Celestia Forums

I made this several months ago as an experiment and completely forgot about it. As I posted in the 16k Moon texture thread I used Photoshop to manipulate the RGB layers of a 4k Moon texture in the attempt to create a workable bumpmap. Of course no matter how much I played with the thing there were problems with some craters turning into mounds and the impact rays from Tyco kept coming in as long narrow mountain ranges witch they are not of course. So I figured the best thing to do was to do it by hand. So I chose the darkest gray in the texture and proceeded to paint in the crater bottoms and use slightly lighter grays the nock down Tyco's blast rays. In the end the outcome was ok as far as I was concerned. Then I went onto something else it stayed forgotten.
Now when I started to go through that 60+ gigs of Celestia textures and installs I stumbled across it and thought I would load it up with Praesepe's 16k Moon texture. Well it looked a little better than I remembered. So here we are. I am going to post it for download in the next few days as both a bumpmap and a .dds normalmap. Again the size is only 4k so if you are looking from a distance its looks rather nice. But get to close and it falls apart. I might consider doing an 8k version or I can put the pieces together and turn it over to someone else to do with full instructions on what I did.
So as always here are a few pictures. The first is actually a glitch in which the texture didn't load but the bumpmap did. It shows off the detail of the map pretty good. Now I am attempting to use a thumb-nail system to cut down on load times. So click the picture for the full size version.
The second is of an 8k Moon texture, I don't remember who’s at this point, I think it might be John Van Vliet’s but I am not sure, with the normalmap on. Sorry Praesepe but I just couldn't get a good pic with your Moon texture as it is kind of on the dark side. Enjoy



Ooo! looks like the thumb-nails are working! So from now on expect thumbs-nails from me in most if not all my posts.
Thanks for the code Seldon.

Don. Edwards

Great job Don
looking forward to trying this out on my moon texture
Thank you.

The texture looks like Jens's (Jim) moon texture
with was almost identical to Praesepe moon.
except it was 8k and had the lines Removed.

I take it the first picture is the moon in winter, yes ?

I don't think that it's not my moon ,curently i only have up a B&W moon . My colorised moon is not as green and has a slite a sepia tone to it

Well than it must be Jen's Moon texture. Actually I have found another 8k Moon texture while cleaning my Celestia files up. I don't know who made that one either. It is an 8k .dds and has no color at all, just grayscale. I also found another long lost lunar bumpmap. I am going to try a blending of my 4k and this one and see what develops from the union.

Don. Edwards

BTW I have managed to cut 20gigs of duplicate textures and files from my Celestia folders. So now I am down to about 40 gigs of stuff left. Allot of that is left over project files that I still need to go through and clear out.

Here is the link to my 4k moon normal map. It is a slightly modified version from the one in the pictures above. It doesn't break up as bad when you get closer. So give it a try and let me know what you think.

http://63.224.48.65/~impulse/Moon-Luna/EARTH-MOON_NorMap.zip

Don. Edwards

Don this Normal map looks great with my current moon texture.
Great work as always, Thank you

It is a very good normal map. Mountain ranges show up well, particularly the region Montes Apenninus.

My intention was to put up a screen shot, but I can't figure out how. Anyway thank you very much for your work and for putting it up. It's much appreciated by me.[/img]

My intention was to put up a screen shot, but I can't figure out how.

Losty, you'll need your own webspace, and here's what it says about posting images in the Celestia FAQ;

Can I post Images?
Images can indeed be shown in your posts. However, there is no facility at present for uploading images directly to this board. Therefore you must link to an image stored on a publicly accessible web server, e.g. http://www.some-unknown-place.net/my-picture.gif. You cannot link to pictures stored on your own PC (unless it is a publicly accessible server) nor to images stored behind authentication mechanisms such as Hotmail or Yahoo mailboxes, password-protected sites, etc. To display the image use either the BBCode [img] tag or appropriate HTML (if allowed).

Nice normal map, Don. Thanks.
Are you going to put the bump map up sometime, too? It would be nice to replace Celestia's current default Moon bumpmap with something else, but I guess resolution is going to be the problem ...

Grant

I think I can do that. I will dig it out and make sure it is working as well as the normalmap and get it ready for upload. I wil have it up in a few days. I am presently doing some major updates to Earth Central and I now have to go back and rework the whole main page.

Don. Edwards

Hey Don Maybe you should add a Moon Central to your main page too.
Hint Hint

I could do that. But as I have no Moon texture of my own. I would have to host someone eles's texture. That would not be a problem in its self. But the more limited Hub site I have been thinking of taking down. Like Pluto Central and putting into a more general Hub Site.

Don. Edwards

It was nice,but some craters almost disappear.I don?t know if it?s a incompatibility between your 4 k Normal Map and the 8k VT Jens Moon texture.Some craters appear good,but Cassini,for example,is much blurred.The same occured with the craters near Mare Crisium.I disabled the Normal Map and used the usual moon bump instead,now.But I am looking for improvements in the future...