Looking for Star Textures

[Dollan]

Does anyone know where I might find some good examples of star textures? Red dwarfs, yellow dwarfs, giants, whatever?

...John...

[Rassilon]

I think I can get terraform to produce star textures in the next version if you want.....

[Dollan]

That would be cool.

What I really want are textures that can be somewhat customized. For instance, certain stars that I might be using are known to have massive sunspots; these would be very neat to incorporate.

In the meantime, I'm also trying to figure out how to make a nice texture from actual solar images.

But now I need to run the boys to school, so....

...John...

[selden]

John,

In case you haven't noticed, Tech Sgt Chen also is interested in stellar textures. You might consult with him.

[WildMoon]

What about neutron, pulsar, and qausar star textures?

[Tech Sgt. Chen]

The hardest part is making the original template. It's very time consuming. However, once I make the first template, I save it as a B&W texture that I can apply various color shades to later on.
I use PhotoShop but, any paint program (Gimp, etc.) that affords layering and a clone brush/stamp tool will do nicely.
For HIGH RESOLUTION textures (these can strain some older graphics cards and result in large file sizes - you have to find a compromise), I start with a few Hi-Res photos of the solar surface. I then create a transparent template in photoshop for the size I desire (usually 4096 X 2048). You must then (using the clone brush or stamp) transfer random sections of the original solar surface photos onto the transparent template. I usually set my clone brush opacity somewhere between 80 to 95 percent so the edges blend nicely. Once I have completed stamping the entire template (making sure every inch is covered COMPLETELY), I use the Polar coordinates tool followed by the Offset tool to mitigate any potential seams. When using the offset tool, just stamp over any seams or edges you find. I then remove ALL color and save it as a BW template.
I use either the clone brush tool or a cut and paste section for applying sunspots later as needed. The cut and paste method is better for sizing the sunspots but, you may need to erase surrounding granulation for it to conform to your current template. Once finished applying sunspots and coloring, save it as a .jpg image and your DONE! You may need to tweak the darkened areas of the sunspots using the selection tool and applying color variations. Once you make a star texture or two, it becomes much, much easier.

[Dollan]

Thanks, Sgt!

I'll probably start this method when I'm ready to work on the 12 Ophiuchi add-on of mine. It's a rotating variable, and those huge sunspots really have captured my attention!

I've bookmarked this thread under my "mini-tutorial" section, so I'll definitely be referring abck to it!

...John...

[Tech Sgt. Chen]

Eventually, I will be posting a few more variations of star textures on my website. I'm currently working on a special request for another forum member. I recently suffered a HD crash and had to hastily back up all my templates and texture samples to CDs before reinstalling windows. I've tried to recover some of my samples and textures back from the CD but have gotten the dreaded "cyclic redundancy" error message which usually means that data corruption occurred during the transfer to BRAND NEW SONY CD-RWs. That means I have to start some projects from scratch again. I lost my low resolution "Red Giant" texture, an O-class star texture, a Blue Giant texture with Theoretic giant sunspots, etc. All-in-all, a real drag (in 80s lingo). But, I know I can recreate them with time. Today, I finally got around to re-installing Celestia 1.3.2. I'm also gonna install the 1.4.0 version so I can learn how to deal with all the new features and code parameters. Wish me luck...

[Dollan]

Good luck indeed! I would have loved to have seen those lost textures....

...John...