Celestia Forums

I need some help for creating night-textures

I don't know how I can do it, or what programs I need to use to make it. Please notice, if someone know how I can do it



Thanks

--- edit ---

I mean night lights, like here on Earth

kristoffer wrote:I mean night lights, like here on Earth

http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?t=222

most "inspiring" video:
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/cities/CitiesAt ... 0edit7.mpg

I think kristoffer is looking for info on how to create city lights for night maps on fictional sci-fi planets.

--- edit ---

kristoffer wrote:I mean night lights, like here on Earth

PlutonianEmpire wrote:I think kristoffer is looking for info on how to create city lights for night maps on fictional sci-fi planets.

Of course. But I would be able to create great city lights for night maps on fictional sci-fi planets, precisely since I know very well how to create realistic city lights on Earth... How about this?

Fridger

PS:
====

Here is a trivial little exercise, definitely profiting from city lights on earth:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Suppose, you want to render a city with huge illuminated skyscrapers on some far away planet:
That's very easy. You start with this great satellite photo of HongKong at night:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Click on image by all means!]


Then load it into GIMP, hit on

Filters->Distorts->Wind...
and then rotate the result by 90 degrees by hitting: Layer->Transform->Rotate 90 degrees clockwise

Then you have your sci-fi city with gigantic illuminated glass towers
And --due to the 90 deg rotation-- NOBODY will recognize that this sci-fi city was generated from Honkong.
[Click on image by all means!]


...and suppose you want a sci-fi city featuring a central illumination source (an artificial sun so to speak), that's just another click on Filters->Light and Shadow->Supernova...
and matching the light color to the orange illumination:



[Click on image by all means!]

--- edit ---

First, I will create some city-lights to my addon Boliverius Alvera Sagittarii

And maybe to the terraformed Mars, but for Mars, you will only see some small lights in Valles Marineris


Here on this picture of the terraformed Mars, I have marked the location(red):

How about taking the spec texture and then placing your light patterns on your continents? Then a simple save as "whatever_night.*" and VOILA! Lazy man's night texture...

-M-

The thread 'Our planet from the space' on the forum of 'News of spaceflight' magazine in general and following links: 'Night cities', 'Seeing Earth IN Space', 'The View from Space - Countries and Coastlines' in particular!

I thought about this again, can I create night lights texture with Photoshop?

Is it some tutorials for how to do it?

Maybe I can use the brush in photoshop to create it

--- edit ---

Hi.

Now I also want to make a new night texture. The night texture will have bioluminescent colour. How can I do that. Can I use photoshop for it to create this night texture?

--- edit ---

First, you should use your favorite paint program (e.g. photoshop or paint.net) to create a surface texture image which is black everywhere that there is no glow, and colored where the glow should be seen. The image should have dimensions which are a power-of-2 on a side (e.g. 2048x1024). Put it in the directory textures\medres\ of your Addon. In my example here, I've called it night-bio.jpg and put it in extras\Addons\bio\textures\medres\

For the glows to be seen on the night side of the planet, insert this line into the SSC definition of your planet


If you're doing this for the Earth, you could create this one-line SSC (perhaps called bio.ssc ) and put it in the root directory of your Addon (I created it as extras\Addons\bio\bio.ssc )


As a result, when using this surface texture image, which I created from Celestia's earthnight.jpg using Paint.NET
I see this in Celestia

--- edit ---