation by means of GIMP and|or Photoshop. Perhaps the people who have announced their interest in writing could edit their posts, just adding something like

newbie, GIMP, PS
or
little practice with GIMP, none with PS
or vice versa
or
wizzard with GIMP, PS

Also I need to know your OS. Just add XP, Linux or OSX

Let's see whether something usable comes out of this.

In any case, I guess I will have to start by recapitulating some basics of image manipulation like

1) Image types: RGB, RGBA, Grayscale, Indexed
2) Tools, selections, feather edges,...
3) Layers & transparency
4) Filters, ..., frequent operations
...
Meanwhile, I will have some time trying to port the cylindrical projection software we shall need.

Perhaps you could install meanwhile: GIMP 2.x and ImageMagick and play a bit with these programs, if this is your first contact with them. Please install the /stable/ versions.

http://www.gimp.org
http://www.imagemagick.org/ImageMagick.html

GIMP and ImageMagick can be downloaded for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX!


Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

Can you run Windows command-line programs?
Do you have a compiler a board?

I don't think so... but Unix command-line yes.
For now I haven't but guess there is all I need in the dev tools from Apple...

But then you should have a Unix compiler (gcc?). That would be fine.

I looked around a bit, and it seems everything one needs (without me knowing anything at all) is available for Unix, which means we should be eable to use it...

Here??s imagemagick, both source and binary:
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binar ... .php?#unix
It turns out there are also UIs for it out there, though i don??t know how efficient those wuld be... The java version is probably the easiest one to get: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/api.php?
The OSX developer CD comes with Panther, and should have everything else, i think.

---

Fridger, i am most interested to follow your "course", not the least to get some practical experience configuring and playing with the software you are going to use... I hope you will include basic instructions for non-windows users, and maybe even take the time to answer a stupid question or two... (which will surely pop up) As for the GIMP, i don??t care which editor you write it for; principles are surely the same in Photoshop, and besides, that is not where i need to focus.

- rthorvald
Oh, OSX, Photoshop (professionaly). Ignorant at the command line.

[t00fri]

Runar,

great you are interested to participate in this 'tutorial venture'. I am sure you will be able to help a lot converting various GIMP commands into Photoshop! I know things quite well myself in principle, but actually remember many menue entries only if PS is in front of me. From Linux, it takes me a Windows reboot each time if I have to look something up...

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Hi all,

ElChristou just pointed me to a bug in the 'convert' tool from ImageMagick around version 5.5.7 (the version I have used up to now). There is another minor bug (or 'new feature') in the 'identify' tool of ImageMagick >= 5.5.7 that might interfere with my 'virtualtex' script <= version1.03.

The 'convert' bug crashes my virtualtex script when a tiling of a .JPG texture is requested in JPG format.

I have now downloaded version 6.1.8 (Linux) of ImageMagick which got the 'convert' bug fixed! So, please, install the actual stable version (either 6.1.8 or) 6.1.9.

I have also uploaded a slightly modified 'virtualtex', version 1.04 that adapts to the modification/bug of 'identify'.

You find my latest 'virtualtex-1.04' script here:

http://www.shatters.net/~t00fri/virtualtex

Also, until I am ready with the 'tutorial', you are invited to study the excellent examples of the new version 6.x of ImageMagick in
http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/graphics/imagick6/

Bye Fridger

[John Van Vliet]

hi i am not to shure about the convert bug seeing as i ported virtual texture to vips/nip (2.5 hours became 8 min.)

but seeing as i domped cygwin for mingw
i can see about doing a mingw build or vc++.net one for mmps and the project.exe

[t00fri]

hi i am not to shure about the convert bug seeing as i ported virtual texture to vips/nip (2.5 hours became 8 min.)

but seeing as i domped cygwin for mingw
i can see about doing a mingw build or vc++.net one for mmps and the project.exe

John,

are you saying that you might want to try compiling 'mmps' with vc++.net for Windows? That would be most helpful, since unfortunately my spare time is always too short...

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

I am sure you will be able to help a lot converting various GIMP commands into Photoshop!

Sure, i can take notes "in progress", and you can include them as footnotes or something, if you want.

BTW, have you decided on a format? Pdf, Word, HTML?

- rthorvald