Celestia Forums

So I have this code, and I have made all the texture files and put them in 'medres' and yet all that happens is I get a white sphere for 'Hecarro' and "Hecaroo Minor', its moon, isn't there at all, nor is the moon "Hecarro Station". And belive me, the texture for Hecaroo isn't pure white. So what can I do? I have the code here, mostly it was just copying/pasting other code. And how can I make it so that Hecaroo is orbiting HIP 70602 AT 10,000,000 km? Hecaroo Minor orbiting Hecaroo at 1,000 KM? Hecaroo Station orbiting Hecaroo Minor at 100 KM? And could someone please tell me how to make my own star? I'm sorry... I'm new at this solor system creation thing...

"Hecaroo" "HIP 70602"
{
Texture "Hecarro.jpg"
HazeColor [ 0.4 0.45 0.5 ]
HazeDensity 0.2

Radius 1023
Oblateness 0.064

EllipticalOrbit {
Period 1.0000
SemiMajorAxis 1.0000
Eccentricity 0.0167
Inclination 0.0001
AscendingNode 348.739
LongOfPericenter 102.947
MeanLongitude 100.46
}

RotationPeriod 39.92425
Obliquity 12.08
LongOfRotationAxis 262.78

Albedo 0.4
}

"Hecaroo Minor" "HIP 70602/Hecarro"
{
Texture "Hecaroominor.jpg"
Radius 102

EllipticalOrbit {
Period 55.822
SemiMajorAxis 64333
Eccentricity 0.3234
Inclination -02.98
MeanLongitude 155.568
}
RotationPeriod 19
Albedo 0.4
}

"Hecaroo Station" "HIP 70602/Hecarro/Hecaroo Minor"
{
Texture "Hecaroostation.jpg"
Radius 2

# Launched Feb 20, 1962, 9:47:49am EST
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 0.06144
SemiMajorAxis 6587 # perigee 100 miles, apogee 160 miles
Eccentricity 0.00737
Inclination 32.54
AscendingNode 329
ArgOfPericenter 96
MeanAnomaly 287
}

Albedo 0.10
}
-Luke Vyrm
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000

I changed line 3 of my code to

Texture "Hecaroo.jpg"

And my planet has texture! but I'm still having problems with Hecaroo Minor and Station...

Luke Vyrm wrote:I changed line 3 of my code to

Texture "Hecaroo.jpg"

And my planet has texture! but I'm still having problems with Hecaroo Minor and Station...

That's because you have the Hecarro/Hecaroo misspelling in several other places . . .

--Chris

I'm a terrible speller. Thanks.

Okay, now everthig is all working, for the most part. Thank you, Chris!
Tomorrow I'll post the textures and .ssc file, but untill then, I have some shots of Hecaroo, it's moon and station. They're at
http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000/H ... ystem.html
I've got the objects where I want them, but i'd still like to know how to make my own star...
-Luke Vyrm
http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000

well (assuming that may not have fixed it/you will need to know this anyway) all textures must be a power of two. I.E. 2x4, 4x8, 8x16, 16x32, 32x64, 64x128, 128x256, 256x512, 512x1024, 1024x2048, ect...

Luke,

Add-on stars can be defined for Celestia 1.2.5 in a text file in the "extras" subdirectory which has the filetype of ".STC". Thomis Guilpain has written an English Web page that describes the declarations that can be used in an .STC file at http://members.fortunecity.com/guilpain/index_uk.htm (There's a French version, too.)

Celestia keeps track of stars by their "Hipparcos number".
Add-on stars should use numbers between 400,000 and 1,000,000,000 (without the commas).

This is because the official Hipparcos database uses index numbers up through 359083 and Pascal Hartmann generated an add-on database for Celestia from the Hipparcos and Tycho datasets of about 2,000,000 real stars. He encoded the Tycho numbers so that they start at 1,000,000,000.. See http://perso.wanadoo.fr/celestia.stars/index.html

As an example, Rassilon has created several stellar (ahem) addons. See http://www.shatters.net/~rassilon/ Some of his systems are numbered starting at 300,000. The actual stars in that index range aren't currently availbale for Celestia.

I hope this helps.

All right, here it is, My Solor System, at "F Boo". Tell me what you think of it...
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000/VyrmSystem.zip
Also, selden, for telling my how to make my own stars. I still don't get it, but... Ho well...
-Luke Vyrm
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000

Luke,

What is it that you don't understand?
I can't improve my explanations if you don't tell me!
Maybe if you rephrase your question, it'll help me to understand where we're not connecting.

Remember that Celestia is, at its roots, an astronomy display program, so you have to define many things using the terminology that astronomers use. That's often not easy. (Also, Celestia has some builtin assumptions that can get in the way.)

A suggestion for your .Zip file: it'd be somewhat more convenient if you created it with the files in appropriate directories (folders) so that the user doesn't have to move the files manually.

Also, the surface texture for the station seems to be reversed. On my system the station name is backward when seen from the outside.

(p.s. As I suspect you noticed, the geometry of your surface textures isn't quite right. Each horizontal row in a surface texture image corresponds to a line of latitude. As you get closer to the poles of a planet, which are the top and botoom of the surface map, the length of the latitudes get shorter. You have to compensate for this in the image by stretching them out more as you get closer and closer to the top and bottom. There are photoshop plugins that can distort images appropriately. Flaming Pear's "Flexify" is one example.)

Luke,

Overall, I think your designs are rather good. The "cartoon" design is quite a contrast to the "photorealistic" designs of most add-ons.

That's weird...The texture works pefectly with me... perhaps you saw it upside down? What am I talking about- there's no upside down in space, it's all a matter of perspective. Anyway, if this should fix your problem. Also, It fixes the problem with the white space north and south of the docking bay doors.
http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000/HTexture.html

As for my problem with stars, my code is this:
# Sisyphus
402040 {
        RA 1643
        Dec -2345
        Distance 100023
        SpectralType "D"
        AppMag 17
}
As of right now, I'm just trying to see if I can get a star to appear, yet It doesn't. Celestia doesn't read HIP 402040.
-Luke Vyrm
http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000

Thanks for the complement, Selden.

Luke,

Yup. That fixed the lettering!

In general, the orientation should be the same whether you're using a separate JPEG viewer or Celestia. It's just that Celestia wraps the picture around a sphere (or whatever other object it's being applied to) so you can't see as much of the image at one time.

Celestia does have a bug when applying textures to 3DS objects. They get "turned inside out" as if projected through the center of the object onto the opposite side. That shouldn't be the case for the default spherical bodies used for planets and moons, though.

What kind of graphics card do you use? I'm wondering if it might be a rendering bug that is different for different cards. I have an Nvidia Ti 4200.

Luke,

I think the problem with your star definition is in its coordinates:
the values are all way too big.

RA (Right Ascension) goes from 0 to 24. It's measured in hours, just like time. The measurement comes from how the sky rotates as the earth turns under it. Just put a decimal point after either the 1 or the 6, depending on where you want it to be in the sky.

Dec (declination) goes from -90 to + 90. It's measured in degrees, just like latitude on the Earth. 0 is at the equator. +90 indicates that the object is above the north pole. -90 is the south pole. Again, just put a decimal point after the first or second digit.

You can turn on "Celestial Grid" to see where the hours and degrees are on the sky. It's in the menu "Render", item "View Options". (If the letteing is too tiny to read, you can change the font by editing the file "celestia.cfg".)

Also, the distance is in light years and should be kept less than 64000. That's due to a limitation in current graphics cards and how Celestia uses their Z buffers. Again, just stick in a decimal point anywhere, depending on how far away you want it to be.

I hope this clarifies things a little.

now the code is
# Sisyphus
402040 {
        RA 12
        Dec -78
        Distance 640
        SpectralType "D"
        AppMag 16
}
in the file 'Sysyphus.stc' in 'Extras'.
It still dosen't work...
Perhaps I should stick to pre-built stars, there are more than enough of them, after all...
Thanks for all your help, though, Selden!
-Luke Vyrm
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000

Luke,

Your new STC file works fine for me!

Did you remember to change all of the references in the .SSC file?

Here's a picture of what I see.


(This is a link to a bigger picture)

Be sure to put both the stc and ssc files in the extras folder and change 70602 into 402040 in 3 places in the ssc file.

Here's one way to get there (you also can use Navigation browser menus, too)
start celestia
type a "return"
type "HIP 402040" (without the quotes, with the space) and "return"
information about the star should appear at the top left
type a "c" (watch the sky swirl)
type a "g" (fly past the stars)
adjust viewpoint appropriately.

You're right, though, there are plenty of stars in the known universe you can use. For example, there are lots of stars where we now know there are planets. Yours could be one of them!

Selden:What kind of graphics card do you use? I'm wondering if it might be a rendering bug that is different for different cards.

well, my graphics card is GEforceMX or something like that...

-Luke Vyrm
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000[/quote]

Luke,

I mentioned earlier, but in more detail, I have a GeForce4 Ti 4200 (128MB). I'm running Celestia v1.2.5 under Windows XP Pro SP1 on a 500MHz P3 with Nvidia's Detonator v40.72 drivers.

I'm not sure you've said which version of Celestia you're running.
I could be wrong, but I think that STC files may need v1.2.5 for them to work properly. The different models of cards affect some features of how the images are drawn (like ring shadows, specular reflections and texture sizes). Celestia's various control files should work with all of them.

I belive that I'm running v1.2.5 ... I'll just wait 'till aa new version of Celestia comes out so I'll be able to tell if it's my .stc file, or the current version of Celestia.

-Luke Vyrm
Http://www.geocities.com/lukevyrm2000
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