Vega Strike Forums

Deus Siddis wrote:I had some trouble baking height maps that matched the normal maps in blender. Are height maps essential?

They were for asteroid techniques. They benefit a lot from height maps. The technique raytraces along the heightmap to do relief mapping, which even casts shadows.

I will see what I can do then...

Is this technique already implemented? If I send you an asteroid with a height map and everything else, can you test it for visual correctness? Or can I even test it myself using the last release?

I had the shader somewhere, although it was written in HLSL, so I'd have to translate it to integrate with VS. In any case, I would probably have to rewrite it for many reasons.

So it's a yeaano. It's a jiffy, and you don't need engine changes to use new shaders, so as soon as I commit you should be able to enjoy. But it will take me some time to commit.

My personal roadmap for 0.5.2 goes:

• Split CSV
• Rocky shaders
• Threaded SUCCSS
• Streaming music

So then I suppose I should wait until you have the new shader committed before working on finishing asteroids, but get them done in time for the 0.5.2 release?

Deus Siddis wrote:So then I suppose I should wait until you have the new shader committed before working on finishing asteroids, but get them done in time for the 0.5.2 release?

I'd like to have them for 0.5.2, yeah.

Managed to rescue some of the WI before my crash. Still not the ice asteroids I want, but the visuals are getting better...

Nice indeed

BTW, other question. Is there an easy way to tweak the shaders for earth planets (or mars, perhaps) to give the planet a more greenish hue instead of the standard blue one ?

esgaroth wrote:BTW, other question. Is there an easy way to tweak the shaders for earth planets (or mars, perhaps) to give the planet a more greenish hue instead of the standard blue one ?

Yes, you can modify earth or mars technique, and change the atmosphere's color parameters (there's many). But, mind you, that's unrealistic. Atmospheres everywhere are blue, due to Reyleigh scattering.

Yes, you can modify earth or mars technique, and change the atmosphere's color parameters (there's many). But, mind you, that's unrealistic. Atmospheres everywhere are blue, due to Reyleigh scattering.

OK, I´ll try to modify what i find.
And yes, it is probably unrealistic, but we were discussing elsewhere about a planet with a chlorine atmosphere which would probably not be really green, but probably with a slight green hue...

If you want different colored atmospheres for the sake of aesthetics, there's more realistic explanations than that.

Two much better options are atmospheric impurities (dust) and ionization (usually of the upper atmosphere). The former is how other planets in the solar system get their non-blue-or-white looking atmospheres and gas ionization gives you the various colored "neon" lights and the aurora borealis.

Impurities and dust would also need to be simulated through absorption parameters, although it's far trickier, since those are modulated exponentially based on atmosphere thickness and very small changes to those parameters can have a huge effect.

I had an example somewhere, can't remember where. It was a desert planet, but I'm not sure I committed it.