Celestia Forums

Well heres my first official atempt with LunarCell. I imported the images out of LunarCell and into Photshop and put it all together with Gimp.
The first shot is without clouds and the sescond is with clouds. The clouds are not from LunarCell. I am using spec pluged into the main textures .png and then using the exported bumpmap.


Please give me some input on what you think. I personaly think we have found the best plugin for making terestial planets yet.

Simply gorgeous, Mr. Edwards! Very impressive! Perhaps they should rename the plug-in to "Celestia". I can forsee it being most useful, especially for the fictional projects. Good job!

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

Chris,
I was checking on what you asked Ras about not using any shadows and highlites on the terrain of a texture as in LunarCell. As you can see from this image this is the result of absolutly no shadows/highlites and only the bumpmap generating the terrain.

Very disapointing from any standpoint. Here is the same texture with terrain shadows and highllites added.

The diferences are incredable. The first image looks very flat even with the Bumpmap set to 7.5 and there is an odd effect in the way the water appears. It takes on bumps as well. The second image of course has terrain shadows & highlites and shows a great deal of detail and depth. It almost looks 3D.
I am going to work on this this texture as a base line and adjust the amount of terrain lighting to see if there can be a happy medium. As it stands my texture needs to be viewed with the sun on the left side of the screen to keep the terrain alined in the right direction. I know this is why you asked for shadows & highlites to be removed. This was the problem with the BlueMars texture I sent you. But that shadow/lighting efect is in the original images and I wouldn't begin to know how to clear that up. Any further ideas would be welcomed. Maybe we will just have to release 2 versions of every texture to keep everyone happy.

fantastic stuff.

it stands my texture needs to be viewed with the sun on the left side of the screen to keep the terrain alined in the right direction

This is because bumpmaps need to be aligned in the z direction instead of x or y if you follow me...Something I am working on improving....unfortunately it is hard to take something like the moon and render a true bumpmap this way...I suppose there is need for a bumpmap plugin for photoshop because I fear it might take a bit of programming to get rid of the one sided shadows and leave the bumps....

The best example of a true bumpmap would be something like a relief map or topographical map where there is no light rendered on the surface left to right...but straight from the top...

Woooo they are nice
you gonna put those up for download ?

I really like those clouds, did you make those too

Ill send you my Asteroid textures too, if you would put up some pics and a download for me,
I made four... Normal, medium, dark, and ice.

I do plan on sharing the textures I make but this one is my tester so it won't be availble for a while.
The clouds I believe are the work of Fridger Schrempp. There his bumpmapped clouds and give a real feel of depth and reality to a render. I did tweak them just a touch for my own tastes. I would like to see your asteriod textures and if we could find a way of transfering them I would be game. I might even be willing to send you copy of the texture I am working on but time is of the essense. My iTools account is going to disapear by the end of the month. Be warned its quite large. All the acompaning textures makes it weigh in at close to 15mb and you are going to have to have a 64MB video card because the textures are 4096x2048. Thats how I get all the detail. I might be setting up some downloads through KaZaA so keep tuned for that.

D.Edwards wrote:Chris,
I was checking on what you asked Ras about not using any shadows and highlites on the terrain of a texture as in LunarCell. As you can see from this image this is the result of absolutly no shadows/highlites and only the bumpmap generating the terrain.
The diferences are incredable. The first image looks very flat even with the Bumpmap set to 7.5 and there is an odd effect in the way the water appears. It takes on bumps as well. The second image of course has terrain shadows & highlites and shows a great deal of detail and depth. It almost looks 3D.

I've been playing with LunarCell a bit more myself, and noticed that there are a couple things that keep it from being the perfect tool for creating Celestia textures. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a way to force the generated bumpmaps to be flat in the oceans. You have to do it yourself, and the result (at least when I did it) was an apparent cliff all around the oceans. Second, there's not much range in the bump maps . . . most of the pixels in the bump map were close to white. I think it's possible to workaround the problems somewhat by some clever tweaking of the bump maps.

--Chris

Well I figued out part of it. To flaten the ocean floors you need the bumpmap and the specmap. Be sure you leave the specmap so that the seas are in black and not inverted so they are white. This should be the default image you get from LunarCell. Now take a look at the bumpmap and look for the color that best guesses sea level. Its going to be gray it just matters what shade of gray. I used photoshop 7 for my work but I guess it could be similar in Gimp. Open both the bumpmap and the specmap in photshop. Adjust the contrast of the specmap so that the black areas representing the sea turn to a shade of gray that is close to sea level on the bumpmap. Now use the magic eraser and select the white section of the specmap and click. This should make it go transparent. Select all of the image and past it over the bumpmap. Be sure your specmap and bumpmap are both the same kind of file. Such as .jpg or png. I use .png for all my work. Make sure the new layer is fully covering all the black in the bumpmaps sea areas. If it doesn't and you see some black on the bottom or the top undo the paste and go back to the modified specmap and try seleting a little less. What I am saying is as you start to select shave a little off the top. From each time I tried this it always seemed to place the layer to low. Now try again. It may take a few trys but when you have all the black in the seas coved you will see when it looks right. Now flaten the image and you can start to either use the blur tool of if you have photoshop 7 use the healing tool and start blending away the faint pale gray lines that were left behind after the layer was pasted. When you get all finished save it as a .jpg. Plug it in as your bumpmap in whatever .ssc file you are using and take a good look. You should have smooth waters. I know it sounds like a lot of work but trust me the end results are much better than the orginal bumpmap the LunarCell gave you. Also tweaking the contrast and brightness of a bumpmap can give it added depth but do it only in moderation or your mountain tops become flat topped measas instead and you could undo that nice flat sea floor you just made and create a whole new mess.
Heres is a sample of what I did. First is the stock LunarCell bumpmap with bumpy water.

Now my modified bumpmap. Smooth waters.

As you can see there is a great diference. I don't know what the white dots are in the second image. Just some kind of noise that got included with the screencapture. If you read this and can think of an easier way please be my guest and maybe fill everyone in on the info.
Oh and as far as using only the bumpmaps for terrian texture. I have found after several diferent atempts that in LunarCell if you at least give just a little hint of a shadow being cast on the texture and using the bumpmap generated you get a much better result. The more shadow you generate the greater the detail and the less important LunarCells poor bumpmaps become to a point. The bumpmaps are a must for proper lighting effects at the planets terminator. That is the transition from light to dark on a planets surface. Besides from what I have seen of all the Earth textures they all have some shadows apearing in the mountains. There are even shadows on the Moon textures as well. Hope this helps out and answers any questions.

the white dots must be the City's lights, turned on in LunaCell

Not sure why it put them in the water

I wouldn't think so. Lunarcell places cities only on land and mostly on the edge of water, so...

Is anyone using Lunarcell with Gimp? Since I can't set the colour in LC...

The dots are not city lights. They were turned off. They must be flotsome from the capture of the image. I have seen it crop up from time to time in the new relases of Celestia when I do a screencap. It also could be something to do with the driver version I am using. I seem to one of only a few users that are using the new Detonator 40 drivers.

I use LunarCell to create my maps and pick my colors but they always seem way to bright and saturated. So I use Photoshop to tame the colors down and bring them into a more realistic look. The above pictures tells the taill of my results.

P.S. Buy the way I have made a change to my account. Actualy I couldn't change what I wanted so I made a new one. The post calling me Mr. Edwards just made me feel like a school teacher. So now we can be more informal.
Don

Ahh hell should of picked a fictional one like Omega or Spiderman lol...Makes it more fun

Besides you can change your name in your profile...

Sorry, Don. What's so bad about being a teacher? As a student, I simply meant it as a sign of respect. And a fictional name wouldn't have helped. Although Mr. Spiderman does sound a bit goofy, I did once post a message to Mr. 884.

P.S.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

abiogenesis wrote: I did once post a message to Mr. 884.

two things, 1) could you just call me billybob or billybob884 or something a little less formal, because im not really old enough to be considered Mr. and 2) was it really that bad posting a message to me?

No, no. Not bad posting a message to you. Just thought it was funny that I typed "Mr." in front of a number. No offense meant, by the way. It's just a habit I picked up at school. Some of my fellow students and I refer to eachother in that manner. I realize, now, that it seems a bit more formal in print than intended.

Now, I can't stop hearing Agent Smith in the Matrix:

"Mr. Anderson..." heh.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

Hey Rass,
I don't know how many times I have tried to change my name but it won't take. So I thought I would create a new self so to speak. I did think of using an old handle I have ( Impulseman ) but I would have to explain the thing of were I got it from.

abiogenesis wrote:No, no. Not bad posting a message to you. Just thought it was funny that I typed "Mr." in front of a number. No offense meant, by the way. It's just a habit I picked up at school. Some of my fellow students and I refer to eachother in that manner. I realize, now, that it seems a bit more formal in print than intended.

Now, I can't stop hearing Agent Smith in the Matrix:

"Mr. Anderson..." heh.

- a b i o g e n e s i s -

lol! ok now thats over with, back to more important things...

Ok so its no longer my first LunarCell post but I did start the topic so I will keep adding here till a better topic opens. So now I am going to post a little wonder I put together with of course LunarCell. This colage has a sort of theme. Its the same little planet/moon I posted pictures of earlier but with a wicked little twist. I got the idea to show the evolution of this little world. So I decided It was going to start off as a frozen one. So as the story goes so to speak as this solar systems star ages it gets hotter of course. This little planet is lets say in an orbit equal to our asteroid belt. So it starts off very cold. As the star gets hotter this little world start to warm up. As it does its got all the goodies for life and of course life gets a foothold. But as time goes buy the star gets hotter and hoter and finaly the this little world is starting to die. First the seas start to evaporate and then most of the life goes as well. In the end it becomes a desolate little world with little signs of life. Heres the series of pictures to go with this little tale. The pictures are numbered 1-8 the top one with clouds the bottoms without so you can see the surface change better.
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/donedwards/.cv/donedwards/Public/compose.jpg-link.jpg[img][/img]

As you can see LunarCelll gives the ability to do things that would otherwise take a great deal of work. The same texture base was used for all the images I simply changed values for various parts of the texture and of course you can see the results. Now if we could figure out how to plug in textures for earth, mars, and venus this could get real interesting.