Habitable Stars

[Dollan]

It depends on which pictures you mean. I've used LunarCell, Bryce 5.0 (with maps found on the 'net, though these should be considered tmeporary), while surface views are largely made with Terragen. The planetary maps are made with Fractal Terrains, although I sometimes export those to Campaign Cartographer for more specialized versions.

My goal, however, is to get textures made for each world, original to me, to replace the highly general LunarCell images, and the simplistic Fractal Terrains maps. And, of course, once I learn how to make textures, I can start importing these systems into Celestia!

...John...

John - what do you use to make the pictures of your planets? They're rather nice...

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I meant the global views - Lunarcell, I presume?

I'm not sure about how good these fractal continents are... the Earth's terrain isn't particularly fractal. I guess it's good for making a base to work on in photoshop though...

I like the atmospheres though. The photometric function looks pretty realistic there - it's not the usual lambertian stuff you see in 3D renderers (inlcuding Celestia, I think).

[Dollan]

The small thumbnails on themain world listing page, those were done with LunarCell, yes. But they are only meant to be temporary images. I'll replace these thumbnails in time.

On the Ghellhonus page, these were also done with LunarCell, and are meant to be temporary images. The clouds were actual weather sat images, though (one of the GOES, if I remember right).

I'll probably replace these with color sketches when I get time. It'll remove realism, but will be more accurate for what I intend for the planets. Then, given time, I'll get their actual textures done and post those.

Whew! I have a ways to go!

...John...

[Cormoran]

Nice site, John

I've been using Fractal Terrains too, for Planet map creation. I find that exporting the FT maps into Wilbur as 'Special MDR' format files allows better colour manipulation (I used a graphics package to sample the rgb colours of Earth and transposed them into custom colouration files in Wilbur).

As others have pointed out, fractal maps ain't perfect, but some of us don't have the time or the talent to do better (I'm sure you just don't have time, based on the massive scope of the ArcBuilder universe).

However, the experimentation goes on

Cheers,

Cormoran

[Dollan]

Hi, Cormoran...

Thanks for the comments! Yes, fractal generation, or really any generation, doesn't beat good old fashioned back of the envelope creation and sketching, in my view. I've been thinking heavily of scrapping the maps that I do have, and simply drawing out custom ones that I like, that fit my ideas better. Ghellhonus turned out okay, but it took a lot of tweaking, and there are still some missing geographical features that I've thought about and like, but which are not on the map.

But yes, considering the other currently active parts of the setting (I'm completely overhauling the time line for its final revision), this is gonna take a while!

...John...

Nice site, John
....
As others have pointed out, fractal maps ain't perfect, but some of us don't have the time or the talent to do better (I'm sure you just don't have time, based on the massive scope of the ArcBuilder universe).

However, the experimentation goes on

Cheers,

Cormoran