Ocean Overlay Texture for most VT Earth Textures
Posted: 02.10.2006, 01:20
This is something I wanted to try way back when the first VT textures of Earth came out but never found myself actually doing it. The First VT Earth was created by Walton I believe but I could be in error. It was a decent first attempt, but I disliked the ocean coloring that he had gone with. They were very green looking. Of course several newer ones have been made by various other texture artists here on the site. They have of course been based on the NextGen BlueMarble textures. This of course has its own inherent problems, namely that the ocean appear darker along the coastlines than farther out off shore. In my own 16k NGBM textures I have fixed this glitch by building an ocean overlay layer that is added to each texture while I am working on them in the PSD format.
So you may be asking where I am going with all this. Well I have orphaned this layer and turned it into a standalone texture that can be plugged in as an alternative overlay texture. Here is what it does.
I have chosen to use Fightspit's 64k VT Earth texture for demonstration purposes. If you look close or click the image for the full size you will see the dark coastlines that I have mentioned earlier and the overall purple tint of the oceans.
Now here is the same texture at the very same camera angle with my ocean overlay applied via Celeatia's overlay feature.
Of course this is just a quick test version and the polar data is a bit blurry at this point. But I should be able to fix that. But you will notice that the dark areas of the coastlines have been fixed by applying the overlay. I also added the missing polar cap visual data to the layer.
Here is a shot of the overlay itself layered over a plain white Earth.
This is just to show that the texture is in fact totally separate from Fightspit's texture. This means it can be used with any Earth VT texture, no matter what size or who made it as long as it is based on the NGBM textures. At this point it?€™s only at the 8k level and in the DDS format. Creating a 16k version in DDS won?€™t be possible without making it into a VT in its own right. I do plan to do this. AS for making one any larger than 16k I really can?€™t see the need as there really is no detail on the flat texture.
So if this seems to be something the Celestia community would like me to take forward now is the time to put some input in.
As for anyone wanting to possibly add this layer to their VTs if you contact me maybe we can work something out. Of course this would mean totally rebuilding your VTs and this is why I came up with this idea instead.
Don. Edwards
So you may be asking where I am going with all this. Well I have orphaned this layer and turned it into a standalone texture that can be plugged in as an alternative overlay texture. Here is what it does.
I have chosen to use Fightspit's 64k VT Earth texture for demonstration purposes. If you look close or click the image for the full size you will see the dark coastlines that I have mentioned earlier and the overall purple tint of the oceans.
Now here is the same texture at the very same camera angle with my ocean overlay applied via Celeatia's overlay feature.
Of course this is just a quick test version and the polar data is a bit blurry at this point. But I should be able to fix that. But you will notice that the dark areas of the coastlines have been fixed by applying the overlay. I also added the missing polar cap visual data to the layer.
Here is a shot of the overlay itself layered over a plain white Earth.
This is just to show that the texture is in fact totally separate from Fightspit's texture. This means it can be used with any Earth VT texture, no matter what size or who made it as long as it is based on the NGBM textures. At this point it?€™s only at the 8k level and in the DDS format. Creating a 16k version in DDS won?€™t be possible without making it into a VT in its own right. I do plan to do this. AS for making one any larger than 16k I really can?€™t see the need as there really is no detail on the flat texture.
So if this seems to be something the Celestia community would like me to take forward now is the time to put some input in.
As for anyone wanting to possibly add this layer to their VTs if you contact me maybe we can work something out. Of course this would mean totally rebuilding your VTs and this is why I came up with this idea instead.
Don. Edwards
