Celestia Forums

A project just for the sheer fun of it!

This will be the official thread for this project. Right now its just in its early stages. There is no firm release date. I am still working out allot of the dynamics of the system at this time. I still have to find and calculate the orbital parameters for the stars, but they do orbit each other and in proper motion I believe. The other parts of the system are fairly straight forward.

The texture itself was born out of just tinkering around with the large BMNG graphics and putting things together in a new way. Originally the texture was going to be called Sahara, but I got the idea to do something a little different. Something totally Sci-FI and fun.

The planet Gunsmoke is not based on the old long running American TV series of the 50s and 60s as someone has already hinted at. Sorry but the moons aren't named Dillon, Kitty, and Doc, sorry. Its roots come from the late 1990's and while it is did come from a Sci-Fi TV show, and a failed Saga game of the same name. At this time I am not going to reveal that information. I want to see if someone here in the forum can figure it out and post the answer.

The cities on Gunsmoke have names like December, July, Augusta, May, New Oregon City. The humans that live here use a large grazing animal that is a bit of a cross between an ostrige, a komodo dragon, and a beaver. They are called a Tomas

That?€™s all the hints I am giving, now onto the pictures. Some of these have already been posted but there are a bunch of new ones too.
















































One last clue, the big crater in this moon was made by one person on the surface of Gunsmoke during one on one combat. That?€™s it no more clues.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and hope to see an answer soon. I am sure someone is going to google it though.

Don. Edwards

Incredible

These planets and moons look real

Very great Don. Edwards, continue to explode my eyes

Superb work Don!

I recall a game based on japanese anime (?) called Trigun...
It's the only stuff I remember that can match your description...

Thats what I thought it was from. I love the show and I sometimes watch it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigun pretty much verifies that it's Trigun. Fancy. I've watched an episode or 2. It seemed fairly interesting.

- T R I G U N - it is.

Not very hard to figure out I guess.

Its a shame about the game getting canceled. I think it would have been real cool to play.

I will be posting some new close ups as I have a new PNG based normalmap for Gunsmoke that looks really nice and really make the surface pop. BTW this is an 8k texture, thats one of the reasons it has such nice detail. If i could get all of the super sized BMNG textures downloaded I suppose I could even take it to 16 or 32k.

Stay tuned.

Don. Edwards

Don:

Considering that Gunsmoke DOESN'T exist, I simply cannot understand HOW you can create such a realistic world The sand dunes, the dried river valleys, the cliffs and mesas ... they are all created from your graphics skill, yet there is no such place.

PLEASE - Just how do you start with a blank screen and produce something as awesome as this planet? I am sooooo ignorant of how graphics artists do such a thing that I would love to gain even a bit of insight. Obviously, it could take a long time to outline and you are too busy for that but ... even a hint of how you work your magic would be nice

Frank

fsgregs wrote:Don:

Considering that Gunsmoke DOESN'T exist, I simply cannot understand HOW you can create such a realistic world The sand dunes, the dried river valleys, the cliffs and mesas ... they are all created from your graphics skill, yet there is no such place.

PLEASE - Just how do you start with a blank screen and produce something as awesome as this planet? I am sooooo ignorant of how graphics artists do such a thing that I would love to gain even a bit of insight. Obviously, it could take a long time to outline and you are too busy for that but ... even a hint of how you work your magic would be nice

Frank

My guess is that Don's textures are based on/derived from satellite photos of a desert somewhere on Earth... judging by the colours perhaps somewhere in the Australian outback?

To quote Ned Ryersonfrom Groundhog Day..."Am I right or am I right or am I right? "

There is a big clue as to were the came from. As I indicated in the First post, the texture was going to be called the planet Sahara.

Not to burst any bubbles, but it is basicly the whole Sahara desert taken from the 41k BMNG texture. From the coast of the Atlantic to the Gulf of Arabia. If you look in a few of the pictures, what looks like a large rift valley running from north to south with a few large lakes down its center, this is actualy the Red Sea put back together. The Red Sea was or is a flooded rift valley, if you take the water out and paste the sides together they match up beautifuly. You gota love plate techtonics. I have always wanted to close the Red Sea and see what it would like. Of course there was allot of blending and merging of other desert areas to complete the texure. I used the healing brush to add large southern polar dune fields. I hope this hasn't disapointed to many of you out there.

It still makes for a beautiful world to play with.

Don. Edwards

No bubbles burst....actually Sahara was my first guess, but I thought that would be a bit too obvious. If only I'd read your first post properly!

Nice work anyway Don...makes me think of Frank Herbert's "Dune"

Chuft-Captain,

I wondered when someone was going to think of it as a Dune look-a-like.

Don.

It would be cool do do some models from Dune... if no one is interested I'll try some during this year...

Don:

No bubbles burst here. Your skill in patching together an existing tableau from a desert location on Earth and seamlessly creating an entire planet texture is obviously spectacular.

Thanks for sharing some insight into how you did it.

Frank

Excellent work!

I like the idea of closing the Red Sea.

One thing I wonder about is the normal map. How do you make a normal map for a tweaked texture like this?

Moses parts the Red Sea.
Don. Edwards puts it back together again.

Nice work here, I really enjoyed the HD 28185 add-on, looking forward to this one too.