Call For Space Backgrounds

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

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Fendorin
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Post by Fendorin »

ahahahahah

please chuck what is it mipmap and what the different if we have both in game???????

(i m sorry to be "unknowledgeier" like i am)
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Mipmaps are size reductions.

Imagine you make a texture 1024 x 1024, call it "LOD0.png".
Now you load it into Gimp, reduce it 50% to 512 x 512, save as "LOD1.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 256 x 256 and save as "LOD2.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 128 x 128 and save as "LOD3.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 64 x 64 and save as "LOD4.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 32 x 32 and save as "LOD5.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 16 x 16 and save as "LOD6.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 8 x 8 and save as "LOD7.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 4 x 4 and save as "LOD8.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 2 x 2 and save as "LOD9.png".
Reduce 50% again, to 1 x 1 and save as "LOD10.png".
This last texture, LOD10.png, is a single texel; a tiny dot.

The GPU (the chip in your videocard) needs all these texture reductions to be able to do "tri-linear filtering".

A mipmapped texture is a single texture file that contains an original texture AND all its consecutive 50% reductions, all hidden in one file.

The problem with mipmaps in environment cubemaps is that they don't work very well. There are problems with seams that show on the reflections of the environment on specular objects. The program I linked you to is a program from ATI that fixes those problems by generating mipmaps for cubemaps in a special way.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Fendorin »

hello

i finally found the last space background(ingame) commited and my point of view is: please Pyramid remake ALL space background : the tools you create for povray is exellent and the difference between the ancient and the few you produce is too much,
the one you did is very beautifull and majestic compare to the old is like be in two different game

thank and bravo!!
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by pyramid »

Thanks. The starfield tool for povray is not yet at its full potential. It's at best an eraly alpha stage. When time allows, it will improve tremendously. And whe I come up with some nice backgrounds they'll sure go to VS first.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by SCghst1 »

Is this for actual backdrops in space flight or for stations/planets? i have some very good backdrops we can use for planets i have made in terragen
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by loki1950 »

These are for when you are in flight we already have lots of terragen examples to choose from :wink:

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by punx »

So my english isnt good, so i make it short

what do you think about this nebula? good enough for you?

25% original image> http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/5376 ... mage25.jpg

cube map> http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4581/nebulacube.jpg

ingame> http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3941/nebulagreen.jpg
I know my english sucks :P
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by loki1950 »

Welcome punx nice nebula not quite like a real one from the dispersion pattern but it does look nice like your screen shot of it in-game i see you are using the nvidia tools there has been some discussion about artifacts at the seams that ATI's version seems to avoid but no decision has been make on which way to go i will point our resident blenderhead here as i imagine he will have some comments :wink:

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by punx »

hm the ATI-Tools not available for Linux

But i have a other question:

How should look Vegastrike, there are so many different styles for spaceart?(colorfull, dark, how many stars, clear, blurred)

also here for example:

FreeSpace SCP: http://scp.indiegames.us/scn/Miscellane ... ybeam1.jpg http://scp.indiegames.us/scn/MediaVP/fi ... _lazor.jpg
Homeworld: http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/s ... ota084.jpg http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een001.jpg
Freelancer: http://www.stadler-ger.net/files/FL_003.jpg http://media.moddb.com/images/downloads ... 0with2.jpg
DarkstarOne: http://www.hookedgamers.com/gfx/editori ... iginal.jpg http://news.softpedia.com/images/review ... -large.jpg

personally I think the freelancer ones are the best looking for cubemapes
I know my english sucks :P
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by loki1950 »

Not sure as the style for backgrounds has not been discussed in that amount of detail but colored backgrounds would need justification from physical reality as we do have a few physicists as members :wink: who might object since our engine does follow real world physics in many ways which can be modified by the various MODs depending on the level of reality they wish to model such as inertia and acceleration effects but the general feel of the VS universe is to model these accurately so consistency with this implies backdrops that match.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Punx, welcome aboard!
What Loki is talking about problems at the seams is with cubemap mipmaps.
It doesn't really concern you if you're only generating the top mipmap level.
If you want more info, check this thread:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... =4&t=11810
I can do the mipmaps later, once you're done with the basic cubemaps.
(Cubemaps will need mipmaps for the next generation shaders, which allow
shininess (gloss) modulation of materials, by making them reflect more or
less blurred versions of the background.)

What IS important is that you produce high quality masters, 2048 x 2048 per
side, minimum. Masters go in the masters repository; and the reduced
and/or compressed versions for shipping with the game are made from those
masters. This is important because, if in the future we want to, say, add
some contrast, or re-compress with a better compression tool, without the
originals we can't.
Even more preferably, 16-bit EXR's would be better than 8-bit formats; if
that's possible. Like, if you're using Blender, you can export to an EXR.

Artistically, it needs a bit more depth; more turbulence or something; it's
a bit too obvious that the nebula is a Perlin cloud. Just needs more layers of
info, jets, globular clusters.... :D
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Shark »

Is pyramid still around? Could you upload the POV-Ray source? I'd like to take a look at it.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by pyramid »

I'm still peeping in from time to time. 8)

As far as I know the pov-ray sources were in the masters repo.
But you can also get the latest (improved) ones if you want to play with the stuff: http://space3d.no.sapo.pt/

Go to downloads and get the Space3d includes. I didn't document or write a tutorial yet, so you might have to look at the examples.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Darkmage »

There's a new tool for making space skyboxes: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 25#p380926 it's called spacescape. It's exactly what we've been needing for years.
If you're interested in helping with mission editor/engine development contact me at jcarthew@gmail.com or irc.freenode.net #vegastrike.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Hicks »

What program is used to generate the .cube files the game uses?
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by klauss »

The images themselves, I don't know. But the filtering and packing into .cube files (which are in essence DDS compressed cubic textures) can be done with ATI's (AMD's) cubemapgen.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Hicks »

yeah i have the program, but i couldn't find the option to create a .cube file or to open one
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by klauss »

You don't create .cube files, you create .dds files and rename them to cube.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Itusa »

Would be quite willing...

I thoroughly plan to use space backgrounds from NASA (just as a way to add more content to be honest)

However, the lack of a step by step tutorial has me at best confused. POV is beta and while that's okay for some, I typically avoid using Beta software in actual releases (so I can't use it). This means that I have no software to assist either.

So my question is, how?
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by Itusa »

POV is ... useless.

There is however a script for Cube Mapping in GIMP that seems to create an effective cube map ready to be put into dds format although only creates six sides, doesn't appear to create smaller versions.

As the JPL (Nasa) is basically open source (MIT equivalent), I'm in discussions with them to get some "high res" images as not all are actually posted.

One issue, GIMP's inbuilt DDS plugin doesn't actually compress the image very well. NVCompress is required.
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Re: Call For Space Backgrounds

Post by TBeholder »

We have missed a few breakthroughs.
There's ancient FLAM3 system allowing to generate similar textures from parameters (i.e. little more than randseed).
jWildfire is an extension of that, and Hubble Scripts by Michael Bourne for it are specifically tailored to make nebula-like sky pictures.
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