Celestia Forums

I don`t have a powerful PC or graphics card but these amateur images I made are OK for my own personal enjoyment. I make my own planet templates and superimpose a landsat image to get the topography. I use Celestia to spherize it and add clouds. They are in my textures-medres-level0 directory.

I`d value your opinions on:-
1) The colours of land and water. Is the blue realistic (earthlike)?

http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/9928 ... rrapn7.jpg


2) Is the topography realistic? It`s quality has faded somewhat from the original. I added a gaussian blur to the water which soften the edges of land.

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/7376 ... ekybl7.jpg


3) Are my nightlights OK? Too bright? Too white? I can add as few or as many as I like.

http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/5649 ... htspk8.jpg


4) Is this a nice pic or what?

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/3916 ... idewf9.jpg


I`m not sure my spec/bump maps are showing too well,if at all. Maybe I did something wrong. Anyway,thanks for any comments - good or not too unreasonably bad I hope .

I rather like your texture. Could you possibly post an image of just the texture? It would make it easier to make a few comments. But what I can see, I like.

What is the resolution? 2k? 1k?

...John...

Dollan wrote:I rather like your texture. Could you possibly post an image of just the texture? It would make it easier to make a few comments. But what I can see, I like.

What is the resolution? 2k? 1k?

...John...

Thanks John. I`ve enjoyed your work ever since I discovered Celestia. I got the image from Visible Earth. It`s kinda cheating but it gives me the results I like. I re-scaled it from the original which was larger. My image is 1k res.

I downloaded one of your add-ons and see most of the textures are 2048x1024. I will work on 2k and hope it improves my images.

Thanks for your comments.
Dave F

Okay, I see why it looked fuzzy to me, yeah. But still, I like the effect you've garnered here. A warm and aris world, but yet with large oceans. I think this is a great start, and moving up to 2k textures can only be an improvement!

And frankly, I don't see such sampling as cheating. Using various methods, from cloning to simple regional sampling, I tend to use a lot of images located at The Earth Observatory. I then go into either Paintshop Pro or Photoshop and do some color correcting, as well as selective editing to remove most or all man-made artifacts (roads, towns, etc.). And, frankly, I'm still learning a lot. I only wish I had more time to devote to Celestia.

Can't wait to see new versions of this! And I like that last shot a lot. But then, I have this weakness for planetary images with accompanying moons....

...John...

Hi Dave,

These are nice images, they remind me of the old Skylab footage, kind of slightly washed out... or old film print.

Even though I 'in principle' know what you have done, and Dollan, and others , I have never attempted doing something like this myself, well done

Dollan, just a question on your method , you say you colour correct your images, do you work off a template i.e colour chart? or just go by instinct?
just curious...

Cheers

Osmium

Dave F wrote:3) Are my nightlights OK? Too bright? Too white? I can add as few or as many as I like.

I think they are a bit bright, yes. Compare them to "earthnight.jpg" in your standard installation. Many night lights on that Earth map are rendered as shades of grey, not brilliant white.

I like the textures, by the way, I think they are well done. I like seeing other people's work.

Yes...they look very nice Dave.

osmium wrote:...Dollan, just a question on your method , you say you colour correct your images, do you work off a template i.e colour chart? or just go by instinct? just curious...

For the most part, just by instinct. In PSP there is a nice function called the one-step image correction tool, or some such thing. Usually, if I have an image with high color, utilizing this will alter its appearace sufficiently to put a nice spin on a new appearance. But more often than not, I simply eyeball it. Of course, half of the job is to see what the thing looks like in Celestia, especially once a cloud layer is on top of it, and a haze layer is put in place.

Using the haze function (which apparently doesn't work with all video cards; Selden would probably know why and which ones) can really put some nice finishing touches on a planet, I think.

...John...

A couple of png`s at 2048 res which I put in my textures/medres/level 0 folder. Don`t yet know how to make 8 tiled images for level 1. Added new topography and the quality improved IMHO. Guess these will do until I learn more stuff. Hope you like them.
Dave F