Great Textures

[Deep Space Fox]

Guys,

I need some guidelines on how to install textures, I've been trying the whole evening yesterday and I did not manage to make it, and I know how to use a damn PC, so you can speak technically, should be fine.

The thing is that I downloaded 32k mars textures found in textures forum (http://www.electronics.dit.ie/dbrady/celestia/index.htm , 182mb compressed). Unrared it, takes 682mb and i've got directories with these type of files =>
1 .ssc file, 1 .ctx file (that references a directory supposed to contain images), and the DDS files all inside a '\MarsnormalmapDXT3\textures\medres\level3' directory (about 120 files, each 5.9mb, so in total => 682mb).

I don't manage to make them appear in Celestia. No clue how to tell the prog to cuse the bunch of files within that directory.. or even how to use the SSC file or the CTX...
Do I need to change things in solarsys.ssc? anywhere else?
I do not even know where all files should be put... sometimes I'm told to unrar everything in Extra, but then what? Nothing comes out, I still see my old crappy textured Mars...

Help please... when I see some galleries you guys made, I wanna cry... and I want to see that too....
graphic card won't be an issue (radeon 9800 pro, should be allright)

Thanks a lot in advance,
Fox.

[TERRIER]

Hello D S F

I've just put an answer to someone else's question, in another part of the forum that concerns this texture. Here is what I wrote;

My description may sound a bit over simplified, but this is for the benefit of any new users who may also be having a problem.

I'm running mine as an alternate texture with the following SSC which I have called 'Mars(D.Brady).ssc'; (It can be called anything you want!)

Code:
AltSurface "Mars(D.Brady)" "Sol/Mars"
{
Texture "MarsFlat.ctx"
NormalMap "MarsNormalMapDXT3.ctx"

Color [ 1 0.75 0.7 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.45
Radius 3396 # equatorial
# Oblateness 0.0069

}


I've got everything placed in my main EXTRAS directory inside a file called
'Mars(D.Brady)' - again it can be called anything you want.
Inside this I have placed the above SSC file, and also have a 'TEXTURES' file as well.
Inside the TEXTURES file there is another file called 'MEDRES' where I have placed the CTX file 'MarsFlat.ctx';
Code:
VirtualTexture
{
ImageDirectory "MarsFlat"
BaseSplit 0
TileSize 256
TileType "dds"
}


also inside the 'MEDRES' file is another file that contains the actual texture tiles called 'MarsFlat' which the CTX file refers to.

Inside the 'MarsFlat' file are the individual tile files for levels 0 to 4. I have also added empty files for levels 5 to 10 in case of (hopefully )any future expansion to this texture.

Please note that because I am not running this as my main texture, my main solarsys.ssc has not been altered in any way from it's previous definition. But it might be worth checking that the filenames for your SSC and CTX files for your main texture and alternate texture are not clashing.

The normalmap I am using is also from D.Brady's site and I have simply put all the files for this(CTX and texture level files) inside a file called 'MarsNormalMapDXT3' and then put this into my main TEXTURES/MEDRES file.

hope this helps?

Merry Xmas
TERRIER

[Deep Space Fox]

Hey Thanks Terrier for the answer,

I'm gonna try that as soon as I get home (stil at work now..).

so apparently the filenames do no matter, whatever name you give the files, Celestia will find them and use them appropriatly, right?

last but not least, is version 1.3 mandatory? I guess I'm using 1.3.0... dled from celastia official site though

Tx again! and merry xmas to You!

[selden]

DSF,

Virtual textures require Celestia v1.3.1 prerelease 9 or later.
They don't work with v1.3.0 as found on SourceForge.

Prereleases are available on Shatters.net.
See the "preliminary user's FAQ" Question/Answer #3.
Or you can (in principle) build a copy from the source code CVS archive that's on SourceForge.

The official release of v1.3.1 is RealSoonNow.
My personal guess is it'll be available in a couple of weeks.

[DSF]

Thanks man,

I'm downloading now pre 11.
Iave been trying again and up to now no good results... I still have the same mars.. the original.
I'm really wondering how celestia would pick up the files in the extra dir instead of the original 'jpg' in the textures dir.
what makes him choose from one or the other...I wonder..

I've got 900mb or so of mars, I suppose the difference in quality will be more than just noticeable

hope I'll manage

tx for advice


[/img]

[selden]

DSF,

Celestia expects the "addons" folders to be organized in a particular tree structure within the "extras" folder. It looks through them for all the catalog files it can find (SSC, STC and DSC) and loads the textures that they specify.

Please take a look at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/addon-intro.html. It tries to explain how addons work.

[DSF]

I managed to change to the alternate textures now, but still I'm pretty sure that's not the best ones yet...

I'm reading the stuff you told me, that's fine now. Everything thus remains in nicely organised folders within the 'extra' dir.

what I'm not sure I understand is what textures it'll display from the different "level" dirs.... coz now it's seems bit poor, which makes me think I'm vizualising level0 textures... but maybe I'm completely wrong..
I compared to D.Brady's screenshots, and well his are still far better (I find), although I dled everything from his page.

shouldn't it take a bit of time to load the textures then? when I swap from "normal" to 'marsnormaldxt3', it doesn't take a second and it's there... pretty quick for that much amount of file...

thanks again for your help, i'm very grateful!

[selden]

DSF,

The primary purpose of virtual textures is that they're much faster because Celestia doesn't have to load all of them. It only loads the ones covering the area that you can see. This also reduces the amount of memory that has to be used in your graphics card.

I think the easiest way to check that the virtual textures are working is to start out using the "normal" texture. Get close to some area on the surface -- like the Mississippi delta. It'll be quite blurry. Then switch to the appropriate alternate texture. The image should suddenly become much sharper. The coloration is somewhat different, too.

Does this help?

[DSF]

http://fr.f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fredwens/album?.dir=/Celestia&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//fr.f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fredwens/my_photos

check this out, that's what I have

looks like he's only taking the 'flatmars' one, not the ultra deep textures from 'MarsNormalMapDxt3'

......

[selden]

DSF,

Don't forget that "normal" maps control the apparent slope (and thus shading due to shadows) of the surface, they aren't images of the surface coloration.

You might want to compare the RedMars maps, which are available on the NASA Celestia server at http://exp.arc.nasa.gov/downloads/celestia/extras/. They're probably similar resolution, but the coloration is quite different.

[DSF]

big thanks again!

well, I've installed the blumarble for the earth and with that one I can really see the difference when zooming...

when I do that on mars for example on the olympus mountain or the sort of canyons, it remains blurry, so it makes me think that one fails somewhere...

I'm almost there, earth is fine, so...

[DSF]

yes I made it, found what was wrong with mars.

Cool it's really nice now when zooming, at least I feel the PC does something and it really gets better.

One more strange thing though, I do as you said to check wether the changes work, so I stay on a place, and switch between normal and 'MarsNormalMapDxt3' textures. When I do this, is seems it shows me another place of the planet....
When doing this with the earth I remain at the exact same place but not on Mars, any idea?

[selden]

DSF,

I haven't done much with the Mars maps. I suspect that whoever created them might have used misaligned maps. This happened often in the past before Celestia was standardized. Celestia now requires that surface maps have 0 degrees of longitude in the center of the map and 180 degrees of longitude at the edges. In combination with the SSC orientation values, this results in the models of the planets showing the correct face when compared to precisely timed astronomical photographs. Unfortunately, many maps available on the Web were created with 0 degrees of longitude at the edges and 180 degrees in the center, so that they have to be modified for use with Celestia (they need to be cut in two and the halves swapped).

In principle this can be fixed by renaming the virtual texture files "appropriately". This should be easy for the first level (switch the names) and maybe the second level, but it'd be more of a chore for the higher resolution levels. Even so, renaming would be a lot quicker than regenerating the maps from scratch.

Does this help?

[danielj]

I did exactly like below,but now MARS 16 VT is a grey orb with specular lightning.In certain angles,the Sun texture appear in MARS.This is weird,isn?t it?I am using Celestia 1.3.1 pre 11

Hello D S F

I've just put an answer to someone else's question, in another part of the forum that concerns this texture. Here is what I wrote;

My description may sound a bit over simplified, but this is for the benefit of any new users who may also be having a problem.

I'm running mine as an alternate texture with the following SSC which I have called 'Mars(D.Brady).ssc'; (It can be called anything you want!)

Code:
AltSurface "Mars(D.Brady)" "Sol/Mars"
{
Texture "MarsFlat.ctx"
NormalMap "MarsNormalMapDXT3.ctx"

Color [ 1 0.75 0.7 ]
HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.45
Radius 3396 # equatorial
# Oblateness 0.0069

}


I've got everything placed in my main EXTRAS directory inside a file called
'Mars(D.Brady)' - again it can be called anything you want.
Inside this I have placed the above SSC file, and also have a 'TEXTURES' file as well.
Inside the TEXTURES file there is another file called 'MEDRES' where I have placed the CTX file 'MarsFlat.ctx';
Code:
VirtualTexture
{
ImageDirectory "MarsFlat"
BaseSplit 0
TileSize 256
TileType "dds"
}


also inside the 'MEDRES' file is another file that contains the actual texture tiles called 'MarsFlat' which the CTX file refers to.

Inside the 'MarsFlat' file are the individual tile files for levels 0 to 4. I have also added empty files for levels 5 to 10 in case of (hopefully )any future expansion to this texture.

Please note that because I am not running this as my main texture, my main solarsys.ssc has not been altered in any way from it's previous definition. But it might be worth checking that the filenames for your SSC and CTX files for your main texture and alternate texture are not clashing.

The normalmap I am using is also from D.Brady's site and I have simply put all the files for this(CTX and texture level files) inside a file called 'MarsNormalMapDXT3' and then put this into my main TEXTURES/MEDRES file.

hope this helps?

Merry Xmas
TERRIER

[DSF]

Hey Selden,

you're a master man!
I eventually managed to display everything as I wanted it...
And honest, my Celestia looks very nice now, although not yet finished.
I'm trying to get the nicest textures I can find, need to use my ATI 9800 pro a little bit

So, Earth and Mars are superb, I should start registering and have my own gallery if that's still possible. I'll have a look.

Celestia is quite new to me, but I'm really getting on with it, and I really lke it.
I've been readin your guide many times, for adding galaxies and so on, it's nicely done, good work. I'm impressed by all the work that's being done for Celestia, really.

Anyway, I've got some other questions, but will post them into separate stuff, not to mix things to much.

Thanks again Everyone for these wonderful day dreams!