Fictional planetary maps

Tips for creating and manipulating planet textures for Celestia.
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Fenerit M
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Fictional planetary maps

Post #1by Fenerit » 18.07.2012, 01:36

Few procedurally generated planetary maps. The Earth's mapping is for short. Zips contains only textures and specular maps. Do not make normalmaps from these. With the John's Earth cloudmap they looks fine, imho.

p01.jpg

Zip_1

Varations of distribution, shape, size and colors. Color table from here

Zip_2
Zip_3
Zip_4

p05.jpg

An alternative map; with lakes of liquid METAL named Celestium, very rare in the galaxy.

Zip_5
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #2by Cham » 18.07.2012, 03:20

Pretty good, Massimo.

Can you generate some of higher resolution ? And what about bump maps ?

How are you generating these textures ?
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #3by John Van Vliet » 18.07.2012, 05:09

--- edit ---
Last edited by John Van Vliet on 19.10.2013, 04:58, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #4by Cham » 18.07.2012, 13:58

john Van Vliet wrote:nice
it looks like you used lunacell

I don't think it's from Lunarcell. Those maps are much better than what Lunarcell can do.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #5by Fenerit » 18.07.2012, 22:01

Cham wrote:
john Van Vliet wrote:nice
it looks like you used lunacell

I don't think it's from Lunarcell. Those maps are much better than what Lunarcell can do.

These are DarkTree procedural shaders. This program is no longer developed since 2006. I'm still working upon the terrain shader's template to remove the unnecessary parts for the single Celestia's light and to tune up the render also for non-Earth planets by adding further noise modules (like for the last map above). Below you can see its modular structure; the two images goes from top (gradient shaders) to bottom (displacement shaders) of its functions' window:

dt_1.jpg


dt_2.jpg
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #6by Fenerit » 18.07.2012, 22:09

Cham wrote:Pretty good, Massimo.

Can you generate some of higher resolution ? And what about bump maps ?

Yes. The problem with big textures is that I don't know where to post them. Too big for my webhost. Must be used shared servers like that were then shut down. :wink:
As for normalmap below there are two images relevants to the first map: one with scale bumps of 0.009 and the second with scale bumps of 0.030. Perso, I do not like them, albeit they follows the procedurals, and then doesn't bumps where it must not be.

b_01.jpg


[
b_02.jpg
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #7by John Van Vliet » 18.07.2012, 22:32

--- edit ---
Last edited by John Van Vliet on 19.10.2013, 04:58, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #8by Fenerit » 18.07.2012, 23:14

For 4k is fine, but for 8k and more I go beyond, since they are about 15-17 MB each one. It say 10 MB user limit. Good to know that, anyhow.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #9by Fenerit » 18.07.2012, 23:19

like this one from testing Wilbur in Wine 1.58

Good to hear Wilbur running on Linux. :o
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #10by Fenerit » 20.07.2012, 02:31

Another map. This comes with the normalmap: I decline any responsability about the use of such bumps! :P

Image
Image
Image

P.S
Hi John: there is a way to get rectangular thumbs? 8O
Last edited by Fenerit on 20.07.2012, 11:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #11by Cham » 20.07.2012, 03:25

Massimo,

I think that your maps are really pretty.

Maybe you should try increasing the "bumps" on the normal map, and increase the level of details on the lands (more grainy, or even rivers ?).

The polar caps are looking a bit too artificial (too much smoothness).

Nonetheless, this stuff is very interesting to depict some alien worlds. Especially with clouds to hide a bit the map smootheness.

Don't stop publishing your maps here ! :D
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #12by John Van Vliet » 20.07.2012, 04:46

--- edit ---
Last edited by John Van Vliet on 19.10.2013, 04:57, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #13by Fenerit » 20.07.2012, 11:12

Cham wrote:Massimo,

I think that your maps are really pretty.

Maybe you should try increasing the "bumps" on the normal map, and increase the level of details on the lands (more grainy, or even rivers ?).

The polar caps are looking a bit too artificial (too much smoothness).

Nonetheless, this stuff is very interesting to depict some alien worlds. Especially with clouds to hide a bit the map smootheness.

Don't stop publishing your maps here ! :D

Happy you like it and thanks for your suggestions. Indeed this thread is a work-in-progress and feedbacks are appreciated just to improve the rendering's fidelity.

john Van Vliet wrote:what program did you use to make the normal map
i ask because i normally extract the green layer and multiply by the Blue layer
then run a SFS on that to extract out the Height data
the blue layer well looks a bit "odd"

The program is the same, to which renderer has been sent the displacement map only (it does render as normalmap by default). The problem is that I forgot to clamp the displacements to the new fractal settings :( ; I did that for the specular map but I forgot the normalmap. The changes in settings doesn't automatically update the spec and normalmap's shell positions, but all the times I must find its correct settings render by render, and in Celestia; being the internal viewer unable to shows them well. With normalmaps is yet worst to see it, for that I was for the moment deprecating their use.

P.S.
Thanks for the thumbs' setting. I was overlooking that.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #14by Fenerit » 21.07.2012, 00:42

Hi John, I've played a bit with the displacement shaders. Could you kindly check the normalmap out with your techniques to see if the displacements no longer sinks now? (I don't have understood what "SFS" is :?: ).

Image
Image
Image
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #15by John Van Vliet » 21.07.2012, 01:59

--- edit ---
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #16by Cham » 21.07.2012, 02:05

Masimo,

I think that you should change the colors palette : the greens are too "phosphorous" or too light. Compare with the Earth's greens palette, it's much darker. Well, okay these maps are about some alien worlds, but I still think the land colors should be darker.

Keep working on this, you're on something very hot, with this project ! :)

The land and water distribution is really good, by the way.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #17by PlutonianEmpire » 21.07.2012, 03:33

Cham wrote:The polar caps are looking a bit too artificial (too much smoothness).
One thing I like to do, in regards to polar ice caps, is go to the Sci-Fi world generator at http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/world/ , and cut and paste the ice caps from the world generator onto a texture of my own that I created.

The downsides to that is that they're always drawn in a straight latitudinal line, with randomized patterns to make it slightly more aesthetically pleasing, but the other downside is even then, they don't always come out pretty, with the ice cap edge patterns more often than not looking like poorly cut-and-pasted diamond shapes, so I'd have to go through dozens of different maps to find a good set of ice caps. :?
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #18by John Van Vliet » 21.07.2012, 04:21

--- edit ---
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #19by Fenerit » 22.07.2012, 02:28

Thank you John for the time spent here. The problem with the normalmaps persist. I can't set the first shell (ocean) to level 0, otherwise I get altiplanes instead of cliffs. Must be -1 or more. Yet shell 2 may be a bit under 0, or the hills starts too far from the shorelines. The program get also the bumpmap. The normalmap made from it (not posted) with the google GIMP plugin seem to get the same result of the normalmap made with the renderer (below).

Image
Image
Image
Image

This map introduces the mountain glaciers and doesn't has too much marked "level-curves".

@ Martin: my inspirations for colors' assembling are some Earth's areas and their surrounds, in order to avoid sharp contrasts.
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Re: Fictional planetary maps

Post #20by Cham » 22.07.2012, 05:51

Massimo,

the land texture and colors are much better with this one. You're getting very close to something fantastic !

But what happened to the nice seashore variations ?
"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin", thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"


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