Celestia Forums

Hello everybody, I'm new!
Anyway, I am working on an addon. see images below.

Pretty neat! Fractal generated landmasses? (just curious) Nice work!



Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Tuefish wrote:Hello everybody, I'm new!

Welcome to the Forums, Tuefish!
What is your AddOn about? Is it scifi, or something else?

- rthorvald

In answer to rthorvald's question, yes it is scifi, so far I've only done Planets and moons and such, but I plan to add manmade objects as soon as I get some good 3D software. Also, The textures were made by first drawing the shapes of the landmasses, (In paintsop pro) then making the textures as I go along. If you'd like some of the textures I've made, I would be glad to share them.

I need some tips for night-side light textures, mine never look right...

Tuefish wrote:I need some tips for night-side light textures, mine never look right...

If it is the lights you mean, i did this on my Ran:

- On the surface map, outline the areas the cities are going. Also mark lines for major traffic arteries: population density tend to follow those, so even if a road is too narrow to be visible from space, the strings of artifacts (towns etc) following them will not be.

- Paint each light as a single pixel (yes, a _whole_lot_ of "mouse dotting") inside these areas (on a separate layer, of course). Use a matte yellow color, vary with whiter. Don??t draw lines, but up the "pixel dot" density where they should be...

- I also give ice caps and major cities a slightly bluish, irregular tint on top of the black.

- rthorvald

Thanks rthorvald, another thing I want help with, is making the planet Earth-like by stages, like terraforming, I noticed that rthorvald did this in Ran, but I would like to know if there is a way of doing it that dosn't require making an entirely new planet for each stage. Also if anyone can recommend good 3d software, I would appriciate it. I have most of the textures and mechanics worked out, so I'll try and put up a pre-release version (after a bit more tinkering).

There are several discussions on the Forum about different modelling programs. Which one you choose depends on your goals and how much effort you want to put into learning the program.

For use with Celestia, you need to generate either 3DS or CMOD model format. Most 3D programs can export in 3DS format, or you can use a conversion program.

Some 3D modelling programs are listed at
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celest ... g.html#2.0

Additions to that list would be welcome.

selden wrote:For use with Celestia, you need to generate either 3DS or CMOD model format. Most 3D programs can export in 3DS format, or you can use a conversion program.

On windows (and Intel Macs if you have a win setup on it), you can use Anim8or, which is completely free and does the job, though with some limitations. On OSX, Cheetah3D is an inexpensive solution which is very easy to learn. And then there??s Blender, for all platforms: very powerful, and free, but with an insanely steep learning curve. All of these exports to 3ds (in Blenders case via an Add-On). Dirkpitt??s CMODtool can convert the 3ds files to CMOD in OSX, and i seem to remember Chris has released some similar app for windows; search the forums for it.

- rthorvald