2k - 4k - 8k texture packs for official distributions

[Fenerit]

Thanks for the link. I haven't seen it.

[t00fri]

from 1k to 2K only; from 8k or 4k to 2k I use the best yours (i.e. your Saturn), by resizing at maxim dpi for fidelity

While you certainly are welcome to use my Saturn in any way you like, it is a case in point: my Saturn is not limit-of-knowledge. It is an interpretation, where i used Ciclops imagery to enhance Bjorn??s original Voyager map. Thus, while it is a more pleasing and detailed map of Saturn than the other ones available, the source is the more exact one... So that is what you should use if you want to produce a scientifically valid package.

- Runar

That is good example, Runar, for why this project will never become an /official/ replacement package, without anybody really watching with expertise what's going on...

After I spent years in dev to get the Celestia database to a rather well-documented status, we don't want to collect NOW new textures by "creators" who e.g. fill parts of Mercury's "blanc" surface "secretly" with crater textures of the Moon, for example... or who make Pluto textures from Ganymede etc. Or who use the radar maps of Venus as a replacement of a standard RGB base texture...

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Such a challenging project is only trustworthy, if all scientific imaging sources and ALL manipulations thereoff are accurately documented by knowledgable people!
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Furthermore, if Celestia dev will continue one day, one of the high priority changes will be much improved planetary atmospheres notably also with respect to surface colors!

This means foremost that the actual textures must have the correct colors of the material, rather than that of the joint visual appearance from material AND sky coloration!

Here is the familiar example from Venus:
(from http://www.nasm.si.edu/ceps/etp/venus/global.html)

That's the combined impression (rock AND sky color)


Right now we would colorate our textures of Venus correspondingly in yellow-orange color!

In contrast, here is the TRUE color of ONLY the rocks (sky-color subtracted!)


That's how the future surface texture should be colored, the genuine color of basalt rocks! Note the correct color gauges as well!

So right now is a bad time for such a texture project, since many textures need substantial reworking according to these new criteria.

The present BMNG earth textures already satisfy these strict criteria, of course. That's why I deal with these for the time being...

Bye Fridger

[Fenerit]

Surely then many planetary maps would have been made in l-o-k form, without being this an option, perhaps. In this manner there is would not been any mistake. Once new data were available we would changed the texture. Pratically this mean that all the fictional textures of the real l-o-k planet would be removed from Motherload, right?

For what concern the end of this thread, I agree, of course. It's a task of the texture makers doing it.

[rthorvald]

Pratically this mean that all the fictional textures of the real l-o-k planet would be removed from Motherload, right?

Fenerit, there is nothing "official" about the Motherlode. It is just a free hosting service for everybody. You can??t trust anything there to be "real". You can only trust the individual authors, if they document their releases.

- rthorvald

[Fenerit]

Pratically this mean that all the fictional textures of the real l-o-k planet would be removed from Motherload, right?

Fenerit, there is nothing "official" about the Motherlode. It is just a free hosting service for everybody. You can??t trust anything there to be "real". You can only trust the individual authors, if they document their releases.

- rthorvald

Right, but as Motherload it's unofficial, in my humble opinion I believe that now all the discourses on what to be "official" are "unofficial"; and that is one of the problems about the stand-by of this project along years.

[t00fri]

Fenerit,

indeed the Celestia dev team is completely unrelated to anything you find on Motherlode! Several years ago, I also had quite a few links to my own texture work there, but I have requested these to be deleted, since the quality on ML is so bad or unreliable in general.

Yet, suppose we had the menpower to gather a small crew of dedicated AND knowledgable experts for this task, it would be a VERY good idea to build a texture pack that is part of the Celestia distribution, which means a package that is endorsed by the dev team.

This would never happen, with such undocumented ventures...and with people who are not entirely aware of the many traps in this delicate business...

I also hope for your collection, you have scanned and included the hires textures from the Celestia-CVS source archive, since there I have deposited over the last year already a number of "official" bigger hires textures : my 4k iapetus, my 2k moon with bumpmap, my 2k phoebe, my 4k tethis and my 4k titan!

I suppose some "experts" who never look into source archives, were not aware of these OFFICIAL state of the art textures... These hires textures in CVS are meant as the start of a dev-endorsed hires texture pack!

Bye Fridger

[Fenerit]

Fenerit,

indeed the Celestia dev team is completely unrelated to anything you find on Motherlode! Several years ago, I also had quite a few links to my own texture work there, but I have requested these to be deleted, since the quality on ML is so bad or unreliable in general.

Yet, suppose we had the menpower to gather a small crew of dedicated AND knowledgable experts for this task, it would be a VERY good idea to build a texture pack that is part of the Celestia distribution, which means a package that is endorsed by the dev team.

This would never happen, with such undocumented ventures...and with people who are not entirely aware of the many traps in this delicate business...

I also hope for your collection, you have scanned and included the hires textures from the Celestia-CVS source archive, since there I have deposited over the last year already a number of "official" bigger hires textures : my 4k iapetus, my 2k moon with bumpmap, my 2k phoebe, my 4k tethis and my 4k titan!

I suppose some "experts" who never look into source archives, were not aware of these OFFICIAL state of the art textures... These hires textures in CVS are meant as the start of a dev-endorsed hires texture pack!

Bye Fridger

Good. I myself being an user not an "expert", of course, do not dig in the source archive because think to be a place for source code not for textures; and this is effectively an error. Well, I'll update my 2k pack in conformity with your specific by resizing in the better way the 4k if you agree with (for up resolution I'll do not nothing, it's not my task, I can't try that). For the rest I'll accept all what will say the "experts crew", even of erase my pack. In this latter case tell me it with clear letter: "Fenerit, erase the pack, so spoke the crew".

[t00fri]

Fenerit,

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please don't misunderstand. You are free to release whatever you like.
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Moreover, the Celestia source code archive ALWAYS contains the full OpenSource content of the Celestia distribution.

This includes ALL official texture images and e.g. also all my PERL scripts that were used to extract the galaxty parameters, binary star parameters and so on. Moreover it contains all sorts of tools that were not included into the binary Windows distribution.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Good. I myself being an user not an "expert", of course, do not dig in the source archive because think to be a place for source code not for textures; and this is effectively an error. Well, I'll update my 2k pack in conformity with your specific by resizing in the better way the 4k if you agree with (for up resolution I'll do not nothing, it's not my task, I can't try that). .

What interpolation filter did you use for rescaling? Bicubic? (Photoshop) or cubic? (Gimp) .

Also you should compress the normal maps in .dxt5nm format, using nvcompress! The quality is sooooooooooo much better.

Bye Fridger

[Fenerit]

Good. I myself being an user not an "expert", of course, do not dig in the source archive because think to be a place for source code not for textures; and this is effectively an error. Well, I'll update my 2k pack in conformity with your specific by resizing in the better way the 4k if you agree with (for up resolution I'll do not nothing, it's not my task, I can't try that). .

What interpolation filter did you use for rescaling? Bicubic? (Photoshop) or cubic? (Gimp) .

Also you should compress the normal maps in .dxt5nm format, using nvcompress! The quality is sooooooooooo much better.

Bye Fridger

I use bicubic filter. It's wrong? .dxt5nm is good for the normalmap, but the dxt3 and the dxt5 interpolated alpha for the speculars and the clouds are inacceptables for 2k; the first, doing visible the terminator line even with the best .PNG nightmap and the second doing the clouds yellow. So I do not convert it from .PNG

[t00fri]

I use bicubic filter. It's wrong?

Bicubic is fine.

Bye Fridger

[MKruer]

Fenerit

Here is an idea that I think might be better, it fits within the Celestia project, but does not require scientific accuracy. The idea is to create Constellations images on the Celestial Sphere, similar to the ones shown below. I do not believe that Fridger, Cris anyone else would have an issue with including these in an official release.

ideal the image would probably be vector based, but I am sure a semi transparent bitmap would work as well. This is something that i was looking to do but i dont have the time.

[selden]

Jestr has provided a version of Johan Hevelius' constellatons on the MotherLode, so you probably wouldn't want to duplicate those.

[BobHegwood]

Just to stir the fire a bit...

I DID find a 2k Uranus texture on the Motherlode, but I'm afraid that this
texture is ENTIRELY fictitious. Don't we have (or aren't we going to get)
some better pictures from New Horizons in the near future?

[selden]

Bob,

Unfortunately, New Horizons won't be passing anywhere near Uranus. It's way, far away in its orbit. See their "where is..." page at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php

[selden]

Uranus has been under a lot of scrutiny lately, since its equator is currently pointed toward the sun (and us), so there are bound to be some pictures available somewhere that could be developed into full textures. Most are in false-color, though. It's quite bland in visible light.

[BobHegwood]

Uranus has been under a lot of scrutiny lately, since its equator is currently pointed toward the sun (and us), so there are bound to be some pictures available somewhere that could be developed into full textures. Most are in false-color, though. It's quite bland in visible light.

Okay, thanks Selden. I've been away for a while. <grin>