Celestia Forums

[awe]Gasp![/awe] I even see cloud shadows!

Actually, I always thought the default cloud texture height (5km?) is high. I take it this is a flexible thing for the add on? I'd like to lower the clouds to 500m.

Spiff.

Cloud hieght is completly up to the users choice.

Don. Edwards

Ok here are 16 more pictures. These are of the 16k version of the texture. The above shot were of the 8k. I did a few close-ups to show surface detail and full global coverage without clouds and the exact same region with the cloudmap.


















































More info, I ended up needing to create an all new specmap. Somehow all the oceans drifted south by 3 pixels making a mass of things. The new one lines up much better anyway. Also the pictures were taken using the new 16k normalmap, although I am not sure I am to pleased with it, so I may rebuild it all over again. I also found a few errors in the main 16k texture that didn't so in the 8k version, so I will be pitting it under the knife to fix these little glitches. I might add that there are absolutly no sign of my old nemisis the polar pinching, its all smooth as glass. So in the end it souldn't add much in the way of time to the release date.

Oh and I am not going to give a date, if I do it will end up not being met anyway.

As always your coments are welcome.

Don. Edwards

Don, incredibly beautiful, as all the things you realize.
IMO this is your best one, I have difficulties to believe that it's a man made job and not pictures taken by a spacecraft.
Very appreciated, thanks a lot, waiting for final release!
Bye

Andrea

Don, the only tittle thing to polish are perhaps a few rivers; in those shoots some seems to be too "sharp" (spec map?), to neat (design too simple), they need a few more affluent I think...
For the rest, no words!

Rivers are flat out the hardest thing to create. Its hard to make then seem to be flowing in a realistic way, it hard to make there color right. Its also a subtle balancing act to keep them visible but not to noticeable. I do know there are a few that are standing out a bit to much. I will need to go back and adjust them in the specmap. There aren't nearly as many as I wanted, but as I said, its not easy making them look real. But I will try a bit more.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Rivers are flat out the hardest thing to create. Its hard to make then seem to be flowing in a realistic way, it hard to make there color right. Its also a subtle balancing act to keep them visible but not to noticeable. I do know there are a few that are standing out a bit to much. I will need to go back and adjust them in the specmap. There aren't nearly as many as I wanted, but as I said, its not easy making them look real. But I will try a bit more.

Oh, don't worry, we can easily believe you about the problem of such subtleties... Just look at the amazon, some affluent are only visible because of the spec map...

Now IMHO, the whole (great) work deserve without doubt a few hours more on this...

Those are possibly some of the best Celestia images I've seen, by far.

Amazing work!

Hey Fridger,

The Ancient Mars texture is another project alltogether. It was incepted the time this one was but I haven't touched that texture at all. That texture will have the more brown clored water and I will be going through and removing allot of craters. I wish there was a way of reorienting the texture to move the poles but I am afriad that is well beyond my skills.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Rivers are flat out the hardest thing to create. Its hard to make then seem to be flowing in a realistic way, it hard to make there color right. Its also a subtle balancing act to keep them visible but not to noticeable. I do know there are a few that are standing out a bit to much. I will need to go back and adjust them in the specmap. There aren't nearly as many as I wanted, but as I said, its not easy making them look real. But I will try a bit more.

Don. Edwards

Rivers could be made with some sort of Photoshop lightning plugin filter as here: (just an example of the visual potentiality)

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/corel/ ... htning.htm

but no one is freeware.

The discussion of cratering and crater ages has been moved to
Crater formation and erosion in the
Physics and Astronomy forum.

Time for more pictures. These are of the present working citylights texture.
Enjoy!



















I took all of these with just enough ambient light so that some of the surface detail and coastal areas can be seem as well as the lights.
As always comments are welcome.

Don. Edwards

Don, is this not a bit too systematic? or you have in mind a special storyline to explain the regularity of habitat along the shores?

This is just the early stages of the texture. I will be going through and knocking out some of the cities along the shorelines. But As on Earth humans tend to congregate near and around water sources. So there would naturally be allot of city lights along the shore, but you are right, even I think this is just a bit much. I will be adding a few more crater cities along the equatorial regions. They make good space ports of course. Actually getting all the city lights along the coast the way they are was a happy accident when when working on some various masks for the texture package. So I went with it. I just needed some input.

Don. Edwards

Well, some of the cities will have been planned from the beginning, I'd expect some of the smaller ones might be quite regular, maybe even some of the larger ones, depending on the politics of the local region.

True, and I give everyone one guess as to which one is the capital city on Mars.

Don. Edwards

The politics of "shorelines inhabitants" is that right for people who lives in a planet before "death" and then "alive". For me that's is ok as it is; with the except that I should like to see just the illumination amongst the major city and what we could be call "holidays villages". After an hard job an "human martian" would find a bit of calm to swim; so the highway's illumination should be visible from high.

Don. Edwards wrote:...I will be going through and knocking out some of the cities along the shorelines. But As on Earth humans tend to congregate near and around water sources. So there would naturally be allot of city lights along the shore, but you are right, even I think this is just a bit much. I will be adding a few more crater cities along the equatorial regions....

That's a relief Don... my first impression was that you were planning on re-creating a nightmare scenario similar to that depicted by Larry Niven in "Bordered in Black". (For those who haven't read it, it's about a planet where the only food source is an in-exhaustible green algae floating on the surface of the oceans...resulting in a fast-breeding population which can only exist within walking distance of the shoreline...but with very serious competitive pressures for access to food. )

I'm wondering how the Islamic world would adapt to colonization; would they pray towards Earth? what about the pilgrimage to mecca? just some random thoughts...

Also, I think that they would set up several countries, so there would be multiple capitals...

Nope, Mars is a one world goverment with a single planetary capital. Although this capital city is real quite large.

As for the other question, they would pray toward Meca as they do now, although it would be moving around allot.

Don. Edwards