Orbital planet surfaces: gas giants

[pyramid]

Your feedback for new gas giant orbital textures is appreciated:

1) gas_midget; 2048x1024, seamless:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gas_midget.png

2) gas_giant2; 2048x1024, seamless:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gas_giant2.png

2) gas_giant3; 2048x1024, seamless:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gas_giant3.png

[klauss]

They lack detail.
They should look a bit more like Jupiter's surface. Not all gas giants are like that, but Jupiter-ish ones are the most interesting.

[jackS]

to wax verbose on the above two posts and the images therein -

I think it's not so much an issue of total detail, but a lack of local distinctions in the proposed textures. Although there are plenty of edges and changes in the shifting colors, they are very regular in their striations. There's no sense of particular spots on gas giant having any personality. If you look at the Neptune texture, I think the interesting thing is not that it has a relatively few bands, and is thus "bland" vs. Jupiter, but that, even in those relatively few bands, there are distinct spots, swirls, jags, etc. It is the starker imperfections that would appear to lend it some more character, despite the relatively soft color transitions.

[Stakhanov]

True , the embarassing aspect of current textures is their regular aspect , colored as a baby toy ball would. Gas giants feature monstruous storms , jet winds and hurricanes the size of smaller planets. Give them a less polished and more tempestuous appearance... photoshop should have some suitable functions with the swirl transform and suchlike.

[Oblivion]

Tempests and hurricanes is nice. But then again, would introduce problems if you are only using 2d manip programs. Such as GIMP. There's no way that Gas giants with swirly maps can be textured unto a sphere seamlessly, unless you don't mind spending days along the edges, matching them up.

Yup, I too think the textures are not that detailed, hence lacking somewhat. But hey, the important thing is, are they TILEABLE? If they are, you could add the imperfections (minor eddies, gas continents, etc.) later. Anything tileable by me is good as a starter map for planets.

[pyramid]

Thanks all for the fruitful feedback.

Meanwhile the first textures are reduced in size and quality, stil maintaining their initial character.

I agree that creating seamless textures wit 2D progs is extremely inefficient.

Please find here the next batch for ppreciated feedback:
1) Gast giants preview:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/gallery_gasgiant.html

2) And the corresponding textures, all seamless, scaled down and low quality jpegs:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gasgiant_map04.jpg
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gasgiant_map20.jpg
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gasgiant_map18.jpg
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/vegastrike/gasgiant_map42.jpg
Try also 01, 08, 11, 15

You can order your own colors

My most burning questions:
> What is the established voting, release process?
> How can I commit to svn?

Pyramid

[charlieg]

Contact Klauss, PeteyG, JackS, or dandandaman or hellcatv. That's a sample of the people that could help integrate you into development.

Aside from committing to official svn, you could do an anonymous svn checkout and post patches here, but that's a little ugly.

[Oblivion]

The green and the orange ones, looks nice. With a bit more tweaking, I think it could look great. But, since I can't see the poles, is there polar distortion?

Do you have any of the full-res maps? I'll see if I could tweak it a bit, by adding further cloudmaps. I have some cloudmaps at home. (Earth's, hehe), but like Klauss did, changing colors could probably do it. I've DLed one of the maps, I'll try to play with this. If something comes out, I'll scream and call Dr. Frankenstein.

"It's alive!!"

-Igor

-provided of course, I find ways to render in neat squares.

[pyramid]

I have added some renders with rotated planets on the bottom of the page:
http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/gallery_gasgiant.html

There are no artifacts to be seen on the poles, since the textures are 3d generated and unwrapped to 2d images.

As for the surfaces itself, using a procedural approach with randomizer, I'd like to establish a voting system for which renders are most liked by the community. Any ideas on how to do that?

The surfaces currently have clouds, but yo ucan't see them on the compressed jpegs.
I'll post some more detailed gas giant cloud details in the next post.

-Keep the space clean-
Pyramid

[klauss]

Actually, the blue one (42) is my fav.
The good thing about that is that most stripes are fully horizontal (it just looks wrong when they aren't), straight and only disturbed by the blobs (storms).

What could be improved, though: multiply the blobs. Have the present number of present-sized blobs, but add lots, countless small blobs. They will take care of adding detail, as it will shake the edges of the stripes without looking unnatural (they're smaller storms).

Further detail can be added with 2D progs, once the main features have been baked to be seamless.

[rigelan]

I actually like that greenish one next to the blue.

Funny thing about these. Some of them look like what 16-bit color used to look like on the monitors, with the stripes instead of a real gradient. Not really a problem, these planets are supposed to have stripes. Just something it reminded me of. By the way, I also think the exotic colors of purple & orange are really rather cool, even though I am not sure how much they actually represent real planets. Coolness counts, though.

[Karnizero]

Tempests and hurricanes is nice. But then again, would introduce problems if you are only using 2d manip programs. Such as GIMP. There's no way that Gas giants with swirly maps can be textured unto a sphere seamlessly, unless you don't mind spending days along the edges, matching them up.

There is a way to make planetary twisters like Uranius or so, using the Gimp.

First you must create the gas texture, and then apply the distort filter into Filters>Distortions>Deformation. Then set the deformation type to "counterclockwise swirl", and the make one or two swirls.
This will geneare swirls at the surface.

In the other hand, if you like a huricane zone, like some gas planets at solar sistem, for example like the great red one at jupiter, you can do it very simply:
first select a ecliptic small zone, who will be the future hurricane. Then apply the filter Filters>Distortions>Lens Crystal (i dont remember if this is the exact name), and apply a bit crystal lens distortion.
Then, deselect that selected zone, and apply Filters>Distortions>Deformation, and set the deformation to "move", and move the left and right sides of the eliptical form a bit, just to make the effect of undercloud.

I dont know if you understand how i explain lastly, but i will try to make a small tutorial on how to do this, just using The Gimp.

[Oblivion]

@Karnizero:
I understand it. I also have GIMP at home, but I don't use it often, The layout is weird for me. . What I meant for it being difficult, is that once you distort it, the edges don't match up then. There would have to be one area in the planet where there is no atmospheric turbulence, because, they would break uniformity of the edges, and seams would then be visible.

But using 3d programs, you can make swirls all over, and no seam would be visible.

[To Megatherion]

Nice planets and textures. Good work,