Celestia Forums

i simply CANNOT get nebulae to work in celestia

its making me very frustrated

i extracted all the files to the right folders, but nothing shows up in celestia

i have no idea what im doing wrong

First we have to know which version of celestia u use.
Furthermore try to give some more detailed information about your computer-system (OS, graphics card, amount of RAM, directx installed? (which version), other drivers u have installed,.....)
Maybe we can help u then

There's also the question of *which* nebulae and which download kits you mean and exactly what procedures you followed to install them. Too often it's easy to overlook a critical step or to leave one out because "it can't possibly matter".

I just now downloaded and installed Rassilon's Rosetta Nebula (NGC 2237) to see if there was anything "obvious". It requires that you be running Celestia v1.3.0. DSC files (Deep Space Catalogs) are not recognized by v1.2.5.

1.3 prereleases can be downloaded now from http://www.shatters.net/celestia/files/, but the final version should be out very soon -- like before this weekend.

Added later:
If you already are running a 1.3 prerelease, make sure you have the Render View Options... manu item "Show Galaxies" checked. (or type a "u"). I keep forgetting that one myself.

I hope this helps.

Ok, i thought it would just be the fact that I didnt have the new version... but i downloaded it and it still doesnt work

My computer is a:

AMD Duron 1200+
512 M PC-133
NVidia Ge Force 2 GTS
DirectX 9
Windows XP

Ive tried NGC2244, and NGC1999... neither of them work

"they work fine for me".

My guess is that you're leaving out some installation step. Unfortunately, guessing what that might be would take forever. You'll have to specify exactly what procedure you're following to install the objects, step by step.

(Often when someone generates such a list they suddenly realize what was left out.)

well i downloaded the update

unzipped all the files to a temp folder

copied the meshes to the models folder

copied the textures to the medres folder

copied the DSE and SSE etc... to the extras folder

^^^^ That was me.... for some reason i wasnt logged in

Side comment:
Since you're running XP, there's no need to extract anything to a scratch directory. Just double click on the Zip folder. That'll open a new window showing the zip file contents. Then you can drag the files from there to the destination directories. XP treats Zip files as if they were compressed directories.

What you claim to be doing sounds right. However, you misspelled the filetypes. This suggests to me that you may be copying the wrong files to the wrong directories.

I'll spell out the steps in detail:

Download the Rosetta Nebula addon, which is NGC2237.ZIP
Double click on the Zip file NGC2237.ZIP.
A new window will open.

Locate the file "NGC2237.dsc"
Drag it to the directory "extras"

Locate the file "NGC2237.3DS"
Drag it to the directory "models"

Locate the file "rosetta.png"
Drag it to the directory "medres"
(Note to Linux users: Rassilon was careless with capitalization. You'll need to go through the text files and make them agree with the capitalizations actually used in the filenames. This doesn't matter under XP, which is case-insensitive.)

(Ignore the files NGC2244.stc and NGC2244-2.stc. They define a cluster of stars in the middle of the nebula and are not related to the problem.)

Then start Celestia.

Check to make sure it's v1.3: open the Help menu and select "About Celestia". A new window will open that says "Celestia v1.3.0" at the top-center.

Now: can you "goto" the nebula? i.e. is the nebula name known to Celestia? If not, then the problem is related to the .DSC file.

To test if Celestia knows the name, type the following sequence of commands:
[return] (Celestia will prompt with "Target name: " )
NGC2237[return] (no space between NGC and 2237)

If the .DSC file is OK, then the name will appear in the upper left corner of Celestia's window along with the distance (5500.000 ly). You have now "selected" NGC2237.

Make sure galaxy rendering is enabled:
Select the "Render" menu
Select the "View Options" item
in the new window:
check (select) the Show "Galaxies" box
also check (select) the Label "Galaxies" box
then select the [OK] box (NOT the [x] box at the top right)

Type the letter "c". Celestia will turn toward the object. It should pause briefly while it loads the texture. When the viewpoint finally stops turning, you should see a tiny pink blotch in the middle of the screen labeled "NGC2237" in yellow.
If there's no yellow label, then you did not select the "Label Galaxies" box properly and you probably didn't select the "Show Galaxies" box properly either.

If there is a yellow label but no pink blotch, then the problem is related to either the 3DS file or the png file. (I'd try editing the 3ds file to specify another texture to find out if it's the image file. You need a binary file editor like HexEdit to do that.)

Then type the letter "g". Celestia will take you to a position near the object.

I just tried this sequence of download, file-drags and commands on my system and it worked perfectly using WinNT, Celestia v1.3 and a Radeon 7000.

I hope this helps.

I had a lot of trouble getting a view of this nebula again with version 1.3.0.

What I did in the end was to effectively 'move' it. I cut and pasted from V380.ssc into the extrasolar.ssc like so:

# HD 92788 system
#
# M sin i = 3.86 Jupiters (Fischer et al)
# Han et al (2000) claim a mass of 54 Jupiters and inclination of 176 degrees
"b" "HD 92788"
{
Texture "gasgiant.jpg"
Mass 1200
Radius 70000

InfoURL "http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/HD92788.html"

# orbital data
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 0.9246
SemiMajorAxis 0.97
Eccentricity 0.27
}

RotationPeriod 10.0
}

"Reflection Nebula" "HD 92788"
{
Mesh "V380_neb.3DS"
Emissive true
Color [ 1 1 1 ]
Radius 10e12
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 100000
SemiMajorAxis 1e-6
Eccentricity 0
Inclination 0
}
RotationPeriod 5e24
Obliquity 90
Albedo 1
}

"V380 Ori" "HD 92788"
{
Texture "V380.jpg"
Emissive true
Color [ 1 1 1 ]
Radius 1050000
Atmosphere {
Height 1500000
Lower [ 0.88 1 0.88 ]
Upper [ 0.55 0.88 0.55 ]
Sky [ 0.55 0.88 0.55 ]
}
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 1000
SemiMajorAxis 1e-6
Eccentricity 0
Inclination 0
}
RotationPeriod 1000
Albedo 1
}

"Hathor" "HD 92788"
{
Texture "V380_vi.jpg"
Emissive true
Color [ 1 0.65 0 ]
Radius 1000000
Atmosphere {
Height 3000000
Lower [ 1 0.65 0 ]
Upper [ 1 0.5 0 ]
Sky [ 1 0.5 0 ]
}
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 0.3098
SemiMajorAxis 0.4578
Eccentricity 0.0002
Inclination 0.0044
MeanAnomaly 205.53
}
RotationPeriod 677.10
Obliquity -1.39
Albedo 0.55
}

and so on. It does work.

Regards...bh.

I found NGC 1999, it's at HIP 3000005 on my setup... try Nagivation/Select obect/NGC1999... I wil have to alter the ssc code for the system to get the surrounding planets and such.

It lies very close to praesepe's new nebula.

Regards...bh.

Big problem:

Selden, I downloaded & installed your example billboard.zip, and put it into the extras folder exactly as it should be. I opened Celestia, goto "billboard" & I can see the label but no texture. It's completely invisible.

Then, I brought in Rassilon's nebulae from the folder of version 1.2.5, and tried to run those, the same thing happened (the star cluser around rosetta did appear ok)

I tried modifying your billboard.3ds, still no change. I even copied all the files & put them in every extras folder, still no change. I changed the texture as well. No nebulas will appear for me in Celestia.

I have version 1.3.0 and this has never happened to me before, in 1.2.5 they worked fine (even in the 1.3.0 pre's they worked fine)

What am I doing wrong?!!!

Btw, I have P4 1.7, Geforce 4MX440, 127MB RAM.

It's probably something simple that I'm missing here...

Jack... keep trying. I'm sure they are there... it took me a while and alot of back tracking to find them. Have you tried the above 'Select object' method?

Type in NGC1999 and see what happens...

Many regards...bh.

Jack,

Did you try the Cel:// URLs on my Web page?
They should force all the settings to be right and should cause your copy of Celestia to generate exactly the same scenes as are shown in the snapshots. (Except for the yellowish Carina closeup.)

Are you using a GoTo or are you looking at the object telescopically from the Solar System?

What I usually do manually is to use the C (center) and T (track) commands after typing in the object name. Then I crank up the magnification with the , (comma) key. I think I need to change my addon-intro page to suggest doing this instead of a GoTo.

Also try toggling "Show Galaxies" by typing the u key.

I've found that Celestia seems to be overshooting in some cases when I use a GoTo with a Billboard. After a GoTo, try the C or T command. Also, if you're too close in the "wrong" direction, Celestia thinks you're inside the billboard object. In that case, Celestia clips the object in different ways, sometimes not drawing it at all. depending on exactly where you are. In that case, you'll have to back away from the object before you can see it.

I hope this helps a little.

I've updated the billboard page at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/billboard.html to include some visual descriptions of where the files should be, using the new Celestia v1.3.0 directory structure.

See, for example, section 5.1 at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/billboard.html#5.1
Scroll down to its end, just above section 5.2.

selden wrote:Did you try the Cel:// URLs on my Web page?

Yes, and still nothing appears

selden wrote:Are you using a GoTo or are you looking at the object telescopically from the Solar System?

I used a goto, that didnt work, then I tried looking at it telescopically, and neither worked. I even changed the location to 300ly from the sun, shrank the radius to 5ly, and still nothing appeared.

selden wrote:Also try toggling "Show Galaxies" by typing the u key.

This is the first thing I thought of that could be wrong, and it was turned off, but even when it's on it makes no difference.

It's definitely not overshooting, because i've tried it with other nebulae, what i did was open celestia, without doing anything first i just centered & followed ngc2237 or 1999, and zoom in on it using the home key.

selden wrote:I've updated the billboard page at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/billboard.html to include some visual descriptions of where the files should be, using the new Celestia v1.3.0 directory structure.

The files are all in the proper places as you list on the above page still no improvement...

There are 2 reasons why i'm REALLY annoyed about this:
1. They used to all work perfectly before

2. I've made a load of my own nebula textures for celestia & now i cant test them out....

If anyone can think of anything i'd be really grateful...

Celestia treats planetary objects somewhat differently from DSC objects. Maybe you can use that to test things.

Several of the asteroids in the solar system use 3ds meshes.
You might try substituting one of your nebular meshes for one of them.

e.g.
put the 3ds model in the main models directory
put its image in the main textures/medres directory
change the name of the eros model to use your model instead.

Then you should be able to use control-W to turn wire-frame on and off, for example.

( I haven't actually tried this just yet.)

This is really strange... I tried substituting the billboard.3ds with other 3ds's and I couldn't see anything, but when i substituted asteroid.cms, this happened:

It's a very faint ghostly image of an asteroid, (very hard to see) but when I move to the "front" of it (the side facing the sun) it dissapears. This was as close as I could get to the front before it went off.

Also, I installed your billboard.zip into my old version of celestia 1.3.0 pre5, and it worked perfectly...


I can use version 1.3.0pre5 for testing out the nebula textures, i forgot I still had it.

Jack,

If you really want to run 1.3.0 final, I'd suggest installing it from scratch in a new directory and just flushing the current copy entirely.

I think that if 1.3.0pre5 is OK for you, it'd probably be best if you could wait for 1.3.1pre1. Hopefully that version will fix the various shader bugs that sneaked into 1.3.0 final. And maybe include Lua

Of course, you do still have the option of installing 1.3.0pre6. That did fix several bugs in pre5 (and brought back a minor menu bug).