Bumpmapping cloud layers

Post #1by **t00fri** » 15.05.2002, 20:31

Here is a new nice game to play for 'GIMPers' and 'PHOTOSHOPers': Clouds get a very natural 'fluffy' look if they are bumpmapped. Here is what I did (GIMP):

Take some nice grayscale (e.g. 2K) image of your clouds and blur it with a blur radius of ~10-15 pixels. Take this as a bumpmap file in Filters/Map/bump map. Switch on light compensation, take a depth of 5-10 depending on taste and GO.

It's fun and looks great;-)

Of course, you should also map the grey scales of your clouds to shades of blue with white remaining the brightest.

It is also very nice for the /moving/ upper white cloud belts of Jupiter...

Bye Fridger

Avetikus · Post #2by **Avetikus** » 26.05.2002, 18:40

I saw the images in the Bruckner's Gallery. Beautiful.

What size are your .dds files for Earth, and is there anything special you have to do to Celestia to get it to go?

I'm using a GeForce3 ti200/amd 1400+. Ought to be able to do this, but when I swap in earth (bumped) i end up with a nice, round ball.. wihtout texture.

Are the files too big to put up for d/l?

M Rodriguez

Post #3by **t00fri** » 26.05.2002, 19:51

Avetikus wrote:I saw the images in the Bruckner's Gallery. Beautiful.

What size are your .dds files for Earth, and is there anything special you have to do to Celestia to get it to go?

I'm using a GeForce3 ti200/amd 1400+. Ought to be able to do this, but when I swap in earth (bumped) i end up with a nice, round ball.. wihtout texture.

Are the files too big to put up for d/l?

M Rodriguez

Of all the experiments I did with textures, perhaps surprisingly, the clouds involved most work of all. Good clouds are somehow hard;-) despite the fact that resolution here is not a major issue...

When you get an untextured display there are several obvious possibilities:

1) you forgot to change solarsys.ssc according to your new file type (.png, .dds).

2) something went wrong with your alpha channel. You did not tell whether you made .dds files. If yes, you /must/ request -dxt3 (NOT -dxt1a) as file type otherwise there will not be an 8bit alpha channel!

My 8k dxt3 earth.dds is 44.7 MB long. You only have to adapt the new file type in solarsys.ssc. That's all...

Good Luck,

Bye Fridger

Avetikus · Post #4by **Avetikus** » 27.05.2002, 03:40

ah, no. I didn't combine them myself.

I downloaded a few files that I found links to here in the forums.. some alpha bumped ones by Pixel.

Bah.. perhaps I should just wait for the 'released' package. I still have fun using the 8k earthmap and looking at the places I've been. /shrug

M Rodriguez

Avetikus · Post #5by **Avetikus** » 04.06.2002, 21:55

Ah-ha!

I found a file that worked on my system without having to compile one myself. I'm using "EarthAlphaBumped8k" and it's like night and day compared to the original (but less bulky) file. I guess the oddball alpha channel in the other file was throwing my card.

Now to find a bump mapped cloud layer for Earth and Jupiter..

M Rodriguez

Mikeydude750 · Post #6by **Mikeydude750** » 05.06.2002, 01:59

Um, I was wondering if a GeForce 2 MX 200 32 MB PCI card could support DXT3 compression. Could you tell me if it can?

(NOTE: The card can only hold textures up to 2048x2048)

Post #7by **chris** » 05.06.2002, 04:54

All GeForce cards support DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 texture compression.

--Chris

Mikeydude750 · Post #8by **Mikeydude750** » 06.06.2002, 04:22

Ok, but can my card support any DXT3 texture greater than 2048^2(2048x2048)?(heheh...nice use of powers, eh?)

Post #9by **chris** » 06.06.2002, 05:56

Mikeydude750 wrote:Ok, but can my card support any DXT3 texture greater than 2048^2(2048x2048)?(heheh...nice use of powers, eh?)

Probably not . . . and no consumer graphics card that I know of can support textures larger than 4096x4096. But Celestia will automatically split planet textures into chunks that your graphics card can handle . . . So the 8192x4096 DXT1 compressed Earth texture will get split into 8 (2 rows, 4 columns each) 2048x2048 textures.

--Chris

Mikeydude750 · Post #10by **Mikeydude750** » 06.06.2002, 15:45

chris wrote:
Mikeydude750 wrote:Ok, but can my card support any DXT3 texture greater than 2048^2(2048x2048)?(heheh...nice use of powers, eh?)
Probably not . . . and no consumer graphics card that I know of can support textures larger than 4096x4096. But Celestia will automatically split planet textures into chunks that your graphics card can handle . . . So the 8192x4096 DXT1 compressed Earth texture will get split into 8 (2 rows, 4 columns each) 2048x2048 textures.

--Chris

Weird. Then how come my card can't handle a 4k Earth Texture smaller than 32MB?

It displays a texture-less globe.

Post #11by **chris** » 06.06.2002, 16:34

Mikeydude750 wrote:Weird. Then how come my card can't handle a 4k Earth Texture smaller than 32MB?

If this 4K Earth texture is DXT3 compressed, then it should work fine--it should be 10 megs with mipmaps. What's the file size?

--Chris

Post #12by **t00fri** » 06.06.2002, 16:34

Mikeydude750 wrote:
chris wrote:
Mikeydude750 wrote:Ok, but can my card support any DXT3 texture greater than 2048^2(2048x2048)?(heheh...nice use of powers, eh?)
Probably not . . . and no consumer graphics card that I know of can support textures larger than 4096x4096. But Celestia will automatically split planet textures into chunks that your graphics card can handle . . . So the 8192x4096 DXT1 compressed Earth texture will get split into 8 (2 rows, 4 columns each) 2048x2048 textures.

--Chris
Weird. Then how come my card can't handle a 4k Earth Texture smaller than 32MB?

It displays a texture-less globe.

Sorry for asking, but is the filename correctly entered in solarsys.ssc? Do you have an earth.dds file also in the medres folder, in case your 4k texture is in the hires one??

Bye Fridger