Available for download - Asteroid Maker 1.6

[buggs_moran]

bdm,

Just out of curiosity, any thoughts on increasing the number of objects?

[ANDREA]

Following previous posts, I've added to my Geonosiun asteroid belt-rings the jedifighter.3DS model I found here (with tons of other Sci-Fi models!):

Code: Select all

http://scifi3d.theforce.net/list.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=11

by Ricardo C. Beux (Original Model) and Mark Burge (Junshi) (Textures).
It can be used freely giving account of the authors.
Here how it should appear:

but this is the result in Celestia:

I remember that there was a discussion on the need and methods to convert 3DS to 3DS for Celestia, but after a search I didn't find it.
Can someone give me the right address?
Thanks a lot

Andrea

[jestr]

Andrea,I expect the model will have to be split up into smaller objects,each with a different texture.In modelling software,it is common for these models to have many different textures applied to different parts of the same object which isnt possible in Celestia.I will see what I can do,Jestr

[ANDREA]

Andrea,I expect the model will have to be split up into smaller objects,each with a different texture.In modelling software,it is common for these models to have many different textures applied to different parts of the same object which isnt possible in Celestia.I will see what I can do,Jestr

Thanks a lot Jestr, both for information and for help offer.
If I can add something else ( ), the jedifighter goes together with the Jedi Starfighter HyperRing by Andrew Crook (Author) and George Mezori (ZOO) (3DS Conversion) ,

that you can find in the same page:

Code: Select all

http://scifi3d.theforce.net/list.asp?intGenreID=10&intCatID=11

If you wish to give a look there... thank you!

Andrea

[selden]

Also, most of the JPG textures provided with that model are not a power of 2 on a side. They'll need to be scaled to a different size. e.g. Some are 528x1137. Scaling them to 512x1024 should help, although it'll damage them somewhat.
And one of them is a GIF and one is TARGA, which can't work at all.

[ANDREA]

Also, most of the JPG textures provided with that model are not a power of 2 on a side. They'll need to be scaled to a different size. e.g. Some are 528x1137. Scaling them to 512x1024 should help, although it'll damage them somewhat. And one of them is a GIF and one is TARGA, which can't work at all.

Thank you Selden, I see that this kind of conversion is not an easy task.
Moreover the textures are spreaded in a 3D space, instead of being in the right place.
But why Celestia cannot use the other's format (I think Celestia started after 3DS format beginning)?
Bye

Andrea

[buggs_moran]

Silly powers of two. Always screwing things up exponentially.

The functions are sitting in a tavern, nervous about the coming Derivation. The doors blast open and the functions hide under the tables, only the exponential sits calmly on the chair. The derivation comes in, sees the function and says "You're not afraid I can derive you?" "No, I'am e to x", says the exponential. "Well" replies the derivation "but who says I differentiate along x?" Ha ha ha ha... ahem, um, I am a geek.

[selden]

Andrea,

My guess is that people who do the conversion from other formats to 3ds often are simply careless. They don't check to make sure that the results are OK. In this case there are parts of the fighter scattered all over the place.

Here's a picture of the fighter after I resized and converted a few of the textures, which was easy. Repairing the model would be a lot more work. I'll leave that to someone more skilled in 3D modelling than I am.

[jestr]

This effect is usually caused by the (creation?) origin of each part being in different points in space,the model looks fine in 3DS Max,but I havent exported it to Celestia yet-there are some flipped normals need fixing,before I hack it apart by texture,looks like I'll have to change each parts origin also then,Jestr

[ANDREA]

Thank you for these info, Selden and Jestr.
I was wrongly supposing that Celestia needs a different 3DS format.
Now it's clear.
I'm sorry for my questions, but I have absolutely no experience on modelling, and even if I find it fascinating I think I'll never approach it.
IMHO, it's the same as Linux: a lot of advantages, but it's for who uses it corrently and not seldomly, and the same is for any kind of modelling.
Am I wrong?
Bye

Andrea

[Jeam Tag]

If I can add something else ( ), the jedifighter goes together with the Jedi Starfighter HyperRing by Andrew Crook (Author) and George Mezori (ZOO) (3DS Conversion)Andrea

Andrea, some months ago I shown in my SW pages lots of picts about a long work-in-progress by Linuxman that is using (after convertions, additions etc) many models from the 3d site you mentionned. see this old page * for example (i've deleted others to replace, step by step, by updated pages about the first release of this work;The pack will be linked soon on the CML, I hope) http://jeam.tag.free.fr/CELESTIAhtml/Ce ... rWars4.htm etc. (Episode one, so neither Jedi fighter nor HyperRing is present, even if I had picts about them running well in Celestia in my ancient pages, seems to me i quoted them in the old thread about Jedi fighter by El Pelado? don't sure)... So, if there are some questions about SW models todays I will try to announce the release, and refresh the pages in my cat, if I find some time... Jeam

* Edit: I have quickly replaced some old picts, page http://jeam.tag.free.fr/CELESTIAhtml/Ce ... Wars10.htm and following... there are a little Fighter (#11) and Hyp' (#14 & 15) in it...

[bdm]

bdm,

Just out of curiosity, any thoughts on increasing the number of objects?

The bottleneck on the number of objects is the Celestia export and some limitations of OpenOffice. The Celestia export currently requires one row per line, and OpenOffice is limited to 32,000 rows. Thus, I cannot have more than about 400 asteroids.

I haven't yet discovered how I can have multiple lines of text in a single cell (although Google is helping here), and have it work reliably in Excel, OpenOffice and other spreadsheet applications. When I discover this, I can convert the Celestia page so it has one row per object and have the output formatted neatly.

There won't be a new release of Asteroid maker for a couple of weeks as I work on other projects.

[ANDREA]

Andrea, some months ago I shown in my SW pages lots of picts about a long work-in-progress by Linuxman that is using (after convertions, additions etc) many models from the 3d site you mentionned. see this old page * for example (i've deleted others to replace, step by step, by updated pages about the first release of this work;The pack will be linked soon on the CML, I hope) ... Jeam * Edit: I have quickly replaced some old picts, page http://jeam.tag.free.fr/CELESTIAhtml/Ce ... Wars10.htm and following... there are a little Fighter (#11) and Hyp' (#14 & 15) in it...

Sorry Jeam Tag, I missed that info.
Now I've seen your new enormous addon project, and I'll speed-up my new garphic card purchase, so I'll be ready to enjoy all your stuff.
Nice to heve it, from an old StarWars fan like me.
Bye and thank you and Jean-Marie le Cosp?©rec [aka Linuxman).
Bye soon

Andrea

[bdm]

It would be helpful to move the discussion of ship modelling to another thread on that topic. That way, it would make it easier for others to help with the particular issues by making the thread easier to find.
_________________

On the asteroid maker, I have added a Kuiper belt option that allows a user to create Kuiper belts. Kuiper belts have different orbital distributions to asteroid belts, so I have attempted to simulate this by adding a logarithmic distribution of semimajor axes for Kuiper belts, and creating an option that creates the occasional high-eccentricity orbit that some KBOs possess. This option expands the length of the semimajor axis for selected objects, and also adjusts the eccentricity so the periastron remains at the same distance.

The KBO orbits may be a little unrealistic, but given the distribution of orbits is still mostly unknown it may be hard to tell the difference.

I should be ready to release this new version in the next few days. I want to add more documentation before release. The creation of Kuiper belts requires the changing of a few parameters for good results and I must explain how this is done.

[PlutonianEmpire]

The Asteroid Maker is a spreadsheet that creates asteroid belts for fictional star systems.

These are the download links. The Motherlode link is recommended and should be tried first, but it won't be available until the Motherlode is updated. After version 1.6 becomes available at the Motherlode, all future version updates will be released through the Motherlode only.
Download links for version 1.6:
Asteroid Maker 1.6 - Motherlode (1068k)

Some features:

• Up to 400 asteroids can be created at a time
• Trojan and Hilda asteroids
• Exclusion around Kirkwood gaps
• Binary asteroids
• Asteroid moons (up to 2 per asteroid)
• Up to 25 random textures
• Up to 20 random models

Sample screenshots:

Star system showing asteroid orbits


A typical asteroid.


An asteroid with two moons.


A binary asteroid.
[/url]

Wow. I downloaded it, and it looks like quite lot of work. yikes.

[Dollan]

Okay, I'm finally getting the spreadsheet generator to work (helps if you reload Excel, apparently), though I'm still confused by a couple of things.

First, being the absolute newb to Excel, it is the blue and yellow fields that I can edit, right? Seems obvious, but I want to make certain.

Second, apparently the latest pre versions of Celestia do not come with the textures listed out in the generator. Where can I find these? I didn't see them at the CV Repository. The models are all there, though. (EDIT: never mind, I just found some other textures and utilized them).

Third, are those "#Blank" lines neccesary? They seem to add quite a bit of size to a file that would otherwise be fairly small. With them included, my outputs average some 32,000 lines long!

...John...

[bdm]

Okay, I'm finally getting the spreadsheet generator to work (helps if you reload Excel, apparently), though I'm still confused by a couple of things.

First, being the absolute newb to Excel, it is the blue and yellow fields that I can edit, right? Seems obvious, but I want to make certain.

Yes, I put in those shadings to highlight the cells that can be edited. Actually, all the cells can be edited, but I highlighted the important ones.

Second, apparently the latest pre versions of Celestia do not come with the textures listed out in the generator. Where can I find these? I didn't see them at the CV Repository. The models are all there, though. (EDIT: never mind, I just found some other textures and utilized them).

The filenames of the textures can be edited as needed.

Third, are those "#Blank" lines neccesary? They seem to add quite a bit of size to a file that would otherwise be fairly small. With them included, my outputs average some 32,000 lines long!

...John...

These #BLANK lines mark places where data was omitted, such as an asteroid that has no moon or an asteroid in a Kirkwood gap. These are difficult to remove in the spreadsheet, but after saving to an SSC file these lines can be removed easily using a text editor that supports search-and-replace with regular expressions. (Change "#BLANK" plus end of line to nothing, and voil? , all the lines are removed.) The spreadsheet is a cross-platform tool, not a complete solution in itself. Sometimes other software tools are required to complete the job in the same way a hammer is not the only tool that is used to construct a house.