Playing with the new Space Graphics earth textures

[t00fri]

Sure, I am faszinated playing with the new Space-Graphics
(http://www.space-graphics.com/) earth textures.

Clearly, I have also tried to investigate quantitatively (by comparing
test rgb values) how different they are from my textures. Although, it
is not quite easy to stay entirely objective in this case, I am not
100% in favour of their colors. Definitely, I think that the ocean
specular reflection e.g in Don Edwards images has too much
/cyan/. This is probably related to a still unmatched specular
color setup in HIS solarsys.ssc and not to the new textures.

I definitely dislike the fact that the new textures are JPG's. From
a more ambitious point of view this is quite "terrible", since any
manipulations done with JPG's will dramatically reduce their
quality. The new (CVS, 1.2.5preX) Celestia requires the textures to be
a power of two in size, implying that some action has to be taken to
reduce those 5k, 10k images to 4k, 8k. As to my personal standards, I
dislike doing this with JPG format. Most of you will however not
notice what I am talking about;-).

Now, let me point out what I personally like best with the new textures:

The EarthRender-10K-Color.jpg texture has the right type of redish color
correction ( similar to mine;-)) for viewing it from space, but most
importantly it is reeeallllly FLAT (no shading)!

(Don't forget to reduce it to 8k if you use a modern Celestia!)

Thus, this is a great texture to experiment with /dynamical/ bumpmapping, using
e.g. my 8k earthbump.jpg. The 3d-views of mountain ranges as function
of the position of the sun (sunrise, sunset!) are simply gorgeous.

Another file that faszinates me is the shaded earth view
EarthOne-5K-shaded270.jpg that contains "empty oceans", however with
shaded altitude levels! So I might just "fill" those oceans with
semi-transparent water such that the shading of the ground is still
visible slightly. Looks like worth a try...

Stay tuned...

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Frider,
What would you consider the best setting for the speculars in my solarsystem.ssc. I am just using the settings that came with Celestia.
I too agree that its a shame that they, Space-Graphics, don't at least offer a large tiff version. I myself convert the jpg at its maximum resolution to a png or tiff before I start any work on it such as resizing. I am all to familiar with what a jpg format texture looks like up close and when it gets resized.
I have had problems converting my 8K texture to dds format. I had no problem with the 4k texture but when the 8k is finished it has white blocks over the continents. As far as I can tell I believe the blocks as coming from the spectural layer. Its getting coruted somehow. I plan on trying again and also doing seperate main texture from the spec to see if that fixs the errors in the image. Any tips would be great.

Thanx
Don. Edwards

[t00fri]

Hey Frider,
What would you consider the best setting for the speculars in my solarsystem.ssc. I am just using the settings that came with Celestia.
I too agree that its a shame that they, Space-Graphics, don't at least offer a large tiff version. I myself convert the jpg at its maximum resolution to a png or tiff before I start any work on it such as resizing. I am all to familiar with what a jpg format texture looks like up close and when it gets resized.
I have had problems converting my 8K texture to dds format. I had no problem with the 4k texture but when the 8k is finished it has white blocks over the continents. As far as I can tell I believe the blocks as coming from the spectural layer. Its getting coruted somehow. I plan on trying again and also doing seperate main texture from the spec to see if that fixs the errors in the image. Any tips would be great.

Thanx
Don. Edwards

Hi Don:

indeed, its the Spec color that makes the picture look too cyan. Here is what I use:

SpecularColor [ 0.57 0.55 0.51 ]
SpecularPower 35.0

I have added some unsharp masking to the new 8k EarthRender texture to make it even more crisp.

Moreover, for my GF2 Chris had switched off the Haze! I have turned it on again in the source and now together with dynamical bumpmapping, things look really great. If you have a GF>=3 its OK anyway.

I do not have any problems with converting 8k's to dds using nvdxt. But I have 512MB of Ram!

Note, I always use the LATEST CVS 1.2.5pre version of Celestia. In particular this allows to use /separate/ spec and bump files of size different from the main texture. The spec file may be much smaller than the main texture! Also bump files may be a factor 2 smaller and still give great dynamical 3d-bump effects.

Bye Fridger

[chris]

Moreover, for my GF2 Chris had switched off the Haze! I have turned it on again in the source and now together with dynamical bumpmapping, things look really great. If you have a GF>=3 its OK anyway.

Sorry about this . . . There's a bug in older NVIDIA drivers that totally messed up fog in vertex shaders on pre-GF3 cards. It's fixed in new drivers, but I don't want to mess up rendering for people using older drivers. I believe that it's possible to check for an OpenGL version of >= 1.3.1 to determine if vertex shader fog is working properly . . . should really get around to doing that.

--Chris

[Don. Edwards]

Hi Frider,
Thanks for the info. I have 768mb of ram but its only 133MHz SDRAM and I use Windows XP as my main OS. I can't even begin to crunch the 8k texture under XP and it crashes nvdxt.exe. If I boot from an older hard drive that Win98 on it I can get it to render the texture but I end up with the distorsions. I have decided to seperate the main texture map from the specmap and this should fix the problem. I myself am using an NVidia GeForce4 TI 4200 similar to Rassilons but I only have 64mb on my card were I believe he got the 128mb TI 4200. I was considering using unsharp masking but I was just trying to see if I could actualy put the texture together in the first place and convert it to a usable dds file.. I plan to go back and remake 4k and 2k texture and do a few refinments to get a better look. I will do the same for the 8k texture but I think that the 8k is going to take alot longer to work on.
I don'y believe you said witch specmap you used. Did you use the standard specmap or did you try Buzz's specmap with all the added lakes?
Well wish me luck on my texture crunching.

[t00fri]

Hi Frider,
Thanks for the info. I have 768mb of ram but its only 133MHz SDRAM and I use Windows XP as my main OS. I can't even begin to crunch the 8k texture under XP and it crashes nvdxt.exe. If I boot from an older hard drive that Win98 on it I can get it to render the texture but I end up with the distorsions. I have decided to seperate the main texture map from the specmap and this should fix the problem. I myself am using an NVidia GeForce4 TI 4200 similar to Rassilons but I only have 64mb on my card were I believe he got the 128mb TI 4200. I was considering using unsharp masking but I was just trying to see if I could actualy put the texture together in the first place and convert it to a usable dds file.. I plan to go back and remake 4k and 2k texture and do a few refinments to get a better look. I will do the same for the 8k texture but I think that the 8k is going to take alot longer to work on.
I don'y believe you said witch specmap you used. Did you use the standard specmap or did you try Buzz's specmap with all the added lakes?
Well wish me luck on my texture crunching.

NOT AGAIN, please... (Chris, please delete the "anonymous" mail above and -if possible- extend somewhat the "life time" of people's identity in this box.)

Hi Don and friends:

I am surprised to hear about problems with nvdxt at that (8k)
level, since 768MB of memory is definitely large enough for 8k
conversion.

Note, there is both an "old" version i.e. older than
version 4.4 that I am using mostly and a "new" one, version 5.18, that
may now be downloaded from the NVIDIA developer side. You might want
to try them in turn...The user Pixel, who gave me the "old" version,
claimed that the latter was the only means to convert 16k textures to
dds. As to those, I am unfortunately still unsuccessful. All my
nvdxt's crash with 16k textures immediately. I suppose it is due to
their truely primitive memory management given my "small" 512MB RAM
storage!

If only someone (like Chris;-)...) would finally manage to
port nvdxt to Linux. Then I could debug the problem and modify the
memory managment...

For me, the inherent 16k conversion problem is a real pity, since I
have now found a means to do /sophisticated/ and /easily reproducable/
GIMP image manipulation with those monster files: I have installed the
GIMP-GTK-Perl modules, such that I can write Perl scripts to do GIMP
work and start them from the command line! The trick is that the 450MB
output textures may be directly written into a file without the need
to display them in GIMP right away. Moreover, I benefit from my remarkable
"Perl-wisdom";-) as well. And, finally, this scripting method allows to work
easily on a (large) number of different size textures in a
/reproducable and automatic/ way as to my standard color/saturation
corrections, unsharp masking etc.

Let me also recall that I only have 32MB in my GF2! Therefore, the
new possibilities with separate spec and bump files are really
important for me. With 16k earth textures and a separate 4k spec.dds,
I get still smooth 12-18 fps (1600x1200/16bit) with my card, since the
16k texture is compressed as a 8:1 DXT1c format now (no alpha channel
within the main texture)!

Also the new /dynamical bumpmapping including haze (!)/ opens truely
spectacular views. Respective examples I shall display in my Texture
Foundry Galley shortly! See also my separate topic "Great perspectives with
new (hazy) bump&spec maps"...

As to the spec maps, I usually take my own ones, since making
spec reflection masks with GIMP /including lakes/ is quite easy. I have
also checked the one from Buzz. Since it presumably used
simple (bluish) color-based selection, it has a few /brownish lakes/
missing. My discussion in the separate topic "Great perspectives with
new (hazy) bump&spec maps", involving Buzz' mask, illustrates this...

Finally, I would never use an 8k spec map, given my 32MB graphics
memory;-). My specs are 4k throughout which is virtually
indistinguishable from 8k.

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Fridger,

It seems you're not using Internet Explorer.
I completely lost a long posting when it timed out on me.
It's probably better to edit long posts locally and then paste them into the message window.

[t00fri]

Fridger,

It seems you're not using Internet Explorer. ;)
I completely lost a long posting when it timed out on me. :(
It's probably better to edit long posts locally and then paste them into the message window.

Internet Explorer does not exist for Linux;-), hence: Netscape.

Of course, I edit long posts offline and fill them in afterwards. But frequently, there is another sentence or two I want to add or I might desire to reread a paragraph... BINGO says the box end erases my "personality";-)

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Frider,
I made the adjustment to my spec colors but the settings a had were only off by 2. my setting was SpecularColor [ 0.55 0.55 0.51 ] and yours was SpecularColor [ 0.57 0.55 0.51 ] . I think the cyan is comming from my cloudmap but I could be wrong. It has an inherent light blue color in it so it does add a little blue to the overall image color. I am going to try and tone down this blue color some and see how it looks. I have also tweaked the texture with a unsharp masking and did just a little brightness and contrast adjustments. I think it looks a little better.

[Don. Edwards]

Hi Frider,
How do these look.



I have ajusted the color balance in the cloud texture, plus the other texture tweaks. Let me know what you think.

[Darkmiss]

Don they are Beautiful.

And I am now using your 4k version you put up for download
as I think it looks more realistic that the Blue marble version

Thanks Don

[t00fri]

Hi Frider,
How do these look.
...
I have ajusted the color balance in the cloud texture, plus the other texture tweaks. Let me know what you think.

Well, they look great. Yet --since we are now approaching details related to personal taste-- I still think the blue of your oceans is too "creamy" blue.

Here is my 4k earth for comparison (with my original clouds that also have some blue in them)



Bye Fridger

[Darkmiss]

WOW, Oooooh, Aaaaahhh

Its like firwork night

very nice

[Don. Edwards]

Well unfortunatly this has been a bad day for at the Celestia forum. Agian I am having trouble getting to the site. I had to use the backdoor so to speak to get in here. I can't see images at all in the forum and I have to completely forget about getting into the gallery. I have to assume its due to the new version of Celestia that got released today and the server is getting hit very hard because of it. Or someone left a P2P program running again.
So with all that said I can't see the image you posted Frider. I will have to check back latter tonight and hope things have cleared up some by then.
I have since my last post gone back and reajusted the brightness and contrast of the texture and low and behold I think I have got that creamy blue ocean look almost beat. I have to admit it does kind of look like someone dumpped serval million gallons of milk into the oceans in my earlier texture. I will be replaceing the older 4k.dds with the newer one. So I will have to post over in my area about it ass well. I should have the new dds ready for download within the hour. I will give give it a difrent name as to keep it seperate from the older one.

[chris]

Well unfortunatly this has been a bad day for at the Celestia forum. Agian I am having trouble getting to the site. I had to use the backdoor so to speak to get in here. I can't see images at all in the forum and I have to completely forget about getting into the gallery. I have to assume its due to the new version of Celestia that got released today and the server is getting hit very hard because of it. Or someone left a P2P program running again.

It was a stupid P2P program again . . . I just shut it down now.

--Chris

[Ortolan]

Looks great! I wonder if there's any way to get rid of the blue haze around clouds, maybe applying specular reflections to clouds?

[Don. Edwards]

I did it by opening the texture in photoshop (Gimp should be similar I would think) and I simpley ajusted the saturation level down till it wasn't so blue. Of course this takes the blue glow out but it does leave just a hint of a light grey around some clouds. You can see this in the photos I posted for Fridger to see I think. I can't be shure because I still can't see any pictures in the forum. I hate this. I feel blind. Dammit if the pictures would just load.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Fridger,
Well I have finally got back into the gallery I was able to upload a picture of the updated Earth texture. So how does this look? I think its falling in pretty close to the way yours looks.