Celestia Forums

I want to use some nice Jupiter texture, 4096 x 2048, jpg format, but my video card cannot run it. It can run dds files, however, so I need to convert my jpg file to dds. Sadly, there are no tools for that kind of conversion, on the Mac.

Is someone able to do it for me ? Please, can you email me so I can send you the file ?

Thanks a lot in advance.

I wonder if setting up a web service which does that would be valuable.

maxim.

I've wanted to do the same thing here. JPG's are SLOW on my system, but the DDS's are really smooth.

I converted the 4K Jupiter to dds (as well as the 2K and 1K for med and lo res) for my system. All three in a zip file is 5 MB. I'll be happy to email it to you if you like.

Dave

DaveMc wrote:I converted the 4K Jupiter to dds (as well as the 2K and 1K for med and lo res) for my system. All three in a zip file is 5 MB. I'll be happy to email it to you

Why not upload it to the Motherlode? It?s free, and have plenty of room for your work. I have wanted a higher res Jupiter for a long time

On-topic: i too need some way of converting to DDS: they do run much smoother than jpgs - i get much higher resolution for less CPU power...

I would really like to convert my add-on textures to DDS too, but haven?t found a way; seems to be no Mac tools for it.

-rthorvald

Please DaveMc, can you send your dds file to me ? Click the email button below !

Cham wrote:I need to convert my jpg file to dds. Sadly, there are no tools for that kind of conversion, on the Mac.

There is no DOS emulator on a Mac to run 'nvdxt' or another commandline conversion tool ?

Jens

Apparently, it will not work.

By the way, where's your new Europa texture ?

rthorvald wrote:

DaveMc wrote:I converted the 4K Jupiter to dds (as well as the 2K and 1K for med and lo res) for my system. All three in a zip file is 5 MB. I'll be happy to email it to you

Why not upload it to the Motherlode? It?s free, and have plenty of room for your work. I have wanted a higher res Jupiter for a long time
-rthorvald

I already have my stuff on the Motherlode, and give credit to those who's work I have modified. But I'm a little hesitant to upload this for just that reason, it's not at all my work. I've contributed nothing other than converting it to dds. I'm not even sure who's texture it is but after looking through all my downloads it's probably John Van Vliet's excellent (originally .png) 4K texture.

Maybe this opens a whole new can of worms on how to handle this kind of thing. I'm sure lot's of people d/l other's work and convert/modify it to look/work better on their own systems. Certainly some of these changes could benefit most Celestia users. Maxim's post about a service, possibly on the Motherlode, to do this sounds like an interesting idea.

Dave

These textures comes from NASA and are all free, or are on the Public Domain. So there's no problem whatsoever to upload them.

DaveMc,

the original 4k Jupiter texture came from this site :

http://johnscelestiapage.no-ip.com/file ... php?cid=14

There's no reference of any copyright there, the texture can be passed on as we wish. Please, make your dds texture available. Every Celestia user should benefit of it.

Please !?

Cham wrote:These textures comes from NASA and are all free, or are on the Public Domain. So there's no problem whatsoever to upload them.

True enough, just want to make sure proper credit is given to those who spent their time making the textures look so good.

Cham wrote:the original 4k Jupiter texture came from this site :

http://johnscelestiapage.no-ip.com/filemgmt/viewcat.php?cid=14

There's no reference of any copyright there, the texture can be passed on as we wish. Please, make your dds texture available. Every Celestia user should benefit of it..

Ah, I thought that was John's texture. I'll upload it to the Motherload when I get a chance.

Dave

If there is any interest on it, it would make sense to think about setting up such a web service. Minimum requirements are an upload directory, some php scripts and a windows based webserver to run the conversion tool on. I think motherlode is based on a linux system, so the conversion tools won't work there.

It wouldn't be the fasted solution, but a nice working lesson.

maxim

maxim wrote:If there is any interest on it, it would make sense to think about setting up such a web service. Minimum requirements are an upload directory, some php scripts and a windows based webserver to run the conversion tool on. I think motherlode is based on a linux system, so the conversion tools won't work there.

Possibly there could also be a services or requests section on the Motherlode just for this kind of thing. I'm sure many people have already converted textures for their own use that are ready to upload now.

Dave

Ah, you're thinking about a request service. That shouldn't be too difficult (despite of developing a proper user interface). I was talking of an automatic web service. But as this would be some work for me, it would only make sense if it would be used by several people.

maxim

maxim wrote:I was talking of an automatic web service. But as this would be some work for me, it would only make sense if it would be used by several people

Well, i would certainly use it, as i have no way of converting to DDS - expecially if it could do batch conversions; what i would like is a way to convert jpg VTs to dds VTs... But that may be too big for such a service...

-rthorvald

You would have to load the whole thing up, and then download the result again. Don't know how much MBytes that would be.

PHP has support for zip-files. Probably a zipped set of images could be converted and rezipped in one working step.

maxim

maxim wrote:You would have to load the whole thing up, and then download the result again. Don't know how much MBytes that would be.

Well, even if you set a file size limit it?d be worth it; one could just split it up into several sessions. That would not help on bandwidth, of course.

But the main reason i use VTs at all in my add-ons, is that i can?t display large jpgs. DDS files are another matter; i would probably stop using VTs for maps at less than level 4 or 5 if i had DDS options. Hm, more probably, i would just create bigger maps...

-rthorvald

How much is the stuff you want to convert all in all?

maxim

maxim wrote:How much is the stuff you want to convert all in all?

I don?t think i?ll go back and convert old stuff, at least not if i?m not updating it in other ways. I?m primarily thinking of future work. Typically, 8k maps, which tend to be about 80-90mb before cutting it up. But if i had this, i might possibly start building VT 16k maps with bigger tilesizes than i normally use...

So, i would not use such a service often, as it takes months to create the things i like to do. But when i used it, it would be fairly big files.

-rthorvald