New Textures From Space-Graphics.com

[Darkmiss]

Space-Graphics.com has put up two new 16k jpg's for download
one is of Mars and the other is the Earth.

The Mars texture is simular to the re-colouring that Preasepe did with the older version.

on to the links

Earth http://www.space-graphics.com/e43.htm

includes:
Shaded, Flat, Spec, Bump, and Cloud maps

Mars http://www.space-graphics.com/m46.htm

Includes:
Shaded, and Bump maps

Keep in mind that the Mars texture need Rotating by 180o

[RND]

whoa high res indeed, thanks for the links.

[Bob Hegwood]

Just so you know, Paul...

I exchanged a few e-mails with Mr. Mario Rossi at Space-Graphics.com and he was a very nice gentleman who allowed me to use his Mars texture (After I resized it and corrected the Central Meridian) with my MarsTour script.

The textures he has on his site are really amazing if you've never seen them before. I'm used to seeing fuzzy craters and blurred lines on the surface of Mars. With his new textures, even AFTER I re-sized them for use on my poor, OpenGL-limited machine, I could almost count the rocks on the ground.

Take heed, he's also working on some MASSIVE i.e. - 46k textures.

Sheesh! I'm just going to HAVE TA get a real computer with a graphics card one of these days.

Take care, Bob

[RND]

I downloaded the Earth one last night, took a while on dialup It is pretty amazing work but there are some issues with it. Check out Greenland and you'l see one. While Arctica looks ok, Antarctica looks fake and you cant discern any landmass. Desert regions do look much better though.

[Don. Edwards]

I too have downloaded the texture and found it a little bright and just a little to saturated still. So I of course have already started touching it up. I'm not sure if I like his ocean look or my own better. My older 16k and 8k textures were based on his Earth render textures which the coloring was better.
I too agree the ice packs and iceberg fields look to strange. They look like they have been texturized with a denim pattern. Also the deserts of the greater Sahara and Arabia have the same problems my 32k Earth texture does. Miss-matched shaded photo tiles even in the non-shaded version. I am presently working out the best way to remove this problem.
I am also not sure I like how bright the blue is on all the rivers and lakes. Maybe it is just me. I love Mario's work but I think he could have taken the time to do just a little cleaning up. I always try to. Now we will see if he gets his new 16k Blue-Mars and 16k Teraformed Mars textures done.

Don. Edwards

[Kolano]

I wish the cloudmap didn't have that aqua line through the middle

[jestr]

Very nice Mars texture ,go careful with the new bumpmap though as there are vertical lines one pixel thick running down the side edges,when you swap hemispheres this ends up down the middle of 'Meridiani Planum'.All the best Jestr

[DaveMc]

Anyone know what's up with the Space-Graphics.com site? I was able to connect from home a few days ago but didn't d/l anything since I'm on dial-up. Now that I'm at work with our speedy T1 I can't seem to connect, the site seems to be down ("The page cannot be found" error). Anyone else having this problem?

Thanks,
Dave

[Guest]

Anyone know what's up with the Space-Graphics.com site? Thanks,
Dave

Dave,

Mario is currently on a week's vacation, and I believe that his site will be back up when he returns from wherever he went to relax for a while.

That's what I gathered from my e-mails with him over the last week anyway.

Take care, Bob

[jestr]

I have made a VT Jpg version of the Space Graphics new m46 shaded texture if anyone wants they can get it from my slow ftp site
ftp://celestia:addons@81.111.74.239
It weighs in at about 35Mb it looks great although as Selden has pointed out the shading can lead to unnatural inconsistencies at certain times of day in places.It just seems to have so much more detail and the colours look a lot better on this one,cheers Jestr

[Don. Edwards]

Well I said I was playing with the color of Mario's Space-Graphics new e43 flat Earth texture and this is what I came up with.
-


I like the fact that there are no shadows on surface features. This allows your bumpmap or normalmap to do the jod it is supposed to do. I will be downloading the graphic files he based these off of from the Blue-Marble site ASAP and will most likely use these flat textures as my new continental base in the 32k texture instead.

There is one problem with Mario's (Space-Graphics) new textures though. You can see it in the next set of images.

-

Now if you look at the image on the left you see a large body of water in the middle of California's central valley. The problem is that body of water does not exsit. It is sitting on top of at least four cities. Tracy, Manteca, Stockton, Lathrop and posibly Discovery Bay. I should know I used to live there and the nearest we ever had to having that much water there was about ten years ago when we had some heavy flooding. But it was now where near this extensive. So as soon as Mario gets back and has the site back up running I will fill him in on the error. There are other quibles about this texture as well. The most being that he has made to many bodies of water to bright in color as to what they really are. But I always take a little creative license with my textures so he can as well. Just that I feel he should go back and do some comparing to the master Blue-Marble textures from time to time too make sure he isn't adding things, like lakes to areas where they do not exsist in the first place. All in all I am impresed with the flat shadowless texture data and will be working with it in the near future.

Don. Edwards

[Guest]

Space-Graphics.com holds copyrights for all the images and downloadable
products available on the Space-Graphics.com web site. By downloading
any FREE Space-Graphics.com products, you have the rights to use and
customize it for your own purposes personal or educational but NOT for
business.

this is very funny: have mr mario rossi own satellite or what?
all maps from nasa servers downloaded and little changed. thats all....

"Commercial use of Space-Graphics.com contents
For commercial use and/or licensing information, please email:
licensing@space-graphics.com"

aha very funny......

have mr rossi permissions to change the textures?

[selden]

Anonymous Guest,

That's the way copyrights work. It's not a laughing matter. You can be taken to court for violating Mario's rights. Most countries, including Italy and the U.S. are signatories to the international treaty known as "The Berne Convention." International treaties have the force of law in the signatory countries.

Just because the original image was public domain does not make the variants that Mario's created public domain, no matter how little effort was involved.

One site with lots of information about copyrights is http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/copyright.html

[Bob Hegwood]

By the way,

Just in case you don't know yet, Mario's site is back up and running at:

http://www.space-graphics.com

Why don'tcha go ask HIM about the copyright?

Take care, Bob

[DaveMc]

Space-Graphics.com is up and running but the m46 shaded and bump maps links aren't working (404 The page cannot be found). The other Mars stuff seems to be working OK.

Dave

[Bob Hegwood]

Space-Graphics.com is up and running but the m46 shaded and bump maps links aren't working (404 The page cannot be found). The other Mars stuff seems to be working OK.

Dave

That's because he didn't wanted the server brought to its knees on its first day back up!

Take care, Bob

[DaveMc]

Bob Hegwood wrote:

That's because he didn't wanted the server brought to its knees on its first day back up!

Thanks Bob, I hear that! Plus, yesterday the links were for the 16K version, now they are for a new 8K version. That's fine w/me as I would have had to resize it to 8K anyway before converting to dds.

Dave