Celestia Forums

Inspired by Darkmiss ,I have been trying to add a bit of colour and variety to my asteroids,comets etc,but I need help.I have been trying to research the properties of the different bodies but couldnt find a great deal.When it's
finished I would like to make available as an addon.I have been modifying
the ssc files of Selden Ball,Jack Higgins and Thomas Guillpain -let me know guys if you are not happy with me making your modified ssc's
available to download,so as to point Celestia to different models for the
Comets,Atens,Kuiper belt,TNO's,Binaries,Trojans etc
You can check out what I have done so far here-http://www.geocities.com/jestrjestr/asteroids/asteroids.html
I read on one site that most Trojans were similar in composition to C-type
Asteroids which would make them all quite dark-is this correct?
If you have any corrections , glaring omissions or good links let me know jestr@ntlworld.com
Cheers Jestr

jestr

They look really good!

Not sure about the actual colours, but they do look much better than the standard grey asteroid texture. (btw have you replaced the standard model with minor moon models too, or..?)

When can we download them?!

Nice work jestr

I especially like the D-type and M-type

jestr ...these look great!! Good work...when can we have them?

Regards...bh.

The different colours are nice... though I'm not convinced by the crinkly surface textures. The asteroids we've seen are much smoother than that.

If you want them you can get the ones I've done so far here
ftp://celestia:addons@81.111.74.239
If you want to change the textures you dont have to change anything in
the ssc's just rename your new texture exactly the same as the one you're replacing and put it in the 'medres' folder (no matter how big).
Let me know if you have any problems or if anyone knows any good free web hosting sites I can upload these to for quicker downloads,cheers Jestr

It?s in .rar.Can you put in .zip?

I have just uploaded everything I've done so far to this address,but I was limited in the size of file I could upload,so I have had to copy my addon as if it were in my extras folder and you must download each file separately and copy the folder structure.You can find it here-
http://www.jestrstuff.0catch.com/jestrstuff.html
Any problems contact me jestr@ntlworld.com
I have some 'minormoons' models but I have to sort through them first.I am still editing Selden's other 'Jupiter trojans' ssc's and will upload them as I finish them,anyone else wants to help out with this be my guest.All the best Jestr

danielj wrote:It?s in .rar.Can you put in .zip?

Why don't you just download WinRar?
http://www.rarlab.com/

jestr

Thanks for those! Question: You've got Bluemarble levels 6-10 .zip listed on your FTP tree - that's just selected areas right? It's not the whole world is it?!!

No sorry Jack,not the whole world-that would be a huge file-I wish it was,it is really difficult to find good quality aerial photos of most of the world without paying for them,I can do most of Britain from the pictures from 'Multimap.com',but they dont have much of Scotland or East Anglia.
I have managed to download some big ecw files from various sites (especially 'www.earthetc.com) but the scale is all wrong in some of them
and its mainly US cities.The rest of the world I have no ideas about,if anyone else has any links to good sites let me know,cheers Jestr

There doesn't seem to be any easy way to change the textures .3ds's use from jpg to dds say. Can anyone suggest how?

Kolano,

I'm not sure if you want to change the 3DS mesh file so it looks for a different surface texture image or if you want to convert the image file into a different encoding, or both.

Converting an image file from one type of encoding to another (jpeg to dds, for example) is easy: there are many utilities available to do that. (e.g. ImageMagick converts between all but dds. nvdxt converts tga to dds).

If a 3DS model is specified in an SSC file, just change the "Texture" file specification that's associated with it. If you change the filetype specification to ".*", then Celestia will use whatever image types are available in the textures directories. It looks for png, jpg and dds filetypes, in that order.

If the 3DS mesh file explicitly specifies the surface texture file internally, you can use a binary editor to change the file name in the model file. Emacs can be used, too.

Does this help?

Jack,

Don't forget that WinRAR costs money. Zip is free.

Actually they BOTH cost money...

Proof:
http://www.winzip.com

WinRAR now only $29

http://www.rarlabs.com

But they both also have free evaluation versions. (And even though the evaluation periods are 30 days, they both work forever... )

Sorry to interject here, but I thought you might like to know that you can
obtain an excellent FREE zip and unzip program which handles almost *all*
of the popular zip formats at the following:

http://www.ultimatezip.com

Take care, Bob

There are many programs which can create archives that use Zip format. RAR format is proprietary.

Many of the "zip" programs are completely free. A simple zip program is included as part of Windows XP for no additional cost. Another program is InfoZip. It is free and is available for many different operating systems. See http://www.info-zip.org/

Groan...

That's the third time today i've done something like this...

Sorry- just ignore what I said above...

JackHiggins wrote::oops:

Groan...

That's the third time today i've done something like this...

Sorry- just ignore what I said above...

Jack,

Done something like what?

Do you mean making more information available to all of the folks here
on the Forum? If that's the case, keep it up sir...

Thanks for your continuing efforts on this magnificent program.

Take care, Bob

Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:09 am Post subject:

Jack, still up late I see!

Mind you, I'm finding that the forum clock is approximately 3/4 of an hour fast. Well at least it is for me anyway.

regards
TERRIER

Bob Hegwood wrote:Done something like what?

Like forgetting something that I knew about fairly well, having used a few of the free zip utilities myself...

But hey, if you're willing to go easy on me this time...!

TERRIER wrote:Jack, still up late I see!

Mind you, I'm finding that the forum clock is approximately 3/4 of an hour fast. Well at least it is for me anyway.

When you sleep in as long as I have been lately, you've got to find some way to balance out your day!

The forum clock is off for me too- ill check how much when I post this (i've got my PC clock set up to update itself now & again from an atomic clock online)