Fictional planetary maps

[Fenerit]

The bumpmap above imported in Wilbur. The normalmap from it doesn't seem to show problems. Also with the "height clip"'s option set up as: "min=0, max=1", the behaviour doesn't change. With Wilbur one could sculpting its favourite planet's bumps.

mapw.png

A map in Hexagon. Hexagon is still free (the forum's registration is no longer required, now) and could be used to paint on the texture to add colors/features. By mapping a program's primitive like the sphere, one can accomplish the seamless 3D spherical projection painting, respect to the 2D, flat, seam and try-to-guess paint for such a projection. No advanced paint tools, though. No clone, colorpicker, smear, smooth.

mape.jpg

[Cham]

Massimo,

have you done other nice maps (with normalmap), as the last one you published ?

Please, don't stop publishing these maps, they're really great for Celestia !

[Fenerit]

I'm still working on. As for the "tropical" seashores, a sine function will constrain it around the equator; just to make the thing more real. What do you think about it? I do not think they must be seen at poles, imho. Of course a sci-fi planet could do it.

[Fenerit]

Well... then another map. Added polar caps drift ice.

[Cham]

Very nice, Massimo.

The polar caps are much better now.

Maybe there's too much green stuff at high latitudes, near the poles ?
The transition green -> snow is very abrupt in some land area.

Can you add nightlights too ? Alien civilisation visible at night ?

[PlutonianEmpire]

Yes, very nice indeed. Although, from my perspective, they seem a wee bit too saturated and/or too bright. Other than that, great work!

[Fenerit]

Maybe there's too much green stuff at high latitudes, near the poles ?
The transition green -> snow is very abrupt in some land area.

These maps must be manually retouched. That issue depends upon two factors:
1) the land is beneath the ice (its "lacking" part is seen as white's variation),
2) the sharp truncation of the polar caps' borders (no smooth ends) + the disgregation of the ice drift's Voronoi pattern in order to "hide" its tassellation.

Can you add nightlights too ? Alien civilisation visible at night ?

A planet like Coruscant (Trantor) should be possible, but I have never been involved in such matters so these maps in my intentions were at least just templates for willingly people with more artistic skills than me and for whom the requests of planetary textures were felt here and there in the forum, otherwise I've been done the forementioned retouches by myself. However, stay tuned.

Yes, very nice indeed. Although, from my perspective, they seem a wee bit too saturated and/or too bright. Other than that, great work!

For a bit of darkening, load the map within a photoretouch program and set on the "automatic contrast". I never did such operation because I'm still working on high/low of the shells, thus I may see what happens in seat or rendering. All the fitted parameters are then passed through customizable tweaks, so that no longer is required to touch them onto the shader's module. FYI, for now they are:
- three sands/desert colours;
- six rock colours;
- two land colours;
- two ice colours;
- three hills colours;
- seven vegetation colours;
- one reef colours;
- random land distribution;
- random mountain distribution;
- percentage of land distribution;
- percentage of polar caps;

[Fenerit]

Just because I'm in holiday...

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[Cham]

Massimo,

that map is fantastic !

However, the bump map isn't working (I don't know why), and the normal map is too weak.
The "bumps" are to homogeneous and too flat.

That normal map needs to be tweaked.

[Cham]

I've found two small glitches : the bump map and the specular map should be gray levels only, no RGB.

Why is there a light blue border in your specular map ? AFAIK, it should be gray levels or even black & white.

The night map is very good. However, I think the extra large luminous rectangle is too much.
I'm not sure about the red lines. Maybe more ?

I think that your latest map is worth some adjustements, for the normal map and the night map.

Can you make a 8k version of it ? If you need some space, I could place them on my server space....

[Fenerit]

I've found two small glitches : the bump map and the specular map should be gray levels only, no RGB.

The bumpmap is shipped mainly for custom normalmap's vertical scale; several bumpmap2normalmap conversion program wants RGB.

Why is there a light blue border in your specular map ? AFAIK, it should be gray levels or even black & white.

The specmap is RGB and has the blue border because, maybe, I've misunderstood the "shoreline variation"'s request.

The night map is very good. However, I think the extra large luminous rectangle is too much.
I'm not sure about the red lines. Maybe more ?

That nightmap is a prelude for a more better one.

I think that your latest map is worth some adjustements, for the normal map and the night map.

Now I'm working upon this kind of displacements: (a normalmap for the last texture) maybe is preferable. Displacements are ugly beasts, indeed.

Can you make a 8k version of it ? If you need some space, I could place them on my server space....

When all will be on the right path: I'm still unsatisfied about polar caps.

[Cham]

Massimo,

the normal map is much better now. It's looking weird in some places but then this isn't Earth at all.
It's an alien landscape, so nothing wrong with it.

What's wrong about the polar caps ? They're looking great to me.

You just need to adjust the night map, and that's all (and maybe a tweak to the specular map coastlines).

After that, a 8k version ?

[Fenerit]

A more conventional nightmap for the last texture.

For city-planet nightmaps, maybe is best that also the terrain must be shaped like a huge city: it should be visible from space with the sun light too.

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[Fenerit]

The first is a combination of fractal noises for colors and distribution on coastals and a "manhattan" function for the techno-camo strata on continents + swirls; in the second the techno-camo strata is disgregated through fractal noise which "hold" its the pattern but pixelize it. The problem is that I do not see well what happens before to load the map in Celestia or do zooming in GIMP. The program's preview is not enough for such concerns; the window is too small to discern the optimal colors' distribution and/or blurring. In the second I can use the GIMP's threshold to reduce its density without to lost details because I got grayscale before color adjust; in the first not.

[Cham]

Massimo,

I like pretty much that last night map. It's different than the first, but it's still good, especially for an alien civilisation (not the same lightning technology as ours).

I think that you just need to do an 8k level version of the previous map (land, specular, normal and night). If you need space, you could send the textures to me by email and I'll put them on my server, so we could publish them here. What do you think ?

[Fenerit]

The sends from email doesn't allows more than 3,5 MB. I can send the textures on a shared server from which you can download it. I will PM the link. Just the time to complete the workaround upon the normalmaps.

[Fenerit]

The 8k planetary map. Fortunately, with a bit of polar caps tuning the main texture is below the 10 MB.



Hope you like this kind of displacements. Use the bumpmap to sculpt your favourite ones.

Tuned following John's suggestion


A bit lesser lights.

Few remarks.
1) These maps have the maximum PNG compression (level 9). This could affect the time with which Celestia does load them. To reduce the loading time but the image sizes, do save them with another name by setting a lower PNG compression value within a graphic program.
2) The map doens't has the same colors of the 4k one because they were assigned like tweaks in seat of rendering and I do not remember which were. Thus, it is a bit different; a better one, imho.

[Cham]

Massimo,

this latest version (8k) is trully beautifull ! This one is fantastic !
Thanks a lot for the effort, it was really worth it !

My only concern is about the night map : the lands are too luminous at night, while there isn't enough city lights on the "lines" (highway roads), but this is just a matter of personal taste.

The shores are so crisp and sharp, it's a real pleasure to look at them.
Maybe the normal map bumps are a bit exagerated (a matter of personal taste), but they're really nice anyway.

What'snext ? Can you make the whole texture generation process automatic ? I mean, just a single button click and you get a different map at each run without any hand retouching ? Can you generate a whole set of different earth-like planets without having to invest too much time ?