First of many planets

[Cham]

Here's another one I made for my addon. The texture is 2k (2048 X 1024) with bumpmap and specular map. The orginal Photoshop file contains three layers in 4k format (4096 X 2048) : the cracked texture as a background, the poles from LunarCell, and a 50% transparent texture to add some color and contrast variations.

[Cham]

And now an icy world from the outer parts of the addon :

[Dollan]

For clouds try this, which you may already know about:

2922 different cloud maps a year

Yeah, I make certain to keep that bookmark. I try to save an image once a day, but I haven't been using them since I switched to Photoshop CS2. I'll have to reinstall PSP in order to be able to properly prepare the clouds for Celestia.

Might have to remove some coastline, but still handy.

Did the hacked version of LunarCell do anything special?

no, it just eliminated the need to buy the thing. I haven't had a copy for some time, though. Heck, I don't even have the trial version anymore. Might have to find it again and see what I can do....

...John...

[B_McKinley]

I'll bite. What can you do in PSP that can't be done in Photoshop CS or CS2?

I have to ask since I'm a Photoshop CS person myself.

[Dollan]

Something to do with manipulating the clouds downloaded from the above link, and making them appear, well, cloud-like for Celestia. There's a thread somewhere where I asked a question about a mini tutorial for clouds in Photoshop, and Don Edwards provided an interesting reply. I'd do a search for the thread and provide the link, but it's 5am and I just got off-shift, and I'm pooped! I'll try to remember to look later on, though, when I finally regain consciousness

...John...

[Cham]

Here's a couple of dead planets. I'm not sure I should include them in my Zet Reticuli addon. Should be placed around some pulsar.

[Cham]

I wasn't satisfied with the previous cracked world, so I made another one using the same technique (three layers in Photoshoop, one for the base cracked texture, another one for the poles only using LunarCell, and a third one to add some color and textures variations. All in 4096 X 2048). The result, reduced to 2048 X 1024, is near perfection with bumpmap and specular reflexion. No pinch effect at the poles, bump map is perfect, almost no pixels visible at very close range.

[Cham]

It's really funny what you can do with some textures variations, bumps and specular reflexion. Here's the last cracked planet, with a slight color variation and a bumpmap parameter increased to 5. Look at the shadow side, the crevices are still visible :





I'll try to make another one with lava in the crevices, and red hot glowings on the night side. But this is though to do, I'm not sure how to select the crevices correctly in Photoshop.

[ajtribick]

Those textures are pretty cool, I especially like the ice world. I guess the cracked world is like Noctis Labyrinthus gone global.

Maybe try adding some craters or something, which would make them look more convincing... I wouldn't suspect these planets would have very active erosion processes going on. Maybe try having some craters sheared along the cracks or something to suggest some kind of surface movement or something.

Just a few suggestions... keep up the good work!

[Michael Kilderry]

I'll try to make another one with lava in the crevices, and red hot glowings on the night side. But this is though to do, I'm not sure how to select the crevices correctly in Photoshop.

I work with Paint Shop Pro, so I'm not that sure about the tools in Photoshop, but here's what I'd do.

1. Turn the texture into a negative image. This should make the crevices white.

2. Using the Highlight/Midtone/Shadow tool, I would then turn down the Shadow and Midtone, leaving Highlight how it is.

3. Lastly, I would use the Colourise tool, (this is Australian spelling, in Paint Shop they call it Colorize) and then adjust the hue to a reddish colour to get the final result for the Night Texture.

Do you need me to explain it more? I'm not sure if this is going to work really well, but it's a start.

[Dollan]

Okay, finally got around to posting the primary worlds that I have orbiting Zeta-1 and 2 Reticuli. They're nothing spectacular; just a demonstration of how much I love Earth-like worlds.

The first one is Minos, orbiting Zeta-1 Reticuli. It is an ocean world, and a planet that I'm grooming to be a tropical apradse. However, there are some factual problems with that which I'll probably resolve later.



The second world orbits Zeta-2 Reticuli, and is named Pretarus. It is a habitable world, but colder by far that Minos, and with land-masses that are much more mountainous.



So, there you go. Nothing spectacular, and the rest of each solar system has not yet been detailed.

...John...

[Beowulf01]

looks real good, , how did you go about making the landmasses?

[Dollan]

For Pretarus? Actually, I did an RGB selection in PSP of the Earth, and copied the resulting pieces into a new map. A little extra tweaking in rearranging the land masses, and there you go. Took me about ten minutes.

...John...

[Michael Kilderry]

I was going to do my next planetary system around the Sirius stars, but now I feel inspired to do a Zeta Reticuli addon too! But I think we've got enough planets for those stars already.

[fsgregs]

Cham, will your solar system add-on be posted on Motherlode soon? It looks GREAT!!!!!!

Frank

[Cham]

Well, not yet, it's not ready and I still have lots of work to do on it.

Be patient.