Celestia Forums

Understood. Looking forward to update

Nice looking map John. Have you considered updating it using new images from Keck II? I know they are near infrared images, and Uranus is pale blue/green, and featureless to the naked eye, but i figure an "alt surface" using the near infrared would be awesome.

It is what it is. If the scientific data says the surface is gray. Who are we to argue? Celestia is supposed to provide an "accurate as possible" simulation. I think you are doing an outstanding job John.

That is a very nice texture for your 1st attempt. Much better than anything i could pull off. I think some of the hubble and other equatorial shots of Uranus found on the web are misleading. The ones in the links above specify that they are shot in infrared light. While others at other sites do not....

That is some excellent work. However i agree that the sun as seen with the simulated naked eye of Celestia would be nothing more than a bright white ball with perhaps some visible sunspots. This would make an excellent alternate surface of the sun as seen in x-ray light. It could also make a very go...

Like you Andrea i am a relative newcomer as far as dealing with dds. Most of my work has been in gaming mods where a loss of quality is at worst case trivial. I have not even tried to tackle something like a high quality planetary texture yet, because i believe my skills in that area leave much to b...

What Johaen said :D I only use normal maps to give the views some relief. Shaded textures would look weird if the sun were facing the opposite direction of the shadows. In full views like i posted it is no issue. IIRC (correct me if i am wrong) dxt3, and dxt5 use mip mapping, and that could be why y...

While that mars image does look nice it is off topic since its not taken in celestia. IMO Direct X 10 is not worth getting Vista for. The only card that supports it so far is the GF-8800 that i am aware of. So far everyone that i know that runs Vista has nothing good to say about it. Most have rolle...

I ran a couple test shots with both the 2k, and 4k versions. I am impressed with results. My machine specs are AMD sempron 3100+ (1.8 gig), 2 gigs ddr 400 mhz ram, G-force 6600gt 256 meg vid card, winxp sp2, Heres the 2k texture test shots 1st just the texture http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/4593/a...

Doh! thats what i get for not paying attention :p Ill run them, and post screens in a pm back to you, or should i post my tests here?

I'm running what most consider to be a low end system now :/ but ill be more than happy to test the textures and post results.

I agree with the OP that there isn't enough good moon textures out there. While some make a very nice effort there are still many visible flaws, or areas missing off the texture. If you want to go ahead, and post the jpg/png. Just make sure you note that only a good system should use it. Im running ...

What program do you use to model with?

Seems the last Cmodtool don't fix anymore this kind of seam due to mapping in 3DS... something can be done? Dirk? Chris? http://nho.ohn.free.fr/celestia/preview/bugApo.jpg Thats a damn nice looking model there El Christou :) This may be a stupid question but did you weld the vertices on the engine ...

Sorry, my mistake. I posted the wrong link. The Ciclops images all have borders, and i forgot about the Planetary Photojournal image. Which is the same map without the borders. Here is the correct link http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07782 Download the tiff version of the file.

There is no need to. Since the map is on the web. Save the .tiff image from the Planetary Photojournal site. EDIT: updated link to borderless image. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07782 Resize it to 4096x2048 in any image editing program like photoshop, paint shop pro, or irfran view (a...

I made my own texture using the tiff version of the Cassini map. Resized it to 4k. It is a great improvement over the default texture (not to knock whoever created the default texture which is good in itself). I tried the moving clouds add-on but IMO it didnt make it look as good so i removed it. I ...

What about multi layer clouds like the OP asked? Right now in the current version of Celestia you have your cloud mesh with texture, and its possible to do cloud shadows using overlay. Is there a way to add more than 1 cloud mesh a planet?

Looking forward to seeing normal mapped clouds

Since the current clouds are a larger sphere mesh with an alpha channeled texture it is possible to do, but i doubt the preformance hit would be worth it unless you have a really high end system. The gas giants in celestia by default have no cloud mesh at all (the planet map itself being its cloud d...

"If" the banding were visable to the naked eye it would be very faint at best due to the layers of smog. Most of the fictitious textures out now do depict some banding, but this banding was specuation before Uranus started its "spring" season. The hubble pics show that banding is at least partially ...