Planet textures - a pat on the back

[pyramid]

I thought I'd just give me a pat on my back and share this recent achievement with all of you.

Some two years ago (June 2006), as a linux newcomer and looking out for open source space games, I have discovered Vega Strike 0.4.3 ( we should release more often ). Amazed by the depth of the concept and the shallowness of some graphics I have committed one month after my discovery to undertake the tedious task of improving planet textures (no, I really didn't want to fly around in an universe that is not believable). Though I have distracted myself from the original task (wiki updates - mostly graphics requirements, shield and armor graphics, some options enhancements, cargo images, dds remastering, quit and pause images, capacitor/fuel/drive gauges, planetary rings) today a major milestone has been finally achieved.

Starting slowly with the gas giants (admittedly, they could be much better from my current point of view) speeding up through rocky, carribean, oceanic, to trantor type planet textures, I have all in all created 67 new textures and committed 20 textures from other artists. This means that the number of release quality textures has increased from previously 22 to now 109 out of total 120 planet textures. The remaining 11 textures are solar system moons and large objects for which I could not find hi resolution textures hence will consider this phase of development closed.

I have already learned with gratitude that all those sweat and tears are for the enjoyment of all and absolutely worth the effort. I hope that this enjoyment can be extended to all those that are not so technically versatile ( release often )

By the way, the tools that I have used to create those textures are freely available under GPL in the masters directory of svn as well as on my web page (http://space3d.no.sapo.pt) though maybe not as up to date as in the svn masters repo.

Have fun cruising through a bit more believable universe.
And...stay tuned for more eye candy.

Pyramid

[loki1950]

Thx pyramid they are in deed very much better

Enjoy the Choice

[charlieg]

Great work pyramid. Hope to see you continue to contribute. VS wouldn't be great without the great contributors!

[bgaskey]

Thx for the time and effort. Its people like you that make open source software work. and I agree with the release sentiment .

[Fendorin]

Hello

i have a few suggestions but i don't know if the engine game could support it:

for planet a 64X64 mesh could be better (ingame when you wath a planet the planet seems to be "angular")
then with a sphere object made with 64 subdivision longitude/latitudes the "angular" effect doesn't appear .

How could you give a generic atmosphere for each kind of planet? (rocky and moon don't need of course) the atmospheric effect give a good feeling but i don't know if it' possible to give for each planet.

Where could we find the "planet description file"
the planet mesh : it is a mesh could be integrate like a ship =via UC? or it is auto generate by the engine?
why te first planet we see = Atlantis in cephid17 sectors have a cloud+atmosphere.?


another point: not sure if it's possible but for some planet a procedural/fractal texture could be a good solutions for have a high quality graphics

i did a simplest repetitive pattern for LAVA and "OCEAN ICE PACK" the render is correct



and the ice packed (the atmosphere on this planet could give a nice effect)



and the blend file:DivShare File - lava_ice proceduralplanet.blend


Thank

EDIT:
i wanted made something like that(my english is bad and i can't have a long text picky explanation )
then i made a render of what is my goal for this question/topic
Sometimes a picture is more explicit than verb:

[chuck_starchaser]

Klauss was working on a really good shader for planets with atmospheres, but that was a long time ago and he seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth; doesn't even reply to emails. He had managed to fake thickness, self-shadowing and volumetric effects for clouds.
Before him, I was working on a planet shader, and got some pretty good atmospheric effects.
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... &sk=t&sd=a