Celestia Forums

Hi all,
Just a quick intro, I'm Tony Naqvi from the UK - I've just downloaded and started using Celestia and think it's fantastic.

By day (and most of the night actually) i'm a visual effects artist - specialising in 3D and animation. I actually became interested in Astronomy through one of the jobs we did at my studio that involved a fly-thru of the Solar System, ending in a zoom into a specific location on the Sarth.
Since then i've uncovered a long dorment passion for exploring the universe, and so have persued any astronomy links i could find (i've even enrolled for a cource at the UKs Open Univerisy!) eventually leading to the discovery of Celestia.
Anyway, by way of thanks for a great piece of software - if anyone has any requirements for model add-ons for Celestia, please feel free to let me know (although stars wars and trekkie add-on are no goers ;p ).

(btw - i read a thread in one of the othere forums in which people had trouble laying their hands on Nasas Blue Marble Earth textures - I have the Eastern hemisphere at 420 megs 48k pixels, and the Western hemisphere at 240megs 28k if you want them - though not sure how to get them to you as i don't have much in the way of web/ftp space.)

Take care all and I hope to be able to contribute something soon.
Regards
Tone.

Tone,

Welcome!

Eye-candy for Celestia is always gladly accepted. Of course, most people would prefer free addons rather than having to pay for them.

You might investigate the various free web servers. Some are less obnoxious than others. You local ISP might be willing to provide some inexpensive space.

Also, you should register on the Web Forum so that you can edit your postings when that's appropriate, and so people can send you private messages.

Thanks Selden!

Just to confirm, I mean 3D models for free as add-ons to Celestia (or for any purpose, i'll make them in the compatible .3ds format).

regards
Tone.

BTW, i've registered now and i have some free webspace if anyone wants to take a look at (my rather outdated) work on my website. Address is http://www.tnvfx.8k.com Updates sure to happen soon, it's in dire need of it

Howdy Tone,

Welcome to Celestia!

That is a very nice offer, and once you get deep into playing with Celestia you might even come up with some of your own ideas for models.

Glad to have you here!

Hello Tone, welcome to the Celestia Forums

You certainly have opened the flood gates there.
you are sure to get a torent of requests now

We have a few very talented modelers and editor within the Celestia Comunity already.
But the more the merrier.

have a look at Jack higgins web site to view where most of the models come from lateley. http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/

Also one of the most popular model subjects around here latley has been the Space Shuttle, on the Launch pad, in orbit (open), in orbit (closed)

why not see if you can better this Model.

Paul...don't forget TERRIER's excellent 'Canadarm' model...

Welcome to Celestia Tone ...it really is great fun.

bh...not logged in. Sorry.

Welcome tone!

It seems I have competition now...

Thanx for the plug Darkmiss!

Hi Tone,
Definately no excess of modelmakers round here, respect to all you guys that have taken the trouble to learn. I can do stuff in metal ( I'm a silversmith) many times quicker than on the computer. I have been attempting to make a rocket-flame (rotating, possibly to enhance) to liven up (even more) said Shuttle models etc. and after a titanic struggle (with Anim8tor )have made a thing that looks like a chilli pepper. I would love a gantry to go with the Saturn5 model too... just thought I 'd get in early; there will be many ideas and requests for sure, some from even more strange dimensions than this one....
Anyway, I hope you stick around and enjoy the crack like what I do,
Regards
Ziggy, lurking just now, sorry

I certainly appriciate the warm welcome.
As for model request - no problem, just name what you want, perhaps include some jpgs or links to reference images, and i'll take care of the rest...

One thing i'm currently working on is a fairly detailed (and realistic) scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope.

As i had already started it for a commercial project, i thought it might be nice to adapt it for use with Celestria. One question - is their a ceiling on file size and poly counts for models, or any reference guides for creating models for Celestia?

Thanks again.
Tone.

Tone,

Chris Laurel will have to comment on the max sizes that'll work. I suspect they're only limited by the user's hardware capacity (main memory and graphics memory) and speed.

The major functional limitations have to do with surface texture image sizes and types: they have to be a power of 2 on a side (e.g. 32x32... 8192x4096, etc) and either jpg, png or dds (dxt1, dxt3 or dxt5). Unfortunately, older graphics cards tend not to support DDS format.

Also, make sure all the surface normals point in the correct directions (e.g. outward if the surface is to be opaque to an external observer). Many 3DS models designed for other purposes have turned out to be unusable because the surface normals point in random directions, making surfaces invisible that aren't supposed to be.

Added slightly later:
The supposed size of the model (the length in meters, for example) doesn't matter. Celestia scales it so that the maximum radius is as specified in the .SSC or .DSC file which defines the object's location and orientation.

Hello Tone.

You sound almost too good to be true .

Please see this thread. I have noticed that other users have also requested this model.

Thanks in advance.

Ulrik

Ulrik,

Perhaps you overlooked Tone's comment that he wouldn't do Star Trek or Star Wars models.

Tone,

Personally, I think you should pick subject material that you enjoy your self. My impression is that people tend to do their best when satisfying their own desires.

tonyn

A belated Hello from me, and welcome to the wonderful world(s) of CELESTIA.

I can't wait to see some of your future work, and if you're going to be anywhere near as prolific as Jack then it's going to be hard keeping up with installing all these new models - and I might chip in with one now and again!

You were wondering about file size for your models, well I've just recently completed a model of the ill-fated Helios Prototype which was 2.89MB in 3ds form. I don't think there are many bigger than this apart from some sci-fi models (ie USS Voyager 3.52MB). Anyway I am now finding it hard to view my Helios model without dramatic slowdown,since I installed 1.3.1pre6 (see stats below) but with just a 4k DDS Earth and earthspec texture,I'm desperately trying to cling on to my bumpmap which is a big slowdown factor, no galaxy's, star mag 6.9, no earthnight texture, a 4k DDS moon, antialiasing at 4x, and anisotropic filtering at 2x, which is resulting in just 6.5fps.(It would be interesting to see if other people are getting a slowdown with Helios?)

I reckon if you can keep your models to around 1MB maximum then most people will be happy, especially all of us with low spec graphic cards and slow processors! All my other models run at acceptable frame rates.

Then again if you're feeling really inspired you could produce a high detail and lower detail version of a model. But I somehow think all of us would go for the best one!!!

regards
TERRIER

I've loaded some of the prereleases since ver 1.3.0 and found a dramatic slowdown in system performance...grrr.

Please give me more details on this slowdown . . . I haven't introduced anything that should hurt performance. On the contrary, in the course of implementing virtual textures I made some modifications that dramatically improve performance in some cases (when planets occupy a large area of the screen.) Tell me your configuration and location (a cel:// URL would be perfect) where you observed the slowdown.

--Chris

Hello Chris... you've chopped the rest of my last post!
After ver 1.3.0. I think I loaded pre 5,6,and 7...a dramatic loss of frame rate and a generally 'juddery' type of view. I'm really only talking about Earth views here. It was very noticeable on my 8k shallow water texture...Don's 16k actually works alot better!

I need to download and install the latest Nvidia drivers, which I will do at the weekend, when dailup is cheaper!

I suppose I was having a general gripe about the speed of the developement...I can't seem to keep up!

I need to get back to the beauty of the stars, I've been hanging round Earth for too long.

My system:
Celeron 1.3 gigs
256 RAM
40 gig hd
GeForce 2 400 mx

I had the best performance with ver 1.2.5. I don't like ctrl V at all.

bh wrote:Hello Chris... you've chopped the rest of my last post!

Ack! I must have accidentally hit edit instead of reply. Sorry . . . that was completely unintentional.

--Chris

bh Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 11:48 pm Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote:

I've loaded some of the prereleases since ver 1.3.0 and found a dramatic slowdown in system performance...grrr.


Please give me more details on this slowdown . . . I haven't introduced anything that should hurt performance. On the contrary, in the course of implementing virtual textures I made some modifications that dramatically improve performance in some cases (when planets occupy a large area of the screen.) Tell me your configuration and location (a cel:// URL would be perfect) where you observed the slowdown.

--Chris

Hello, is that bh, Chris or both of you!!!???
My slowdown I've only just noticed today, when I locked onto Helios and Earths orbit.
I havn't visited it for a while and was shocked to see the low fps. I first thought it might be Dons new textures so I checked again with his old ones that I used before, and still got 6.5fps. I can't remember exactly what it used to be but I'm sure it was at least double that of around 13fps, when I first made the model and was running 1.3.0.

The rest of my performance in Celestia seems Ok so I'm wondering if its a slowdown caused only when viewing within a planets atmosphere?

regards
TERRIER

The rest of my performance in Celestia seems Ok so I'm wondering if its a slowdown caused only when viewing within a planets atmosphere?

Aha! That could be it . . . The new atmosphere code actually renders the sky as a semi-transparent dome instead of just initially clearing the background to the sky color. This change was essential for a better looking sky, but it will slow down some cards. Frankly though, I'm very surprised that your frame rate was cut in half--I didn't think it would be so bad. I'll investigate on my laptop, which has a GF2 MX in it.

What window size do you use, roughly? And do you have antialiasing enabled?

Finally, let me note that this potential slowdown will only occur inside an atmosphere.

--Chris

Firstly the most important thing.... I'm off work today enjoying a very rare British heat-wave. The weather forecastors have predicted there's a good chance that somewhere in Great Britain will record our country's first ever 100 degree fahrenheit temperature today. I don't think it'll be in Yorkshire though, we are generally a few degrees cooler than in the south!

Chris
Don't panic about my apparently large decrease in frame rate for viewing my Helios model. I have discovered some of my old screenshot pictures I sent Jack by e-mail. Luckily I saved them showing the frame rates which were around 7.5 fps and were done on 1.3.0!
I've also run another test using the version 1.3.0 basic package and am getting frame rates of between 7 and 8 fps.
I remember now that I originally ran the model on 1.2.5 but I can't test this as I don't have this version anymore and can't download it again because I think you've removed it from the celestia download page. The fps may have been slightly higher but I doubt if it ever reached 13fps ! I guess it just seemed alot higher and I was remembering test runs I did with a less complicated model.

Tone

Back to my original point about 3ds model file sizes, I guess the Helios model is a prime example of a large model causing low frame rates.
Here are examples of frame rates I've got by running the 'Helios Incident' on version 1.3.0 basic package;

Time 100x, starmag 6.9, clouds on, galaxies off, earthnight off.
Helios (2.89MB)/ Earth locked : 7.5 fps
Helios (2.89MB) / Earth locked + UFO (556KB) : 6.2 fps
UFO only after Helios dissapears : 20 fps
Continuing after UFO dissapears : 30 fps

hope this has been of some help.

regards
TERRIER

PS Chris, I've always run Celestia with antialiasing on and at a nvidea setting of 4x, my screen resolution is 1024 x 768 x 32

There's a great deal that I can do to speed up the rendering of meshes. Expect some big improvements in the version of Celestia after 1.3.1--it's something I'm very excited to work on.

--Chris