Celestia Forums

I've added some new code to Celestia that makes it possible to use specular and bump maps simultaneously. I also implemented separate specular maps both for memory efficiency with DXT textures (DXT1 base texture + quarter resolution DXT1 specular map is a big win over DXT3 combined base and specular) and to make the lives of texture builders easier. If anyone would like to send me a set of base/specular and bump textures so I can make some pretty screenshots, I'd really appreciate it. Next, I'm going to fix it so that large bump maps and base texture can be different sizes. Then it's on to palettized bump maps, for effectively 4:1 compression of bump maps. All these changes will mean that with Celestia 1.2.5 and a 32 meg card, you'll be able to view planets with 8192x4096 base and bump textures and specular highlights!

--Chris

Chris,
I would be more than willing to send you a copy of the Blue mars I have been working on. What size do you want. The primary texture at this time is at 2048x1024. I already have specular pluged into the texture. Its in .png format. I have the matching bumpmap for it as well. I would love to see it with both features turnned on at the same time. Please let me know if these sizes are fine for you to work with and I can set them up on my iDisk for you to download and anyone else who might be interested.

WOOHOO!! That's fantastic news, can't wait to download it!

Good job chris...cant wait!...

Sounds good chris ill be making my random texture set to suit.


Edwards, Id like to put your blue mars as a terraformed mars in MH. whats the URL?

Is this going to work on a Radeon Card ?
Eric

D.Edwards wrote:Chris,
I would be more than willing to send you a copy of the Blue mars I have been working on. What size do you want. The primary texture at this time is at 2048x1024. I already have specular pluged into the texture. Its in .png format. I have the matching bumpmap for it as well. I would love to see it with both features turnned on at the same time. Please let me know if these sizes are fine for you to work with and I can set them up on my iDisk for you to download and anyone else who might be interested.

Those should do just fine for some further testing . . . I'll post screenshots here as soon as I get them.

--Chris

Guest wrote:Is this going to work on a Radeon Card ?
Eric

Celestia 1.2.5 will at least have bump mapping that will work on a Radeon; I'm not sure if I'll have time to do anything with specular though.

--Chris

Hey Chris,
I have posted my most up to date textures of BlueMars. Now I wasn't the original creator but I have made many changes to the originals and especialy the spectural layer. The original didn't have may of the water filled craters reflecting light. I have changed that. There are still several small craters that still need work and thay should be done soon. I think this will do quite well for your tests. Just one more thing. When you go to take screen captures make sure the sun is on the uper right of the screen. The texture has natural shadows that are cast fron the sun being in this position and this will greatly increase the look and feel of the captures. I included the bumpmap of corse and the clouds I use which are based on Fridger's cloud textures but I fliped them verticly. Heres the link for the textures.
http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/ ... p-link.zip
P.S. I have also posted the icon I made for Celestia. Take a look at it and as I said before feel free to use it in 1.2.5 if you wish. Heres the link for the icon.
http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/ ... p-link.zip

At the moment I'm using the Bigmars .dds from this site, will this Mars file give me a better picture, or should I stick with the .dds???

The above mentioned Mars texture is not a standard Mars texture. Its a texture of Mars with water on its surface. So no its not a replacement for the present .dds file you have. Use it only if you want to see what Mars looks like if it had oceans on its surface. From evidence they are finding it actualy might not be to far from what Mars looked like between 2.5 and 3 billion years ago.
The site I got the texture from does have a real Mars texture that is really quite detailed. But it most be resized and if you don't have at least 32MB of memory you will have to shrink it down quite a bit to make it work well. I have 64MB of memory so I am able to get away with useing uncompresed .png files and letting the video card and Celestia do the compresing. If you want a link to the site I would be more than willing to post the url. The texture looks like it bumpmapped even when bumpmapping isn't enabled. This why I chose to use these textures for my little project.
Here are 3 screen caps of the textures.
First the regular Red Mars Texture from the site:
http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/ ... g-link.jpg
Second Blue Mars no bumpmapping but specular enabled:
http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/ ... g-link.jpg
Third Blue Mars with the cloud texture that needs a little tweaking:
http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/ ... g-link.jpg
As you can see the Red Mars texture has incredable detail. The only hook with texture is that there shadows already present which gives it even more detail. The shadows do help the texture when bumpmapping is not enabled and it has still has a real feel of depth. It will be a matter of taste for everyone as to the one they prefer best. All the screen caps are of 4096x2048 textures with texture compresion enabled in Celestia.

Great Chris!

My reply is a bit late because I am working on a 8k specular reflection map for earth that I wanted to include, but it takes more time than I hoped :( . First I used the one at http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/earth.html, but it treats all areas below sealevel as water, and living in the Netherlands, I have to disagree :) There are more locations where this is not correct, like Egypt, the Jordan valley, the Caspian sea, and it has other flaws too like the islands in canada. Then I tried to make one by selecting the sea color in the NASA vis earth pics, but this leaves out too much. Finally I made one based on the data from http://life.csu.edu.au/cgi-bin/gis/Map, but it still needs some work.

Hello Chris!
perhaps late, but nevertheless...
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/images/earthmaps/earthmap10k.jpg
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/images/earthmaps/earthbump10k.jpg
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/images/earthmaps/earthspec10k.jpg
I hope stand in good stead
Mikotaj

Wow! Great to see specular highlights and dynamic bump mapping working with a 8k dds file in 1.2.5, although it brings my GeForce 2 32MB to its knees... I use a home grown spec map that I will share real soon! It also has little lakes in e.g. Canada and Russia that suddenly show up when the sun reflects...

Is it possible to use separate texture, bump and spec maps all in dds format and of different sizes?

Buzz wrote:Wow! Great to see specular highlights and dynamic bump mapping working with a 8k dds file in 1.2.5, although it brings my GeForce 2 32MB to its knees... I use a home grown spec map that I will share real soon! It also has little lakes in e.g. Canada and Russia that suddenly show up when the sun reflects...

Is it possible to use separate texture, bump and spec maps all in dds format and of different sizes?

Yes, I've modified Celestia so that all the texture maps can be different sizes. All of them can also be dds, though this isn't recommended for bump maps.

--Chris

chris wrote:

Buzz wrote:Wow! Great to see specular highlights and dynamic bump mapping working with a 8k dds file in 1.2.5, although it brings my GeForce 2 32MB to its knees... I use a home grown spec map that I will share real soon! It also has little lakes in e.g. Canada and Russia that suddenly show up when the sun reflects...

Is it possible to use separate texture, bump and spec maps all in dds format and of different sizes?

Yes, I've modified Celestia so that all the texture maps can be different sizes. All of them can also be dds, though this isn't recommended for bump maps.

--Chris

Chris...on bumpmaps...is it ok then to use a dds spectural with a jpg or png bump map file seperatly?

chris wrote:

Buzz wrote:Wow! Great to see specular highlights and dynamic bump mapping working with a 8k dds file in 1.2.5, although it brings my GeForce 2 32MB to its knees... I use a home grown spec map that I will share real soon! It also has little lakes in e.g. Canada and Russia that suddenly show up when the sun reflects...

Is it possible to use separate texture, bump and spec maps all in dds format and of different sizes?

Yes, I've modified Celestia so that all the texture maps can be different sizes. All of them can also be dds, though this isn't recommended for bump maps.

--Chris

After many experiments, I think dds bumpmaps in 1.2.5 simply do not work, while jpg bumpmaps give beautiful (but slow) hires dynamical bump scenes e.g. of the 16k earth!

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:After many experiments, I think dds bumpmaps in 1.2.5 simply do not work, while jpg bumpmaps give beautiful (but slow) hires dynamical bump scenes e.g. of the 16k earth!

You're right, they don't work . . . The reason is that bump maps need to be converted to normal maps before they can be used by Celestia (all 3D apps work this way.) Celestia would have to decompress the DDS, generate the normal map, then recompress. And DXT compression doesn't well with normal maps at all--the compression artifacts look terrible. Doom III will used palettized textures for compressing normal maps, and this is my plan for Celestia as well. It will give 4:1 compression, and at least at first, it will require pregenerated normal maps.

--Chris

Just a simple question - what's the script thingy for specular maps? It's not SpecMap or even SpecularMap...

Sum0 wrote:Just a simple question - what's the script thingy for specular maps? It's not SpecMap or even SpecularMap...

It's SpecularTexture . . . sorry, forgot to mention that.

--Chris