Earth. With rings.

PlutonianEmpire · Post #1by **PlutonianEmpire** » 17.05.2005, 23:47

I'm gonna upload it to the motherlode for all to download soon.

And yes, the rings are aaaaaallll mine. I made them from scratch.

Dollan · Post #2by **Dollan** » 18.05.2005, 01:07

NICE job! I'm STILL trying to learn how the devil to do rings. The last few attempts of mine have been absolutely pathetic, and not even close to usable.

...John...

PlutonianEmpire · Post #3by **PlutonianEmpire** » 18.05.2005, 01:21

Thanks.

Having trouble with rings, eh? What kind of trouble? Maybe I can help?

Dollan · Post #4by **Dollan** » 18.05.2005, 02:17

Let's just say that I've tried to follow the one or two tutorials that I've actually found, and have never managed to come up with anything remotely close to what I should have.

I use Paint Shop Pro 8 predominantly, but have the latest Photoshop as well, though I'm not very proficient with it.

...John...

PlutonianEmpire · Post #5by **PlutonianEmpire** » 18.05.2005, 02:34

Dollan wrote:Let's just say that I've tried to follow the one or two tutorials that I've actually found, and have never managed to come up with anything remotely close to what I should have.

I use Paint Shop Pro 8 predominantly, but have the latest Photoshop as well, though I'm not very proficient with it.

...John...

Paint shop pro? I've always used paint shop pro for my textures! Goodie!

Now, on with business. Here are a few tips that I can give you:

For beginners, start painting greyscale rings, using the different shades of grey/white/black at the bottom of the paint shop pro palette.

I use 1024 x 64 images and 16 million colors for my rings.

Select the paint brush. Put the size somewhere around 170 to 180, with the hardness and the thickness all the way down to zero. You'll see that the paint brush is only a few pixels wide, but stretches all the way from the top to the bottom of the image without a single curve. Feel free to adjust the opacity to your heart's desires. Do the same for the Eraser should you want to erase some stuff.

When you start drawing, yes, you'll see relatively sharp edges, but don't worry, 'cause if you dont' want to have sharp edges, go under "adjust" in the menu bar, go down to "blur", and select gaussian blur. I used a blur setting of 3.00 for my earth rings.

Also, if you feel the contrast between light and dark is too great, you can always go under "adjust" in the menu bar, go down to brightness and contrast, and reduce the contrast, making the ring more greyer.

Does this help at all?

Dollan · Post #6by **Dollan** » 18.05.2005, 04:28

It'll be a day or so until I have a chance to test it out, but I will let you know.

Thanks!

...John...

PlutonianEmpire · Post #7by **PlutonianEmpire** » 18.05.2005, 04:34

Dollan wrote:It'll be a day or so until I have a chance to test it out, but I will let you know.

Thanks!

...John...

You're welcome, John.

eburacum45 · Post #8by **eburacum45** » 18.05.2005, 17:05

I make rings for my planets these days; they display correctly, but they do not have shadows on the surface of the planets.
I believe that displaying ring shadows on the planet surface is difficult to do.

Dollan · Post #9by **Dollan** » 18.05.2005, 19:53

I can't do ring shadows either, but I always thought that was dependent on the video card?

...John...

Post #10by **selden** » 18.05.2005, 20:44

It does depend on the video card. I'm guessing that's what he means by "difficult". The cards that can draw the more advanced eye candy usually are more expensive than the ones that can't, so they must be harder to make, right?

Dollan · Post #11by **Dollan** » 18.05.2005, 20:49

Very true. I hope to get a better video card this summer, but until then I'll probably just have to live without ring shadows. Blast! **chuckles**

...John...

eburacum45 · Post #12by **eburacum45** » 19.05.2005, 09:18

Well, I have just upgraded my video card, and now I can see practically all the eye candy- but no ring shadows on any of the planets I have made;

(but they are visible on Saturn)...

the shadow of the planet on the rings is now visible quite nicely, as are nightlights, specular reflection and much improved model rendering; but no shadows on the planet for any of the fictional OA worlds.

Post #13by **selden** » 19.05.2005, 11:25

That's very strange. I just did a quick test by putting rings around one of the exoplanets defined in Celestia and it worked fine for me on my new system with a GF 6600GT.

What model of card did you get?

Did you remember to specify an Obliquity value for the planets? That gives some axial tilt.
Otherwise, they're precisely upright with respect to their orbits, the rings are in the orbital plane and the shadow of the rings is invisibly narrow along the equator.

I'd be willing to try to see if I can duplicate the bug, at least. Can you provide some of your SSC definitions?

eburacum45 · Post #14by **eburacum45** » 19.05.2005, 15:49

Thank you, Selden!

my new card is a Radeon 9600XT.

Here is Adonis, from this page
http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Arcadia.html

Here is the texture

here are the rings (a small png)

here is the .ssc

"Adonis" "Bet Com"
{
Texture "browngreen.*"
Radius 38825
Color [ 1.0 1.0 0.85 ]
HazeColor [ 0.08 0.09 1 ]
HazeDensity 0.55
InfoURL "http://www.orionsarm.com/worlds/Arcadia.html"
EllipticalOrbit {
Period 11.39
SemiMajorAxis 5.292
Eccentricity 0.08
Inclination 3.8
AscendingNode 1.7
LongOfPericenter 9.8
}
Atmosphere {
Height 300
Lower [ 0.4 0.5 0.9 ]
Upper [ 0.4 0.55 0.9 ]
Sky [ 0.4 0.4 0.9 ]
}
RotationPeriod 18.67
Obliquity 16.8
Albedo 0.53
Rings {
Inner 69400
Outer 77611
Texture "generalrings.png"
Color [ 0.5 0.5 0.49 ]
}
}

Post #15by **selden** » 19.05.2005, 20:04

Essentially there are two problems conspiring to make the ring shadows invisible on the planet.

The primary problem is that the rings are extremely narrow, which makes their shadow bands very narrow, too. Also, the planet Adonis seems to be near one of its equinox locations. (If you align the image of Adonis so its terminator is vertical, its rings are horizontal; if you GoTo its sun and look at a magnified image of Adonis, the rings are a very thin line.)

This puts the rings almost exactly in the orbital plane, so that the width of the shadow bands is invisibly narrow.

When I increased the ring's inner and outer radii to be the same as Saturn's rings, a very narrow shadow became visible. When I also set the date to be 2001, the shadows of the wider rings were very obvious. However, when I specified narrow rings again, I couldn't see their shadows in 2001.

eburacum45 · Post #16by **eburacum45** » 20.05.2005, 07:22

Thank you.
I have only made small rings for Adonis, and for other planets, so far, because I think Saturn's rings might be unusually spectacular.
The other three gas giants in our solar system have very small, practically invisible rings, and they may be more representative.
But we only have one solar system to compare rings in- perhaps I'll add a few more spectacular ring systems and then the shadows should show up.

eburacum45 · Post #17by **eburacum45** » 20.05.2005, 07:42

Ah yes; that is much better.
http://img66.echo.cx/img66/5745/wallace2xg.jpg

PlutonianEmpire · Post #18by **PlutonianEmpire** » 20.05.2005, 07:46

eburacum45 wrote:Ah yes; that is much better.
http://img66.echo.cx/img66/5745/wallace2xg.jpg

Ooh, yeah! Way cool!

Dollan · Post #19by **Dollan** » 20.05.2005, 16:43

Yes, very nice! I'm defiitely wishing that I could get that card sooner than later!

Dollan · Post #20by **Dollan** » 25.05.2005, 17:43

Well, I received a GeForce 2 card from a friend, and installed it with the appropriate drivers. As a quick test, I toodled on over to Saturn

and checked out the rings. unfortunately, I still can't see the ring shadows on the planet. curiously, when I was at Earth, I saw the specular reflection quite easily -- and for the first time ever on my own system, I might add!

So... are the ring shadows on planets even more expensive eye candy than the specular reflections? I'm pretty sure the graphics card is about 60mb, but perhaps this still isn't enough?

...John...