16k Moon - a work in progress

[praesepe]

One more update: (I managed to get some free time for Celestia )

- All (finally) "black" artifacts removed.
- Colouring redone.

Some shots:

Forgot to ask....

Is this going to be a single 16k texture
or a Virtual texture, or both ?

Well, I initally planned to release it as a single 16k texture, but as long as I've been seeing, Virtual Texture work excellent, load faster and take less resources when the higher levels are not required (ie, seeing multiple planetary surfaces from a far distance ). I may give it a try before I release the whole thing

[Darkmiss]

Please Release as a single texture as well then. Pleaeaeaease........

Fantastic Pictures, are you useing any kind of bump mapping
Or is this just a standard flat texture ?

[ElPelado]

the pictures look grate!!!!!!! nice job.

[praesepe]

I confirm that there will be a Virtual Texture version. I've built tiles up to level 3, and the whole thing runs sooo smooth I'll put some screenshots when I finish the level 4 tiles to show how the work is going. I think I'd have to decide which version I am going to upload, since we have to prevent shatters.net bandwith trimmed down... Or as I've reading here, It could be a good idea to separate the levels in different zips..

[praesepe]

Ok, I finished the last (4) level of tiles I followed the "standard" proposed by Jim (512x512 tiles) in order to have all available Virtual Textures in that format and to avoid compatibility problems As usual, here come the screenshots:

Apollo 11+16K Virtual Texture:


Another thing I am into, is a Moon normal map. The next screenshots show the 16 VT Moon texture along with a 8k normal map that I am projecting to make 16K and of course in Virtual texture format.

16K Moon VT


16K Moon VT+8K normal map


16K Moon VT


16K Moon VT+8K normal map

[DJ_Night]

Finally the release of the long awaited 16k moon texture is close, great work Mr.Praesepe, the final colouring looks very real, keep up the good work,

the 8k normal map also looks good, will you include that in the texture package? viirtual normalmap or single texture?

http://www.la-guarida.com/Celestia/inde ... de0001.htm

cheers...

[Darkmiss]

Well that is really looking nice, great work on this beast.

But please could I ask you to put up the single version as well
Even if its just for a few days or so.

As these vitual textures are nice and all
But i do hope they will not lead to the death of standard texture for Celestia.

above 16k I can see a need for Virtual textures.
But i just like to have the full maps as well, as high as I can get them.

If it comes to it, I would ask you to Post it to me, so I could clear out my entire home page, just to host this texture for everyone.

[praesepe]

Thanks all of you for your comments

the 8k normal map also looks good, will you include that in the texture package? viirtual normalmap or single texture?

http://www.la-guarida.com/Celestia/inde ... de0001.htm

cheers...

It will definetively be an apart download from the main base texture since it's not finished yet and I it also would delay the relase for more time.. I am projecting to make a even large normal map, up to level 4 may be..

Well that is really looking nice, great work on this beast.

But please could I ask you to put up the single version as well
Even if its just for a few days or so.

As these vitual textures are nice and all
But i do hope they will not lead to the death of standard texture for Celestia.

above 16k I can see a need for Virtual textures.
But i just like to have the full maps as well, as high as I can get them.

If it comes to it, I would ask you to Post it to me, so I could clear out my entire home page, just to host this texture for everyone.

Don't worry, I will upload both VT and single versions The single version is going to be the first (I'm just zipping it) and may be the VT will be split in zips correponding to each level to make the downloads easier (and lighter) for everyone.. any ideas?

[Kendrix]

For thoses who are interested, I have taken some High resolution photos of the moon with my telescope.

They can be found at :
http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?B ... st=Kendrix

And from my point of view, Celestia rendering is too dark near the terminator...

[wcomer]

Praesepe,

With respect to the virtual textures. You can shave off about 20% of the total file size by reducing the tile widths as the latitude increases. This can be done in such as way as to maintain a minimum resolution across the entire surface of the sphere. Lets suppose you elect for 256x256 tiles. Then level5 exists with mxn=64x32=2048 tiles. All the tx_m_0 and tx_m_31 tiles can have their widths downscaled by a factor of 1:8. For tx_m_1 and tx_m_30 downscale by 1:4. For tx_m_[2-4] and tx_m_[27-29] downscale by 1:2. I have a zsh script that does this for every level that I'd be happy to send you for reference. If you use 512x512 tiles, then you get less of a reduction but still ~20%.

Also, Before you cut up each texture level into VT tiles, you should pre-compress the level with nvdxt, then convert back to .tga and only then break the level into tiles. That prevents most of the edge artifacts due to the mismatch between the edges of the compressed tiles.

cheers,
Walton

[praesepe]

Ok, I've uploaded the single Moon 16K texture (looks like that my shatters account is going to need at least a simple html page to index all the files I'm adding ).

You can grab it from:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~praesepe/files ... Single.zip

The VT version will have to wait a little more since it's 3:30 a.m. here and I've got to get some sleep )

Praesepe,

With respect to the virtual textures. You can shave off about 20% of the total file size by reducing the tile widths as the latitude increases. This can be done in such as way as to maintain a minimum resolution across the entire surface of the sphere. Lets suppose you elect for 256x256 tiles. Then level5 exists with mxn=64x32=2048 tiles. All the tx_m_0 and tx_m_31 tiles can have their widths downscaled by a factor of 1:8. For tx_m_1 and tx_m_30 downscale by 1:4. For tx_m_[2-4] and tx_m_[27-29] downscale by 1:2. I have a zsh script that does this for every level that I'd be happy to send you for reference. If you use 512x512 tiles, then you get less of a reduction but still ~20%.

Also, Before you cut up each texture level into VT tiles, you should pre-compress the level with nvdxt, then convert back to .tga and only then break the level into tiles. That prevents most of the edge artifacts due to the mismatch between the edges of the compressed tiles.

cheers,
Walton

Hi Walton! great idea :O, I just have to try and get the results!.. I'd really like yo have your scripts to test them, but I'm not able to use them since I don't have unix/linux environment installed on my system...

[Darkmiss]

Praesepe Thank you very very much for your hard work.
It looks and works Beautifuly.

[praesepe]

Hi,

I've uploaded the 16k VT version, it can be downloaded from:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~praesepe/files/Moon16KVT.zip

Here are some screenshots to show how my new Moon normal map is going on.. All data there is derived from LIDAR

[ElPelado]

when i click to download it with Download Acelerator, it asks me for a pasword. and when i want to download normaly, the iexplorer tells me that teh accses is forbbiden. and in your page you dont have a link. what can i do?

[praesepe]

Sorry ElPelado!

I forgot to add the permission attributes to the file... This should be fixed now, so you can try again

[TERRIER]

Praesepe

Somehow I've missed the release of your VT version and I've only just downloaded it!

Just as a re-cap, if I want to view this as my permanent moon texture, I will have to alter the main solarsys.ssc to;

Code: Select all

"Moon" "Sol/Earth"
{
   Texture "Moon16KVT.ctx"

.........

and place the textures folder and the .ctx file into my TEXTURES/MEDRES file ?

regards
TERRIER

[selden]

TERRIER,

I've found it more convenient to make the virtual textures "AltSurface" textures. They can be treated as Addons and moved from one version of Celestia to the next without editing solarsys.ssc.

Here's a picture of the directory structure, along with the SSC and CTX files.

(As usual this links to a larger picture)

Note that I did rename the directories and catalog files to be consistant. I replaced the "space" character by "_" and inserted the "_" in the ctx file name. Spaces in the names of directories and files cause problems for other programs.

Notice that the split-screen view shows both the original moon surface texture that comes with Celestia at the bottom, along with the 16K surface texture for that region at the top. There's a lot of improvement!

[Star Lion]

that textur is way to yello, I prefer the "colered moon 8k vt" to this 16k textur.
This is a good textur, but only if viewed from earths serface.
The moon is not this yello from space, is it.

[TERRIER]

Cheers for the tip Seldon. I've already got all my add-ons put into sub-catogories, such as, Asteroids, Comets, Spacecraft, Nebulas etc etc, within my Extras directory.

This really helps when trying to find things via the menus as it groups all the 'alike' items together...

..however I'm going to bite the bullet on this one, and view it as my main permanent texture.

I'll probably be cursing this decision when it comes to installing the next version of Celestia!

regards

PS I've also noticed, I'll have to change my 'grid overlay' alternate texture definition for the moon if I want to view this correctly with this new texture.

[Paul]

Hi praesepe,

Have you made this 16k Moon texture into a level 9 Moon texture for the new version of Orbiter? If not, then is it OK for me to do it?

Cheers,
Paul