Celestia Forums

Hi all... I'm busy on a new shallow water texture, 4k dds this time. I'm having a bit of trouble with my antarctic sea-ice.

and...

Can anyone tell me what's happening here? I'm using the Nvidia plugin for PhotoShop. I don't really understand the save dialogue, I'm going with what it gives me.
This looks promising...


BTW Don, I've been using your new 8k earth texture with Fridger's clouds, they have a deeper blue transparency. It looks absolutely stunning. The water colour is much more like what I'm looking for. It does rather tax my system though, frame rate is...jerky!

Regards to all...bh.

Not too sure about the sea-ice problem, but could you tell me where i can download the nvidia plugin for photoshop? I havnt been able to find it anywhere...

Textures look great btw!!

Hello Jack... here is the link for the zip:
http://thelys.free.fr/optimizer/DDS%20DXT%20TOOLS%20v5.11.zip

off this page:
http://thelys.free.fr/misc.htm

Regards...bh.

I have to admit that I'm always paranoid about downloading copies of utilities from places other than the original websites.

The DDS utilities and plugins can be downloaded dorectly from Nvidia's web site at http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO ... ion_plugin in the "attachments" section of the page. Note that the links are somewhat disguised and look like bold text.

Selden... yes, I should have gone to Nvidia's site first. I tend to trawl around in google for a couple of pages and it just came up.

It looks like a newer version on your link, and it might just fix my ice problem... I will get the new version from here. Please disregard my last link(s).

Back to the shallow water, any comments or suggestions would be most welcome.

Regards...bh.

bh,
It looks like you might have somehow got your ice fields in the specmap. It looks to me like the ice is disapearing as the Earth swings form day to night. If thats whats happening then thats what you did. Go back and load your base texture and paste your ice fields over the base texture and merge the layers then save it. Also make sure you add the ice fields into your specmap, that way they are not reflecting what would be lot of light unless you want them to of course. Jusst a thought.

P.S.
The deeper blue was always there in the original cloudmap Fridger made. In the newer ones I did based on his a had toned down the color quite a bit. When I made the latest 4k cloudmap I used his original with its full color range unajusted. I feel thats why they turned out so outstanding. I still haven't been able to duplicate the effects to the degree I did in that texture. It was a one in a million hit. I have tried and tried to no avial to replicate it. I have a few that come close but there is hardly any color at all in them and they just don't have the right feel.
P.S.S.
I think I might have a texture you might want to play with. Its a hybrid texture. It has the water effects from my 8k Earth texture on top of a modified Blue-Marble earth texture. It is definetly a lighter color and makes the water look lighter than it does in my texture. Have a peek.

If you like it I can make it available for you.

Don...thanks for your reply, no it's not on the spec map, yes I've tried pasting the ice into a new layer over the base texture and other various combinations, to no avail. I will download the latest Nvidia plugin later tonight and see if that works...I am experiencing a new problem...



This is happening on all my Earth textures. Is this normal and I've only just noticed? Or am I frying my graphics card.

Regards...bh

What am I looking for? The strange black region a the terminator? I doubt your frying your video card. But something is definetly wrong. Your textures might be to big or there is an error in the .dds somewhere. When you are doing your converting to .dds what format are you using? Be sure you convert your images to .tga before turning them into .dds files or strange things happen. Espsecialy if you are converting from .jpg. This might be were your ice fields are disapearing to. Try working on all your layers in .png, psd, or .tga format. Then when your done manipulating them, save the finished image as a .tga. Then convert it to .dds using the command line version of NVDXT.EXE not the Photoshop plugin. The plugin is really only good for smaller textures. Anything say over 2k and things start getting strange. I have completely stopped using the Photoshop plugin except for viewing the contents of a .dds file. I think if you would move to the command line version you would get much better results. Just my opinion though. If you need help on what to type in I can send you the files and a shortcut that all you have to do is open the shortcut and change the name of the image there and of course its location to the image you want to convert. Then save the change and then launch NVDXT.EXE by the shortcut and wait just a few minutes and you will have a nice .dds file. Of course conversion time varies do to the size of the texture. A 4k.dds can be cruched in as little as 2 minutes. An 8k in about 4 or 5 minutes. Of course it also depends on how much memory is free and how many other applications are running and your cpu and memory speed. I will check back latter and see what your response is. I live on vampire hours so its time for me to go to bed. That helps explain why my respones to the forum are always at ungodly hours.
Don.

Hello Don... I will try the command line version
and let you know later how I'm getting on with it.
About the strange effect at the terminator, I'm
getting it on all my Earth textures, not just the ones
I've viewed or manipulated with the plugin...gulp.
I've reinstalled drivers. What else could be wrong here.

Regards...

i get that strange black line too- isit maybe something that Celestia cant render the edge of the specular spot properly when its near the horizon...?

Geforce4 mx440
128DDR ram
20gig Hdisk

Thanx for the photoshop plugin though works great!! (i got the one selden recommended too)

Well I am still awake so let me think. Are you pluging the specmap into the texture or are you using an external specmap? If you are using an external specmap try resizing it down and see if that helps. Also you can always plug the specmap into the texture but you will have to use The GIMP for that. I don't know how to do it in Photoshop. Maybe Rassilon has figure out to do this by now. By pluging in the specmap I think you can save some video ram but I am not sure about that either.

Have you ever gone down close to the surface and watched the specular reflection area slowly move toward you in realtime? Get really close to its leading edge.

At least at lower resolutions, you can watch individual squares of the surface texture change one at a time.

I guess I have a distorted idea of things that are entertaining...

Hi bh,

i have just installed the latest Celestia version and could see with the standard textures the same effect. It seams that celestia cuts of the speculare reflections at the day-night border.

By Jens

Ah... I will be getting my coat then... back to the shallow water. Don, you can go to bed now. Prob be going to bed myself pretty soon. Thanks for all your replys regarding the terminator issue, is it a bug then? (I'll be back!).

Regards...bh.

I'll see what I can do to improve the appearance of specular highlights near the terminator.

--Chris

Hello all... I'm just 'finishing' off the shallow water texture. Don, I've fixed the sea-ice, it was a problem with my mip maps...you live and learn.

This looks quite pleasant...


I will make it available for download when I'm happy it's as good as I can get it.

Regards..bh.

Here's a taster...



What do you think?

Regards...bh.

Hello all... I seem to be doing a lot of replys to my own posting!

The shallow water texture is as good as it gets, after some work on the ice.

I'm going to have to free up some webspace for a downloadable zip. I hope to do this over the weekend.

Any comments or suggestions would be nice. Thanks for all your help on this texture, let's go for a swim!

Regards to all...bh.

I like your shallow blue texture the most, but I'm bothered that you don't have 8k version. I hope this would be 8k... if it is, I'm putting it as soon as you make avaible for downoload!

I hope I didn't confused the textures you're editing: this is still the very blue texture, right? Or you're editing standard "magenta" texture from t00fri's site or something....?

Jango Fett... As to your last question, I'll...er...get back to you on that one.

It looks as though I will only have a 4k version for the time being. I will need to set up some more webspace to host a zipped up 8k version. I will work on an 8k version though.

My machine doesn't handle 8k Earth textures very well.

Don't let the fact that it's 4k put you off, it makes a nice 'alternative' Earth texture - there is alot of water...

Regards...bh.