Celestia Forums

What is the planet's true bumpheight? is it really 4.5? I ask because i was looking for some earth pics earlier and read that on one of these pics, the heights were exaggerated 50 times, and it looked somewhat similar to the bumpheight that came with the default earth in the solarsys.ssc.

Well the first problem is that the default Earth texture that come with Celestia has shadows already in the texture. This adds to the effect or the faulse effect of hieght. That texture should have been replaced years ago along with several other in the package. To get a true idea of what bumpmaping or even normalmaping can do is to use a texture that has shadows in it. Try these texures. These are the the 2k versions of mine. They have no shadows so you can truely see what the bumpmap is doing.

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... -2kPNG.zip
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... -2kPNG.zip
and you need to add a specmap as my textures no longer have one in the alpha channel.
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... pecmap.zip

Try these and then see if this works better.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:Well the first problem is that the default Earth texture that come with Celestia has shadows already in the texture. This adds to the effect or the faulse effect of hieght. That texture should have been replaced years ago along with several other in the package. To get a true idea of what bumpmaping or even normalmaping can do is to use a texture that has shadows in it. Try these texures. These are the the 2k versions of mine. They have no shadows so you can truely see what the bumpmap is doing.

http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... -2kPNG.png
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... -2kPNG.zip
and you need to add a specmap as my textures no longer have one in the alpha channel.
http://216.231.48.101/~impulse/Earth_Ce ... pecmap.zip

Try these and then see if this works better.

Don. Edwards

Thanks! I'll try them!

(the map on the first link wouldn't finish loading. must be my firefox browser? )

Try it now. I lionked to the png instead of the zip file. I believe the png is corupt.

Don. Edwards

Thanks. I took 2 screenshots (yes, i'm using the textures you gave me ):

A bump height of 4.5 (as it is in the default solarsys.ssc file, but with a "#" behind it):


A bump height of 1 with the exact same textures as in the pic above:


My question, really, is which height shows the true heights of the real life mountains & such? 4.5? 1? less than 1?

From what I see I think a 0.5 would be closer to reality. I realy haven't used a bumpmap for a while, I use normalmaps. They tend to be more subtle in there impression of hieght.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:From what I see I think a 0.5 would be closer to reality. I realy haven't used a bumpmap for a while, I use normalmaps. They tend to be more subtle in there impression of hieght.

Don. Edwards

Normalmaps? How do they work?

They work kind of like a bumpmap. They use color to define height.
Here is an example.



This has been expanded by a factor of 2 but I think you see the big difference. Besides the color there are areas that are in red and areas that are in blue. This I believe works like the old 3D movies did with one red lens and one blue one. The colors help represent artificial 3D height.

Here is a shot of the same area as in your shots but with a normalnap instead of a bumpmap.


Of course I am using a 16k texture and an 8k normalmap, at least I think it an 8k. It could be a 16k.
I don't off hand remember what your system spec are but I think you might be able to use a normalmap. The main thing is a normalmap is not very forgiving if it made poorly or is compressed into a .DDS in a poor fashion. They do tend to look there best in .PNG form. There have been a couple of them made for the Earth at the 16k VT level. I have one of them zipped up in storage somewhere. As the standard rule of thumb goes the bigger the texture the more detail can be seen.

If you want to know about Normalmaps I think if you do a search of the Celestia forum there have been some very good discussions about them. I believe Frider somewhere in here went into some great detail as to how they work. But then it might have been someone else but for some reason I think it was Fridger.

Needless to say I feel that a well made normalmap is better in Celestia then a bumpmap. Normalmaps have their height data plugged into them when they are made so you don't have to worry about adjusting them in the .SSC file. They do have several advantages especially for beginners.

If you have anymore questions just ask.

Don. Edwards

All of my textures are no bigger than 2k, for computer speed reasons.

When creating a bump map, could i jus simply take a bump map and then "emboss" it? or is it much more complicated?

No embossing will not do the trick. I have a few questions.
1. What graphics programs do you use?
2. What model NVidia card do you have and how much memory?
3. How serious are you about learning how to do texture creation and manipulation?
4. Lastly how far are you willing to push your video card limits?

I ask these things because they all can go hand in hand.
Let me give you a little history of how I got started with Celestia, texture creation, and what hardware I started with.

I stumbled onto Celestia over three years ago. My first intention was to use it strictly for rendering images of planets for art work as it was a pain in the but to do it in Bryce and Photoshop. Celestia could do several of the rendering steps for me very quickly. The first thing I did was to change the texture for Earth as I did not like the one that came with Celestia. Thing went on from there. I am now doing texture work on the professional level and selling my textures to graphics professionals.
At the time I got started I had a Intel 1000MHZ Celeron Tualatin CPU overclocked to 1500MHz 1Gig of RAM and my graphics card was a lowly NVidia GeForce2 MX 400 with only 32mb of VRAM. But the things I could with that card in Celestia were mind blowing. I used mostly 4k textures but also some 8k ones from time to time. Now if your graphics card is any were like the one I started out with than you are really not putting it to its full use. Unless you are stuck with an old TNT or TNT2 I see no reason why you can't use larger textures. You simply start using .DSS textures instead of .PNG and .JPG textures. A texture when converted to .DDS the right way can be very close to the quality of the best .JPG textures and in some cases can be close to a .PNG texture. This comes in handy when you start to stack textures in Celestia. Let?€™s face it; each texture layer added to a planet is part of a stack. Fist the bumpmap or normalmap, then the main texture, then the specmap if there is one and then a cloud layer again if there is one. There are four textures right there. Now if you add an overlay texture of some sort you add a fifth to the stack.
Now if you are interested in learning a few things like making .DDS textures and normalmaps and the like I would be more than willing to pass on what I have learned. But I warn you it can be a little tough at first and then it can become addictive as you advance.
One last thing, if you truly want to use Celestia and or any other 3D programs or games I can?€™t stress enough the need for you to consider upgrading your graphics card. It is the single most important piece of your computer besides the CPU and memory. The CPU you have is more than fine for the work. You could use a little more RAM but that depends on your operating system. If you are running Win98se , Win ME, Win 2000, than you are ok for the most part. If you are running XP than you are just getting by. But the thing for you is the graphics card. If you have any way of saving at least $75 to $100 you can get a very decent replacement card that can do a whole lot better. My brother just a few months ago replaced his video card with and NVidia GeforceFX 5500 with 128mb of VRAM. It?€™s quite a nice budget card and he got it for $95 and its strong enough to play Doom3. Now I know this sounds like a lot to take in. Of course if you are totally strapped for funds than we can try and make the card you have work. Just consider the possibilities.
Let me know what card you have and we can start from there.

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:No embossing will not do the trick. I have a few questions.
1. What graphics programs do you use?
2. What model NVidia card do you have and how much memory?
3. How serious are you about learning how to do texture creation and manipulation?
4. Lastly how far are you willing to push your video card limits?

I ask these things because they all can go hand in hand.
Let me give you a little history of how I got started with Celestia, texture creation, and what hardware I started with.

I stumbled onto Celestia over three years ago. My first intention was to use it strictly for rendering images of planets for art work as it was a pain in the but to do it in Bryce and Photoshop. Celestia could do several of the rendering steps for me very quickly. The first thing I did was to change the texture for Earth as I did not like the one that came with Celestia. Thing went on from there. I am now doing texture work on the professional level and selling my textures to graphics professionals.
At the time I got started I had a Intel 1000MHZ Celeron Tualatin CPU overclocked to 1500MHz 1Gig of RAM and my graphics card was a lowly NVidia GeForce2 MX 400 with only 32mb of VRAM. But the things I could with that card in Celestia were mind blowing. I used mostly 4k textures but also some 8k ones from time to time. Now if your graphics card is any were like the one I started out with than you are really not putting it to its full use. Unless you are stuck with an old TNT or TNT2 I see no reason why you can't use larger textures. You simply start using .DSS textures instead of .PNG and .JPG textures. A texture when converted to .DDS the right way can be very close to the quality of the best .JPG textures and in some cases can be close to a .PNG texture. This comes in handy when you start to stack textures in Celestia. Let?€™s face it; each texture layer added to a planet is part of a stack. Fist the bumpmap or normalmap, then the main texture, then the specmap if there is one and then a cloud layer again if there is one. There are four textures right there. Now if you add an overlay texture of some sort you add a fifth to the stack.
Now if you are interested in learning a few things like making .DDS textures and normalmaps and the like I would be more than willing to pass on what I have learned. But I warn you it can be a little tough at first and then it can become addictive as you advance.
One last thing, if you truly want to use Celestia and or any other 3D programs or games I can?€™t stress enough the need for you to consider upgrading your graphics card. It is the single most important piece of your computer besides the CPU and memory. The CPU you have is more than fine for the work. You could use a little more RAM but that depends on your operating system. If you are running Win98se , Win ME, Win 2000, than you are ok for the most part. If you are running XP than you are just getting by. But the thing for you is the graphics card. If you have any way of saving at least $75 to $100 you can get a very decent replacement card that can do a whole lot better. My brother just a few months ago replaced his video card with and NVidia GeforceFX 5500 with 128mb of VRAM. It?€™s quite a nice budget card and he got it for $95 and its strong enough to play Doom3. Now I know this sounds like a lot to take in. Of course if you are totally strapped for funds than we can try and make the card you have work. Just consider the possibilities.
Let me know what card you have and we can start from there.

Don. Edwards

1. Graphics program? as in drawing/editing world maps and such? I only have Paint Shop Pro 8, version 8.10
2. How do i figure out what type of nvidia i have and how much memory it has?
3. Mostly, i like to work with cloud maps, using the warp tool to make giant superhurricanes, and taking various textures from various artists and meshing them together to make beautiful (and hopefully realistic) displays of color. I have drawn a few cloud maps from scratch, but they're nowhere near the quality that the other cloudmaps have.
4. How far? Until my computer says "Low on virtual memory", which is extremely frequent, unfortunately, about once or twice a day (probably 'cause i leave my computer on all night due to some superstitions i have ). But i wanna see just how far i CAN take it, so yeah, i'm willing to push the limits.
5. I have ADD, so remaining focused on a certain project long enough is hard enough, but I have managed to overcome it and make a complete planet surface texture by hand, using the paint shop pro's picture tube tool. Usually, i used to take maps from one of my other computer games and then put them on the planets.
6. I have Windows XP.
7. I'm definitely strapped for cash, unfortunately, but i occasionally get gifts (christmas, b-day, easter, etc) from my parents once in a while

PlutonianEmpire wrote:
2. How do i figure out what type of nvidia i have and how much memory it has?
6. I have Windows XP.

Once you're in windows, here are a couple of ways to find out exactly what graphics card you have. Just follow the "easy" step-by-step guide below;

Start->programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Information->Components->Display

You should see a read-out looking something like this;


The other way to look for your graphics card is as follows;

Start->Settings->Control Panel->Display->Settings->Advanced->Adapter

Once you have clicked on the "Adapter" tab the screen will show you your adapter type and adapter information.

Hope this helps ?
TERRIER

The other way to find out is simply open the display properties by right clicking the desktop in a clear area and then go to the bottom of the pop-up menu and choose properties. This will open the Display properties window. Then click the settings tab at the top, and then the Advanced button. This will open another window that will have several tabs in it. If you are running any of the newest NVidia drivers you should see a tab with the NVidia logo and it will say what card you have. Click this tab and you should see something very close to what you see below.

This will tell you all about your card. Now if you do not have this tab in the advanced diplay properties windows than I suspect that you are running Microsoft?€™s version of the NVidia's drivers which have allot of the OpenGL gutted from them in favor of DirectX. You should then head straight to http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.84.html and download the newest drivers and install them. It is always a good thing to keep your system updated with the newest NVidia driver downloads. Never accept any drivers for your video card through the Microsoft Update site. These drivers always have the OpenGL portion of the drivers removed. This because Microsoft doesn't want you using OpenGL. They want you to use DirectX products instead. If your graphics system seems to have running slow than I suspect that you may need the drivers updated.
Let me know what you find out.

Don. Edwards

Does this help at all?

Hey PlutonianEmpire,
I must have completely had a brain fart. For some reason it wasn't registering that you were on a notebook computer. I used to have one of these notebooks myself an Inspiron 8500 with only a 850MHz P3 and I changed out the ATI graphics card that came with it for the very one you have. I did it strictly to be able to work on Celestia when at work. I don't think there are any further card updates for that notebook so you are kind of stuck with what you have for now. But the card you have can do some very nice things and with 4k DDS textures if given a chance. First thing is you still need to upgrade your video drivers. According to your post they are dated last April 2004. Go to the link I provided in the above post and download the Unified Forceware drivers and install them. These drivers cover all TNT and Geforce cards including the GeForceGO in your notebook computer.
I will set up a few 4k DDS textures of the Earth for you to try after you get the drivers installed. Give me about a day and then I will post the download info here for you and details as to how to change the entries in your Solarsys.ssc file to make it all work. If this doesn't work I will be very surprised indeed. I was able to run 4k textures without a hitch and you should be able to the same with that chipset in your Inspiron.


Talk to later

Don. Edwards

Don. Edwards wrote:http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.84.html

This link?

Yes,
On the page you will see a link that says Primary Download Site. That the one to click. It will open a pop-up window with the license agreement. Click that you agree and the download should start. It should be saved on your system as an .exe file. It is about a 20mb download so depending on what kind of conection you have plan according for download time. When it is finished downloading double click the file and it will launch the installer. From there it is just like loading any other program. You may get a window stating that the driver isn't Microsoft signed but just tell it to install anyway. When it is done you will have to reboot the system. After that you should now be running on NVidia's driver for your card. Start Celestia and see if you can see any improvment in performance. You may or may not notice any difference. But trust me you will now have the full OpenGL library of drivers installed for your chipset and this should make Celestia run much better. I will get back to you with the links for the files. It will most likely be tomorrow.

Don. Edwards

Well I just check the Nvidia site and found that you need custom drivers from Dell. I will see what I can find but I can no longer access the customer areas as my account there has been closed. If you are the registered owner for the notebook you can see if you can get in and find them. I will keep looking for an alternate download site.

Don. Edwards