Celestia Forums

Thanks for the help with the RAW Earth maps earlier, guys. Here's what I did with them:





I've also done a number of other original planets, which are on my site:

http://www.freewebs.com/3d-duckboy

REALY GOOD!
but i have some questions:
1) the background you use its just a picture right? or you did it too?
2) can you tell how did you do it, or with what tools or something?

diabloblanco17,
Ok, now this may seem like a personal attack and on one level it will be. But I feel this needs taking care of right away.
Why would you create textures and show those textures and make it so no one can use them? This is an Open-Source program and project and all of us as texture creators freely share are work in the forum and with its members when we can. Your posting these textures with huge "Watermarks" as you call them is flat out a no no in here. I went to your site and each and every texture on your site is useless for Celestia because you have chosen to close your work to the openness of Celestia. I find your work creative and imaginative but to come into the forum and tease its members with textures like this is just right out unfair and uncalled for. I would never “Watermark” any of my creations as I feel that sharing my work is more important than trying to claim ownership of a texture that is based on work that is really not your own to begin with. You got your texture base from NASA and as such it is not truly yours. You didn't take the imagery. All you did was edit it to your own liking. I do the same thing but I always make it known where my texture originated from and I may call it my texture but that is just to separate it from everyone else’s work. Of course you did the work and as such you have the right to share it openly with the forum or not. But to come in and tease members with things like this is just plain unacceptable as far as I am concerned. If you are going to set up some kind of pay system for your work than I might suggest you post information on the subject on your site ASAP. This being an open-source project if you are going to charge for your textures then you need to refrain from posting any images of them as that is "advertising" and that is not allowed in the Celestia forum. Now if you want to freely share your work so forum members can use them than the “Watermarks” must go. Who in there right mind wants to use a texture with a big watermark through it.
Good luck on your future endeavors but please if you are not going to share your work with the forum as a whole than don’t post any further samples. It is just plain not fair to the community as a whole. I am sure some members that read this will feel the same way I do. Others may feel I overstepped my boundaries as a member. But this really needs to be taken care of now or this “WATERMARKING” of textures may become a bad fad that will spread and ruin the texturing community in the forum.

This is my opinion on this matter.

Don. Edwards

Don,

I'd have to agree with you on this one, but let's not overreact before diabloblanco replies & gives his side of the story.

Putting such an obvious watermark on your work is a bit much for a freeware program, but for someone who's new to the Celestia community it's understandable how you could do something like this without realising the reaction...

If you visit the Web site, you'll find DiabloBlanco is using Celestia to make a movie. The pictures he's showing us are part of the development for it. Out of the goodness of his heart, he's letting us enjoy some of the hard work he's done before the movie's released.

I'm sure they aren't intended to be contributions to the OpenSource movement, at least not yet. He has to use watermarks on anything that's made public because he needs to make sure his work isn't stolen by someone else before the movie is finished. The entertainment industy, even (or especially) the fannish side of it, is a cut-throat business.

Selden hit it on the nose.

I'm sorry. I should have noted that the texture maps will be released when the fanfilms are. I created them for specific use within their respective fanfilms, and I'm sure that the owners would not like me to release them prematurely. I'm just trying to garner some opinions for future improvement.

For example, the texture I posted here is for a fanfilm already well into post-production, so it shouldn't be too long before I release it. And any more I make that are not for specific fanfilms will be released immediately.

Sorry for causing any confusion.

Oh, and I also did the star background in Photoshop. I don't mind releasing that if anyone wants it, but it was actually just based off of a tutorial, which can be found here: http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tutorials.html

Very nice work on those texture
they look great, and I'm looking forward to watching the movie.

But I do hope you will release the textures when you are finished.
as I had the same initial reaction as Don and Jack, until I found out about the movie project.

As there are are some great texture and model makers here, that work just as hard to produce stunning creations,
and then just post them for all to use, after months of hard work.

Paul,

You've just pointed out the primary difference between amateur and commercial projects.

An amateur does it structly for the love of doing it and only has to please himself. The results can be given away for free because it wasn't done to put food on the table.

In contrast, the same tools can be used to create an almost identical product by someone who cannot give away the results. Maybe it's being created for money or some other form of compensation, or maybe the creator committed to doing it for someone else.

Artists have to eat, too.

Yep I totally agree with you Selden

Also the difference with a lot of our Celestia atist's (such as Don E)
Is they do not only work hard to please themselves,
but constantly ask for info to please the community too.

and for that I think we are very lucky


Good luck with your Project diabloblanco17
I would like to see screen shots of those textures running in Celestia,
if you have it installed ?

Ironically enough, I don't even have Celestia. I use 3d Studio Max for mapping the textures onto a sphere and rendering everything. But I'll download and install it and see what I can do.

In the meantime, here's a half-size version of a texture that I will be releasing, at least once I get everything compiled and uploaded to my site. Any suggestions on a name for it?

diabloblanco17...great stuff! I get Don's, Seldens and Jacks arguements on this one...a bit tricky I suppose.

With such an open community as this I've never thought of 'cashing' in on something I've done (I should be so lucky!!).

The stuff you can find here is amazing, inspiring. I also sense a great feeling of 'teamwork'...lets all keep it up! Just look what Rassilon has given us!

Just my half an ESB!...bh.

Well I will be the first to eat just a little crow. I should have paid just a little more attention to his site. His textures are truely impresive. I just hope he does alow for downloads in the future because not sharing some of those textures would certainly be a shame. I can of course atest to the amount of work that goes into making these beauties. The work I am doing at the present is very time consuming and its easily the biggest thing I have ever done.
So diabloblanco17 you can keep showing us your work. You have a great talent and you should definetly plug a few of your textures into Celestia and see what it can do for them. I think you will be quite suprised at what you see.

Don. Edwards

bh wrote:With such an open community as this I've never thought of 'cashing' in on something I've done (I should be so lucky!!).

If you were REALLY strapped for cash, putting ads on your own addons site would be the only way I can think of to use celestia for personal profit. I'm not saying i'd actually do that though!!

Yeah maybe I overreacted a bit too at the beginning there- sorry about that, it does look very good!!

Hello diabloblanco17

Any suggestions on a name for it?

I'll start the ball rolling by suggesting something a little bit boring like, Syrtis Terra ?,
Or perhaps this one, that's a bit more of a mouthful, Harenosus Terra ?

I'm sure someone else can think of something better!?

regards
TERRIER

Startrus is not a gas giant,as I can see.So,what system you suggest I can put this planet.What are the dimensions of the planet?It could be a giant rocky planet,but we didn?t know anyone yet,or we did?I just put in orbit of Gama Cephei,but I don?t know if its planet would better a gas giant.

I can't really suggest anything in terms of system placement, danielj. The map is primarily for use in other people's fanfilms (there's a whole community over at theforce.net devoted to fanfilmmaking and related pursuits), and as such, I never bothered to think about how it would fit into the universe. Why give it a set location when others are going to build their own stories around it? For that matter, I'm not even sure why I named it. *shrugs*

So....just put it wherever you think it looks good, and screw the realism. It's totally imaginary anyway.