[Herra Tohtori]

Herra, thanks for the tips on making gas giants. Seeing all of the fantastic pieces of work you all have made is making me realize something. There is so much talent on this thread, yet the planets of FS are in dire need of variety, higher resolution, and imagination. The planets used in the main FS2 campaign look great, don't get me wrong. They are marvelous improvements over the retail planets, but it gets frustrating when you see these planets being used in other campaigns in completely different systems. I have seen a red Venus-like planet, a red Jupiter, satellites Callisto and Europa with various colors, and Mars being used repeatedly. With all of the various campaigns that have been created, I think it would be nice to enhance the scenery and provide some variety with these planets.

Yeah, I have also noticed that even though the current VP planets are a vast improvement over the original PCX images, they are still pretty much rip-offs from Solar system like you said. So perhaps it would be worth it to make a high-res original planets that would be used in retail campaign without need to change the missions - much like the retail star replacement effort. Perhaps it would be worth it to make it a joint endeavour?

Right now I am working on a set of 8+ planets for Warzone, and I am sure there are plenty of other campaigns which need some high resolution planets, whether they are low-orbit or high-orbit views. If it is all possible, I think it would be great if we could collaborate with one another and provide a form of package or .vp which includes plenty of high resolution planets that can be used for FS. It might be a slow project since making planets is not on everyone's high priority list, but I think it would be worth the wait. What do you all think?

Well, in the starting message...

(...)

Then I came here looking for a nice thread featuring planets and stuff, but I didn't really find one! All were like year or two old and had mostly dead links and some people who I've never before seen here, so I decided it was time to make a new topic for planetary art that HLP user pool spews at random intervals. I'll start with two of my planets I made yesterday and today.

(...)

So, what do you think? Also, feel free to post your own planetary creations and stuff. After all, I personally think there's a little too few planets around in Freespace...

<evil laughter> My master plan is starting to work! </evil laughter>

 


No, really, it would be great if we managed to create a diverse pool of planets from which campaign designers could choose planets fitting to their backgrounds, and if they didn't find one they liked, they could likely find someone to make tailored planet for their use, much like with Mandala Prime having two suns in the system, for example.

 

[m2258734a]

Well it sounds like a plan to me   I am all for it.

I was thinking... would it be better to move this thread into the FSU forum once we start getting more contributions, or should I move the "Stellar enhancements thread" in here since the term celestial objects refers to a broad range of stellar, substellar, and galactic bodies? Or should we do both?

Anyways, as far as recreating the original FS2 retail planets, I believe Lightspeed tackled the task already. But the Solar system planets really need to be redone. It's kind of annoying seeing these planets and satellites with different hues in various systems throughout the FS universe. Regardless, I would be more than glad to make this a joint endeavor.

there's a little too few planets around in Freespace...

QFT

[Mad cat]

Its not hugely high res, but I still like it. I've got a few more lying about that I'll have to dig up and post.

[m2258734a]

Beautiful

You wouldn't happen to have this image in 32-bit .tga format with a transparent background, would you?

[Admiral Nelson]

Yep, she's a keeper!

[Mad cat]

I could make it so.

[Mad cat]

Now, these things have turned out pretty big in the file size department (10.4 megs each) but they are double the size of the one that I posted last night. Oh, btw, I have two versions of this image, one has a bigger lit area than the other.

http://www.badongo.com/file/2692209

http://www.badongo.com/file/2692222

*edit*

Oh one more thing, if anyone else wants to get into fancy pants planet making with photoshop go here.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/11885274/?qo=40&q=by%3Aalyn&qh=sort%3Atime+-in%3Ascraps

[Herra Tohtori]

Looks excellent. Especially the surface structure.

[Sypher]

Couldn't resist to try it out.

[Herra Tohtori]

The islands' and continents' outlines look good to me, but the surface itself could do some more colour tones I think. Particularly the green looks like TMNT mutagen (or equivalent biohazard waste) spreading over the surface; forests generally reflect less light than plains so they would be darker. Water looks fine, but lighting could improve somewhat. If the star is behind the planet, there would be only a shallow crescent of the planet that well visible, unless there's another star in the system (which is of course possible).

As for what comes to background and the star... I'll keep it diplomatic and say that I wouldn't make them like that. I prefer my space dark and nebulas subtle... And I think the lens flare effect looks kinda cheesy, but that's just me...


What did you use to make the planet?


->Mad Cat: Thanks for the link, I'll check it out as soon as I'm back home to my own beloved PC. I'll have to convert the instructions to GIMP-jargon though...curse the way they use different terminology in different image editing programs. I won't even try any of this stuff with my parents' PC with only 512 MB RAM (my own now has 3072 MB RAM... Which reduces the page file HD crunching significantly with high-res layers. )

[Sypher]

Thanks for the input

Planet was made with GIMP (to get the water I basically duplicated the still-gray-scale surface layer, inverted the color, messed around with brightness and contrast (extreme contrast, low brightness), blurred it a tad, Changed black to alpha, used colorize on the layer then mapped it to the sphere with the exactly same settings as used while mapping the surface layer)

Anyways, I personally think that my second try turned out far better, though I aimed for an even more expressionistic style of Nebulae, and I am not happy with the moon (Gotta get more experience with those). Whatever, ...



Edit: Stupid me, forgetting that direct linking to DA doesn't really work.

[Raven2001]

Lotsa talent in this thread... I wanna see nebulas next ^^

[Polpolion]

How do you make rings?




EDIT:

 

I made this one with what I could remember from the turtorial when my internet went down.

and: How do you make good rings?

[Mad cat]

This one, I am unsure as to whether or not i'll be able to supply a transparent BG tga file, due to some extremely unfortunate tranfer issues between school and home, and if i can it wont be the same quality. I'ma try to make some changes to this before I let anyone use it in anything, gotta pretty it up a bit, maybe implement a couple things Ive learned in the years sinse this got made.



This next one is as big as its gonna get. Its pretty old school.



As for the question about rings, I need to know whether or not you use PS or not. If so, then yes, if not then probably not.

[Sypher]

How do you make rings?




EDIT:

 

I made this one with what I could remember from the turtorial when my internet went down.

and: How do you make good rings?

I can only tell you how I did it with the ice - planet in the background.

The basic idea was to paint the ring as doughnut (meaning Circle interrupted by smaller circle), subtracting some random noise for it (for alphaness) then mapping it to a plane (play around with the rotation).

[m2258734a]

>Mad cat
Your nebulae look awesome. They have a very artistic feel to them. Would you mind telling us how you created them?

>thesizzler
Have you found a good technique for creating rings? I would just recommend experimenting with all of the features of whatever program you are using until you get what you want. I have been experimenting with The GIMP as of lately and I find it to be a very good substitute for PhotoShop. BTW, the shadow you produced on your planet seems more like an eclipse shadow. The concavity of your shadow needs to be inverted, unless of course there is another planetary body or large satellite producing the shadow.

I am currently making my second planet for Warzone. Terran1 was designed to be a realistic replacement for the low resolution version, but this one is a little different. The low rez version of Lava1 actually looks like lava. Given the size of the planet in-game, and how large the lava texture appears on the planet's surface, I found this to appear unrealistic. Such planetary features would not be so distinguishable, so I tried to make the lava planet more like the hot super Earth extrasolar planets that have been discovered in close proximity to their parent star.

[m2258734a]

Here it is:



I used nothing but The GIMP on this one.

[Admiral Nelson]

Well, as I mentioned in the other thread.  I figured the lava "planet" to be a moon, not a full scale planet for the very reason that one wouldn't be able to see such features on a proper planet.

[m2258734a]

Here is the satellite, Lava1:



If this looks like a good substitute, I'll provide a link to the TGA in the other thread.

[Turnsky]

no 3d rendering whatsoever.