Red Mars & Blue Mars + Normal Maps at 8K

[praesepe]

Hi all,

I've generated some new dds textures that can be pretty interesting, Red Mars and Blue Mars (the ones from space-graphics), both in 8K resolution plus the proper normal maps for hi-res bumpmapping and correcly oriented according to Celestia latest corrections (Grant Hutchison).

Here are some shots of Red Mars. I've applied an unsharp mask to make sense of some surface details which were not as clear I wanted. The texture is ready now and will be available for download in the next hours.





And then Blue Mars with 4k cloud map. When attaching the specular map to the main texture i've discovered that some of the water filled craters are not reflecting light, so it will need to be reworked As soon as I edit the spec map I will put the whole pack for download.

[jim]

Hi Praesepe,

Great shots, i like especially the blue Mars. But the map from space-graphics has one problem: a powerful static bumpmaping. This causes that real bumpmaping dosn't look fine. Therefore i build a "unbumped" Mars map. I had to work a hole weekend to do this job but now my 8k normal map works fine with it.

But a problem i had to compress my normal map with DXT3 because DXT1c produce some ugly boxes. I'd read about a Nvidea hardware bug happens with DXT1 compressed textures and i think thats the reason.

Shall i show some screenshots about my Mars?

Bye Jens

[timcrews]

Hey everybody:

I am currently reading the Kim Stanley Robinson R/G/B Mars series for the fourth time. I am a very well read SF reader, but RGB Mars beats all of the rest of my thousands of SF books as my favorites, no doubt about it. I really appreciate all of the work that you guys do to show me what Mars looks like.

Is the blue mars texture meant to reflect any particular stage of development relative to the Robinson books? If so, then at the time after the aquifers were broken, resulting in the massive flooding, but before vegetation was widespread and visible (and this puts us at the last few pages of Red Mars, or the first half of Green Mars), the water was frozen, not liquid. In fact, the water froze so quickly, the passages that describe the exodus of Sax, Ann, Maya, Frank, Simon, etc. is full of many descriptions of the water being frozen almost as quickly as it could flow. Honestly, this seemed somewhat unlikely to me, since the water was flowing at billions of CFM, but that's what KSR decided to write. And at the beginning of Green Mars, it is made clear that the water has formed glaciers over much of the surface of Mars. Even at the low points, with the warmest and densest atmosphere, only the regions directly over moholes contained liquid water. It isn't until much later that the average air temperature/pressure got to the point that liquid water could exist.

Anyway, I am wondering, if you really want to be faithful to the books, wouldn't you have to depict a "White Mars"? This would be a nice in-between step for the existing Red Mars and Blue Mars textures. (The Blue Mars texture I am thinking of already contains extensive vegetation.)

Tim Crews

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Praesepe,
Looks like you ran into one of the problems I had when using these BlueMars textures to create my various GreenMars ones. That is the terracing effect that the BlueMars textures has built into it. The only way to tone it down is to do a little blurring of the texture. As these terraces are not present on the real Mars they tend to get distracting. The whole reason that they exsist is because this texture was gererated with Terragen and it is not even a photgraphic represantation of the real mars but something that came to life in a computer. Don't get me wrong, the texture is great but they really needed to try and work out the terracing problem. Thats one of the reasons why my GreeMars textures have a slightly less crisp look. While recoloring the tuxture the terraces realy start to show up. Keep up the good work though. Maybe you can terraform your own Mars.

[Darkmiss]

Wow when do we get these......

[praesepe]

RedMars8K+Normal map 8K uploaded, it can be found here:

http://www.la-guarida.com/Celestia/Text ... Mars8k.zip

But a problem i had to compress my normal map with DXT3 because DXT1c produce some ugly boxes. I'd read about a Nvidea hardware bug happens with DXT1 compressed textures and i think thats the reason.

Shall i show some screenshots about my Mars?

I've got the same problem using DXT1c (and had to use DXT3), some ugly black boxes that were specially noticeable at the poles

Sure, i'd love to see some pics of your unbumped Mars!

Looks like you ran into one of the problems I had when using these BlueMars textures to create my various GreenMars ones. That is the terracing effect that the BlueMars textures has built into it. The only way to tone it down is to do a little blurring of the texture. As these terraces are not present on the real Mars they tend to get distracting. The whole reason that they exsist is because this texture was gererated with Terragen and it is not even a photgraphic represantation of the real mars but something that came to life in a computer. Don't get me wrong, the texture is great but they really needed to try and work out the terracing problem.

Yeah, I know you mean, umm, maybe some gausian or directional blur could solve the problem, at least partially. I'll play a little more with the textures and see how can i manage it to reduce down that effect and also correct the specular map, which doesn't match with some craters filled with water.

[t00fri]

RedMars8K+Normal map 8K uploaded, it can be found here:

http://www.la-guarida.com/Celestia/Text ... Mars8k.zip

But a problem i had to compress my normal map with DXT3 because DXT1c produce some ugly boxes. I'd read about a Nvidea hardware bug happens with DXT1 compressed textures and i think thats the reason.

Shall i show some screenshots about my Mars?

I've got the same problem using DXT1c (and had to use DXT3), some ugly black boxes that were specially noticeable at the poles :?

Sure, i'd love to see some pics of your unbumped Mars! :wink:

Looks like you ran into one of the problems I had when using these BlueMars textures to create my various GreenMars ones. That is the terracing effect that the BlueMars textures has built into it. The only way to tone it down is to do a little blurring of the texture. As these terraces are not present on the real Mars they tend to get distracting. The whole reason that they exsist is because this texture was gererated with Terragen and it is not even a photgraphic represantation of the real mars but something that came to life in a computer. Don't get me wrong, the texture is great but they really needed to try and work out the terracing problem.

Yeah, I know you mean, umm, maybe some gausian or directional blur could solve the problem, at least partially. I'll play a little more with the textures and see how can i manage it to reduce down that effect and also correct the specular map, which doesn't match with some craters filled with water.

Of course, I also made clean 8k unbumped textures along with 8k Normal maps quite a long time ago. I never observed any artifacts like funny boxes.../All/ my textures are encoded with DXT1C.

I can see artifacts in the first of praesepe's Mars images above, however. The blue-greenish fringes bordering the canyons. This is presumably due to "overdone" unsharp masking.

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Tim,

Have you visited Frans Blok's Red, Green & Blue Marssite?
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwb/rgbmars.html

He developed a map of Mars in the year M-100 (AD 2219).

It's not really high-resolution, nor is it photo-realistic like Don's and prasepe's versions, but a version of Frans' map is available for use in Celestia.
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/blok/index.html

[Don. Edwards]

Darkmiss,
The BlueMars texture is the same one I did months ago. He may have done it a higher res, maybe 8k but its just the same old BlueMars texture.

timcrews,
Space_Graphics states that the BlueMars texture is suppose to represent what Mars looked like in the past. I have seen other pictures based on this texture that however look more convincing. Like the water color was actualy a tint pf brown due to all the dust and the atmosphere being a diferent color. If I can find some of those pictures I will post them.

[Guest]

Hi Praesepe, hi Fridger,

Here are my screen shots. First my "bumpless" mars (8k DXT1c):


And now with 8k normal map (DXT3) but vertex shader disabled (i'd posted already the problem (bug ?)).

I never observed any artifacts like funny boxes.../All/ my textures are encoded with DXT1C.

Now a shot for Fridger. Can you see the "funny boxes" ?



The problem is only with the normal map. My DXT1c compressed Mars map works fine.
I 've tested several things and i reconverted the DDS to TGA. This TGA file has no funny boxes or artifacts. That's why i think it's a harware or a (windows) driver problem.

Bye Jens

[jim]

Last post was mine. I hate this automatic logout while i write a post

Jens

[chris]

Hey Praesepe,
Looks like you ran into one of the problems I had when using these BlueMars textures to create my various GreenMars ones. That is the terracing effect that the BlueMars textures has built into it. The only way to tone it down is to do a little blurring of the texture. As these terraces are not present on the real Mars they tend to get distracting. The whole reason that they exsist is because this texture was gererated with Terragen and it is not even a photgraphic represantation of the real mars but something that came to life in a computer.

I thought that the terraces might be due to quantization in the normal map. But, do I understand correctly that the terracing is present in the original images, and have nothing to do with bump mapping?

--Chris

[praesepe]

I've worked on the alpha channel to correct the specular reflections (there were LOTS of craters not showing light reflection) and for now i think its finished. I also applied some blur on the main texture to try to eliminate the terracing effect which Don was talking about but it has lost part of the original details Now i'm gonna try to make these clouds look better (i think they look too white and flat).

Hi Praesepe, hi Fridger,

Here are my screen shots. First my "bumpless" mars (8k DXT1c):

jim, you unbumped mars texture is really great! How did you manage to elimante the static bump?

Now a shot for Fridger. Can you see the "funny boxes" ?

Exactly the same happend to me when I use DXT1c (and also DXT1a) compression, I thought I was doing something wrong with the nvdxt command line tool but at least i see that i'm not the only one having this problem.

[Buzz]

I had the "funny boxes" too using dxt1 and the photoshop plugin to make a normal map for earth. I'm going to try a dxt3 version!

[t00fri]

I had the "funny boxes" too using dxt1 and the photoshop plugin to make a normal map for earth. I'm going to try a dxt3 version!

Some of you might remember (or may look up my older mail) that when I first had found out how to do bumpmapping in dds format via normal maps, I strongly emphasized the importance of

smooooooootheness.

Of course, during my extensive normal map studies, I also generated all sorts of artifacts.

Here is what I learned:

1) Absolutely NO, unsharp masking etc corrections to the level map that is to be converted into a normal map!

2) I get the best results by putting the level map into the /alpha channel/, not rgb.

3) Use /nvdxt/ for normal map conversion and 3x3 blocking mode.

4) The order of various image manipulation operations matters!

5) Always use DXT1C conversion, what else...;-)

Bye Fridger

[jim]

Some of you might remember (or may look up my older mail) that when I first had found out how to do bumpmapping in dds format via normal maps, I strongly emphasized the importance of smooooooootheness.

Fridger, this boxes are not caused by a bad smoothless normal map (my normal maps all "handmade" and i don't use any kind of sharpness filter). I'd converted a DXT1c with "funny boxes" to TGA and built from this one a DXT3 file and what shall i say the boxes have vanished. Now you can see the problem dosn't be a "bad" normal map or a "bad" DXT1c file. I remember i'd read about a hardware bug concern all Geforce cards (not sure if GF4 and GF FX) with DXT1 textures.

I use to convert most times the (german) DXT Tool v1.0 (this based on Nvideas command line tools) and only if i need special adjustments then i go to the command line. The photoshop plugin is to slow and needs to much resouces.

I thought that the terraces might be due to quantization in the normal map. But, do I understand correctly that the terracing is present in the original images, and have nothing to do with bump mapping?

Chris, the terracing dosn't be present in the original images.

jim, you unbumped mars texture is really great! How did you manage to elimante the static bump?

The way is difficult here are some main steps:
1. I built two mask one for the shadowed bumps and one for the lighted bumps. To build this i used the high field map (bump map) with the relief filter in the correct direction.
2. I change the mode of mars map to LAB color. Each color channel must be seperate corrected.
3. I copied each channels in three layers ( one for shadows,for lihgts and the map). Now the light and shadow mask were added as a layer mask.
4. Then the masked layers have to made brighter or darker to compensate the bump effect.
That's all

But this are only main steps alone for the shadow mask i copied two different relief layer together ( a sharp and a blur) and i used a color treshold to remove some misc.
To find this way i made several attemts with a test picture. The main problem was to add no unnatural effects.

Bye Jens