Ultimate Terraformed Mars MARK V Milestone Release

[Don. Edwards]

Hello Fellow Celestians,
The long wait is almost over. I am pretty much finished with the main part of the Terraformed Mars project. I could keep going and tweaking things as I have done for over 3 long and grueling years, but there would be no end in site. The end I must start somewhere and I feel its come. Its time to let this project spread it wings a little and see what everyone out there thinks. So I will be making a, all be it small version available for anyone to try if they wish to. The main ideal here is to get some feedback from as many of you wish too as to color balance and over all appearance of the textures across a few systems. I can only judge what it looks like on my flat panel monitor so I need to hear from you as to what might need adjusting for the final tweaks. The textures are only at the 4k level .PNGs but they look very good for a mere 4k texture.

The textures come in two vegetation levels. They can be considered to be at different times. An earlier time when plant life is well adapted to the lower elevations and then the next the vegetation has migrated to higher altitudes as the planet has warmed further. You can use both or choose the one you like best. The Tharsis ice field is also slightly larger in the second one as to show that it has increased in size and mass.





Here are some beauty shots of the two textures. Each is of the same regions but show in each version. Just click a globe to see it in a larger resolution.






As can be seen there is a great deal of variation between the two textures. All the settings I use for the texture under Celestia are included in the copyright and read me document in the zip file. If anyone finds better atmospheric settings for Terraformed Mars please post them so I can give them a try. I still haven't figured out how to get the dark ring from showing around the planets rim under the upper atmosphere. So if anyone knows how to adjust that also let me know.

There are a few known issues with the cloudmap so there is no need to include any errors you find there as its going to get a full rework. I created an all new Normalmap to go along with the changes to I recently made to the main texture. Also I have integrated the specmap into the texture, so you will not need to make any entries for the specmap in your .ssc files.
I am also asking that the texture not be ported over to any other format or application at this time. These are essentially beta textures and they are copyrighted and not really ready for a major wide scale release. There is a copyright read me document included with the textures package. I have to do this because of certain movie industry parties that think they can take and use anything they want and not pay for it. At least this way I am covering myself if they try and reverse the claim of creation.

OK, to get the download just click the picture of Mars below. I will be only leaving this up for one month. Remember I need feedback on this.



Thank you everyone for your patients over the years. It seemed like this day would never come and I know it has taken a long time to get here, but I think the end product is surely worth it. Comments as always are welcome.

Don. Edwards

P.S. Below is the old first post entry. I removed the old pictures as to cut down on load times for the thread. I chose to do it this way versus opening yet another thread on the subject. Just make any posts at the back of the thread, I promise I will see them and respond.

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Hello Everyone,

Yes I started a new tread on this. The other one is thirteen pages long and had started to drift a bit and because I felt that what I have decided to do warrants a fresh start.

I started this project back in December of 2005. I posted the first picture of it in February 2006. It was always a back-burner project but it started to get moved to the forefront more often. The project also went through a reset cycle last year when I discovered I was in error about what the dynamics of the weather would be like on the planet. I was fairly quick to make adjustments to fix that problem. Well like any artist that lets a piece of work set long enough and comes back to it you start to see more errors than you did when you started out. I loaded the texture up last week after not even looking at it for almost 6 months. All I could see is something that had gone very wrong. The more I looked at it the more it looked to green. Fridger had made a comment way back that it didn’t look green enough. Well now I feel its way to green. Also I had heard from a few people that felt I had put the sea level just a bit too high. I had tried to lower the water level but unfortunately the way I had built the first texture negated me lowering the water level without having large areas of bare red land to try and fill in. I did try that but it was a total disaster. So I let things go as they were. But know as I looked at this now drowned Mars in my view I just wasn’t happy. Some of Mars’ most beautiful areas were submerged. The vast and beautiful outflow channels were all underwater. Some of the most spectacular river valleys were all gone as well.

So I decided to reset the whole project again earlier this week. This time back to day one and totally start for scratch. But because I have done all this before I was able to do in a week what had taken me months to do before. What I have created I feel, is a much more realistic view of what a Terraformed Mars would look like. By lowering the water level to what would be a more realistic level I have brought back all those missing river valleys. I have kept the vegetation mainly to the equatorial and northern regions leaving the southern highlands mostly untouched for those die hard REDS out there. And the biggest thing of all is from orbit you can say without a doubt that you are looking at Mars and not some other planet.
So things are moving again. The first Terraformed Mars texture can be considered a Version 1 or I like the term Mark I better. The second incarnation is Mark II and we are now on the final Mark III version of the texture. You know what they say. The third is always the charm. Now it is far from being finished. I am importing the snow, ice, and glacier layers from the Mark II texture and going to implement them in the Mark III texture. I have already done this in Photoshop but I haven’t had the chance to save and convert the texture into a .DDS file to load into Celestia as of yet.
But I did load an early Mark III test build into Celestia to see how it would look. I like what I see so far. Here are a few pictures.






The Atmospheric effects I have set in Celestia are giving the vegetation a greener look than what is in the master texture. Also the ice field on Tharsis is simply a temporary place holder for the real one and I am stil playing with the water levels. I am going to take them back up a touch. I want Ellisium to be an island again.
So in closing I think I have made the right choice in the changes made. As always and comments are welcome.

Don. Edwards

[Victor]

Would it be realistic to sustain so much vegetation without a large ocean?

[zhar2]

THATS BEAUTIFUL

[bdm]

I am still playing with the water levels. I am going to take them back up a touch. I want Ellisium to be an island again.

If you get the water levels just right you could get a large swampy area suitable for growing mangroves.

[Don. Edwards]

I decided to go through all the files for this project, and there are gigs of PSDs and other image files. So I thought I would post a few samples of the actual textures so everyone can see it from one version to the next.

So first we have the last build of the Terraformed Mars Mark I texture.


Next we have the first reset of the project, Terraformed Mars Mark II. I did this because I didn't take into account the formation of Hadley cells and the laws of atmospheric motion caused by these air currents. As can be seen the Tharsis ice field/cap has moved east due to air currents.


This is Terraformed Mars Mark III a. This is the second revision of the Mark III texture. It now contains the snow and ice layers of the Mark II texture, but maintains the vegetation and water levels of the reset texture.


This is where I am now. Mark III b. It is everything that Mark III a is but I have added the higher water levels. But you can see that the water levels are much lower than Mark I and II.


These samples are not representative of the originals or course. In order to make the water more visible in them I had to brighten them by 50% of normal. The originals are much darker and much more accurate under Celestia.

I am sure I am going to hear from some of you about my choice of color for the vegetation. I have chosen to represent vegetation is its natural color as it would look from orbit. I have adopted this same coloration for my Earth Textures and it really makes them look real in Celestia. I can post sample renders of Earth in another thread at another time. I think this covers things to this point.

bdm commented that if water levels were just right that mangroves might grow. These would have to be genetically altered mangroves as even a Terraformed Mars isn't going to be warn enough to support tropical plant growth except in domed craters and green houses. The most that might be seen is semitropical like the Everglade forests in Florida. Most of the climate would be as it is on Earth at 40 Parallel and north. Think of the big Boreal forests, Vast stretches of Alders and Aspens,Tundra, Grassy plains of the North. Also think of Patagonia from South America and lots of sub glacial areas. Also think of post glacial, like we are seeing in the far north of Alaska. The glaciers that are now gone and forests are starting to grow in there places.

As always comments are welcome and encouraged.

Don. Edwards

[ElChristou]

... So I thought I would post a few samples of the actual textures so everyone can see it from one version to the next...

Great, it's always VERY interesting to watch out a whole process! Tx!

[zhar2]

im just wondering why does the vegetation looks so dead and not greener?

[Don. Edwards]

zhar2,
Because in actuality that is the color of vegetation here on Earth. The BlueMarble team over saturate there images to make them appealing and pretty to the mass public. If you look at untouched photos taken by the astronauts and satellite images taken straight down the vegetation looks dark and in allot of places nearly black. Next time you look at some forested hills or mountains from say 30 miles look very closely at the color. The trees look very dark and almost black. The green light reflected from there leaves just doesn't travel far enough to impart the green color. It gets scattered by the atmosphere. Same thing happens when you are seeing the trees from orbit. Only when you see vegetation from low angles does it appear green from orbit. That is because the atmosphere is scattering more blue light and it gives the vegetation a brighter greener look. I will try demonstrating this with a few screen caps tomorrow so everyone can see what I mean. its quite amazing that Celestia is capable of actually replicating it so well.

Don. Edwards

[zhar2]

So, something like this would be the closest aproximate to earth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg

Id previously though it looked like that due to poor quality of imaging equipment around that time, they did seem too ethereal to me.

well now ill have to modify textures all round.

[Don. Edwards]

Update time.

This represents the present state of the Mark III Terraformed Mars texture.



I have finally settled on a water level that is both high enough to fill most of the important basins but also low enough not to flood all the beautiful terrain. This water level adjustment has nearly doubled the size of Elysium. So now it can be considered a sub-continent instead of an island. It has also given the planet more usable land. I have also added quite a few water filed craters.

I have also added some algal and plankton blooms to the oceans and large water bodies. The Hellas Sea now has the signs of a circular coriolis current in it. As it is below the martian equator the rotation is counter or anti clockwise. As everyone knows on Earth the ocean currents are clock wise in the north wile they are reversed in the south. Atmospheric rotation is of course the reverse of that.

I also did just a hint of a color adjustment of the vegetation once again. I shifted it just a little back to green. Of course this image of the texture has been brightness and contrast adjusted as the others have to enable everyone to sea the land water boundaries better. The real texture is much darker hence these features are harder to see.

The last step is to add just a few large rivers that follow the river valleys on Mars. I am not going to do many rivers as they are the hardest thing to get right in a texture and a very easy thing to get wrong. I have learned a few things from earlier attempts. Sometimes its just better not to have them at all.

That being said the end is in sight. I am hoping for a release before summers end. But don't hold me firm to that. I am going to attempt to make a VT version of the texture. So the release may be staged. The lower resolutions of 8k and lower coming out first with the 16k single files to follow. The non compressed PNG VT tiles will then follow that in time.

I will be posting a few Celestia screen captures of the texture at the 8k level in the next day or so.

As always comments are welcome.

Don. Edwards

[ANDREA]

Don, this is only a 1K texture!?!?!?
Cannot wait to see it at 8K or 16K resolution.
Absolutely stunning, very appreciated.
Thank you.

Andrea

[PlutonianEmpire]

Don, your textures are simply awesome! I love them! Excellent work!

[Don. Edwards]

Update Time!!

I have finally had some time to work on the texture again. I have made the first 16k DDS run of the texture in its present form.
The texture has moved forward a little since the last picture I posted. I can't call this even near final as of yet. I discovered after doing the building of the 16k DDS texture that I seemed to have bumped the Tharsis ice cap to the east by 1 or 2 pixels. So its not aligning with the normalmap properly. It has to be fixed of course. It is much easier to realign in the main texture than in the normalmap so I will most likely tackle that in the next day or two and then run another build of the 16k texture through.

So here we go with the first pictures of the 16k version of the texture. Click the thumbnails for the full 1440x900 version of the image.

This First picture is how the texture looks in Celestia with no effects and the most basic render path. This is to show the textures color range in Celestia.


The texture fully skinned and rendered in OpenGL 2.0


OpenGL 2.0 render without clouds.


The rest of the pictures are various close ups of the texture covering different areas of the planet.















Well that covers things for now. I still have a bit of work to go. As always all input and comments are welcome. Oh and if anyone wants to see a region I didn't cover in the pictures just ask and I will post a screen cap of it.

Don. Edwards

[Fightspit]

Fantastic ! I am pretty sure that we will see this terraformed Mars in some Sci-fi movies .

[bdm]

1. Some of the craters have shadows inside them. Are these from a normal map or residual shadowing from the source images?
2. The big features appear too flat, particularly the volcanoes. Will the volcanoes get some basic models so we can see them projecting above the surface?

[Don. Edwards]

There will be no models of the planet and or surface features. I have played around with the surface feature models in the past that were released. I didn't like the way they worked. They wanted to cast the own shadows, and it just didn't work. So unless the surface models have been fix I am not implementing them. The other thing is I don't know how to make surface feature models, and if making them means you have to use the true mola base bumpmaps to create them than there is no way to import or create models with my new surface features. That will have to be handled by the normalmap as it is know. Whole planetary models have always been a good idea but the ones for Celestia are have to be to small so there is really no benefit.

Most of the shadows are the byproduct of the normalmap. It is exaggerated in height, I have been through this whole thing before about exaggerated height and the reason I use it. But you not not mistaken that there are some shadows here and there. Most of the shadows have become vegetated zones but you have made a good and unfortunately a bad point. I have also found some horrific blocking in the texture in the last build, mostly in the western Tharsis region. But it is bad and I have no idea why it showed up. It wasn't in the Mark II texture and unfortunately I can't import that texture's base as a replacement. To much has changed and it wouldn't fit.

So without further a due, I am officially announcing the start of "Terraformed Mars Mark IV".

At this rate this projects is never going to end. To be honest if I have to reset the project one more time its off. I will throw together what I have as the Mark III and dump it on the server and everyone can play with it. I have so many other things that I want to do, but I keep finding glitches in this darn project. So this is the final run, if this doesn't work out the project is dead.

Comments welcome or maybe not.

Don. Edwards

[fsgregs]

Don:

Just simply unbelievable! I look forward to the release of Mark III. The colors are just wonderful!

As an aside, since Mars would be terraformed by human settlers over the next 500 to 1000 years, I assume we will also begin to establish colonies on it. If so, then we will need a nightlight map, similar to the one you did for the Terraforming of Mars educational activity project. In fact, it might be possible to use that night light texture, if you think it is a good idea.

Any thoughts??

Frank

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Frank,

I have been toying with the night side lights but I only showed them once in the previous Terraformed Mars thread. I am trying to do something totally new, so I hadn't really planed on using the old lightmap, not that I couldn't if push came to shove. I just wanted to make something a bit more detailed, and maybe a bit more restrained, not have the planet covered in cities so we as humans are acting like locusts all over Mars. I had toyed with massive circular crater based cities, but have decided to dump that idea as well. Not that the circular cites are totally out, just they too will be smaller and more restrained.

So there will be a nightside lightmap, it just hasn't been seen by anyone but me yet.

Don. Edwards

[Milosz21]

This work is.....

Yes i can't find words

[Victor]

Breathtaking?

I hope that fourth time is the charm, I'd really like to see this project finished