Release: A portrait of our Sun

[Buzz]

rthorvald,

I did manage to get your Sun, and it is awesome! Cool to see what people think of doing that one never thought of oneself (the solar flares)...

[Rassilon]

I just got around to seeing this and I must admit you continue to place me in a state of utter awe...

Of course Ill never see it as it truly is...100+ megs is far too deadly a size for a puny wimp like 56k....

[Vincent]

I'm converting it into dds and that wouldn't overpass 50 Mb... For those who can read dds only...

@+
Vincent

[Vincent]

I have just converted all png files of the th_sun texture itself (in hires, medres and lores folders) in dds format.

The result is a 40 MB folder !!

I didn't notice a big difference in resolution, and, anyway, the result is more than acceptable particularly for people who can't download or use big files.

But as this is Rthorvald's addon, I'm not going to upload the folder, of course ! Rthorvald will look at the quality and take a decision.

Rthorvald, I just have to find a way to send you the zip file... What do you suggest ?

@+
Vincent

[rthorvald]

Rthorvald will look at the quality and take a decision

Getting it down to 40 mb sounds great... How about a screenshot?

I just have to find a way to send you the zip file... What do you suggest ?

If the quality is so good you prefer to use this version yourself, i have no reservations if you want to upload it directly to the Motherlode and get it listed; just add a date and your contribution to the ReadMe, or write a new one to go along with mine. If you rather won??t do this, PM me, and i??ll arrange for an FTP transfer.

-rthorvald
PS: ... And thank you for the work!

[Vincent]

I have no reservations if you want to upload it directly to the Motherlode and get it listed; just add a date and your contribution to the ReadMe

Thanks, I gonna do that.

PS: ... And thank you for the work!

Are you kidding ? YOU did the work !

@+
Vincent

[Redfish]

I think it's very good. Can't wait for a download. But I think the red in the sunspots is a bit too much. I don't know what others think of this.

[David]

Ive just uploaded a much smaller version 2.4MB on the motherload.

I have done it for those who have poor machines and/or a bad internet connection in the lores folder the images are 1/2 k which my computer can handle and in the medres folder they are 1k

if your computer can handle more than that then download textures which are 2k im sure that i've seen them before somewhere, if not them ill post a 2k texture from the large rthorvald addon

David

[skywatchereast]

First, I'm a Celestia newbie and have read a lot of documentation on how to add the addons. But for the life of me I can't understand how to add this one!! Darn it ALL....

After donwloading I have looked at the files and do I replace some of the original files with these new ones? And if I do how are they orginized....

If I don't replace, do I create the directory structure of an add-on and put what files where....

Sorry for a newbie questions....perhaps there is a thread someone can point me too.

Thanks for the info, the Sol addon is absolutely spectacular!!

Chris.

[rthorvald]

for the life of me I can't understand how to add this one!!

In the attached ReadMe, all becomes clear...:

Drop the folder "th_sun" into
/CelestiaResources/extras/addons/
(If the Addons folder does not exist, create it).

That??s it. Don??t touch anything else.

-rthorvald

[skywatchereast]

Thx, works like a charm!!

[t00fri]

Runar,

I just tried your sun. It's really great. I only have one suggestion though: I think the sun-color is far too yellow at larger distance while the intense yellow is quite OK in zoom mode. So one possibility would be to use differently colored mipmaps in the DXT conversion. Pale ones for low-res (large distance from the sun) and more intensely yellow ones for close-ups. The various mipmaps can easily be assembled together into a dds by using the standard NVIDIA command-line tools, for example.

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

I think the sun-color is far too yellow at larger distance while the intense yellow is quite OK in zoom mode. So one possibility would be to use differently colored mipmaps in the DXT conversion.

Since i haven??t had occation to familiarize myself with the DXT formats too well, i regrettably don??t know anything about mipmaps. Are you saying that these can hold color information in addition to what??s in the actual texture, and that i can get a smooth transition between coloring of different levels by employing it? I am well aware that the sun color is too rich from a distance, but it was a tradeoff i had to make to get the color/brightness levels deep enough to have visible features closer in...

-rthorvald

[t00fri]

I think the sun-color is far too yellow at larger distance while the intense yellow is quite OK in zoom mode. So one possibility would be to use differently colored mipmaps in the DXT conversion.

Since i haven??t had occation to familiarize myself with the DXT formats too well, i regrettably don??t know anything about mipmaps. Are you saying that these can hold color information in addition to what??s in the actual texture, and that i can get a smooth transition between coloring of different levels by employing it? I am well aware that the sun color is too rich from a distance, but it was a tradeoff i had to make to get the color/brightness levels deep enough to have visible features closer in...

-rthorvald

Runar,

of course, I realized why you were 'stuck' with the intense yellow color (in zoom mode).

Now, mipmaps are a sequence of subtextures of the main texture, each subsequent one having a width smaller by a factor of two. In the first place, mipmaps save time, since at large distance from the image, you never can exploit the full resolution of the main texture. The code then automatically picks a suitable mipmap texture instead.

Now the trick is that there are command-line tools from NVIDIA (windows) allowing to extract, edit and (re-)store the various mipmaps within the DXT format. So the idea is to fade the yellow intensity successively more and more, the smaller the mipmap size. That's precisely like the eye perceives colors as well...

Once I am done with my Iapetus & Titan textures, I might well have a go at mipmaps for your Sun. I have lots of experience with this

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

Now the trick is that there are command-line tools from NVIDIA (windows) allowing to extract, edit and (re-)store the various mipmaps within the DXT format.

Ok, thanks. I have been all over the nvidia site to read up on this, but what little i find is relatively opaque to anyone not knowing the subject already.

I can see the functions you describe might be very useful extensions to the rationale behind Virtual Textures, and have tried running some of the tools in WinXP under VirtualPC, but that??s slooow (there??s no OSX tools). Also, i don??t know the properties of the different formats good enough to aim for any particular result. I wish they published an introduction to the stuff for the ignorant masses

Once I am done with my Iapetus & Titan textures, I might well have a go at mipmaps for your Sun. I have lots of experience with this

I would really love to see this. And if it were accompagnied by a short description on how it was done, i would love it even more...

-rthorvald

[t00fri]

Runar,

just to make sure that you did not get lost in the NVIDIA labyrinth...You need to go to the developer site:

The utilities I am referring to are the DDS Utilities to be found here:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

There is a quite clear instruction ( help) with these utilities. There you also find relevant Photoshop plugins for normal maps, etc.

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

The utilities I am referring to are the DDS Utilities to be found here: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

Yes, i know. I downloaded them a while ago, and have been playing around with them a little.

There is a quite clear instruction ( help) with these utilities. There you also find relevant Photoshop plugins for normal maps, etc.

Yes - i don??t have any problem with the instructions for the usage. I just don??t know much about the formats themselves, and since i really don??t have a machine that can run them, i am emulating a PC on my mac to do it. That makes it so slow, experimenting is about as fast as watching the north pole melt. Hm, that could speed up soon... So, what i miss is an experience base, or rather, tools to play with on OSX.

-rthorvald

[t00fri]

The utilities I am referring to are the DDS Utilities to be found here: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html

Yes, i know. I downloaded them a while ago, and have been playing around with them a little.

There is a quite clear instruction ( help) with these utilities. There you also find relevant Photoshop plugins for normal maps, etc.

Yes - i don??t have any problem with the instructions for the usage. I just don??t know much about the formats themselves, and since i really don??t have a machine that can run them, i am emulating a PC on my mac to do it. That makes it so slow, experimenting is about as fast as watching the north pole melt. Hm, that could speed up soon... So, what i miss is an experience base, or rather, tools to play with on OSX.

-rthorvald

But why don't you compile them for the Mac. They are command line tools, the code is there and porting should be easy.

Bye Fridger

[rthorvald]

But why don't you compile them for the Mac. They are command line tools, the code is there and porting should be easy.

Somehow, i knew you would say that
Being a designer, i have just a vague notion of what that means. The day a situation like this annoys me enough that it crowds out one of the zillion other things i would like to learn (or often, has to learn), i will find out how to compile software. And one of these days, my DDS challenged work environment just might do that...

In the mean time, i barely thread water concerning stuff it would be cool to know. I use maybe half of my work hours figuring things out, some for paying clients, some for myself. There??s simply not room for everything at once (no dual-processing capacity in my brain, sorry).

Oh, you??ll say this is simple to do. It probably is, too. But getting down to it is not simple, when i only have 24 hours each day, and enough projects to last well into the next millenium...

Some day, though!

-rthorvald

[t00fri]

But why don't you compile them for the Mac. They are command line tools, the code is there and porting should be easy.

Somehow, i knew you would say that
Being a designer, i have just a vague notion of what that means.

...
Some day, though!

-rthorwald

OK, I'll have a look at the mipmaps. Just thought, compiling was trivial for you, since I knew you are a "PRO"...Never mind.

Bye Fridger