Planet Textures

[mtompson]

Hi all
Is it possible to use accurate planet texture maps i.e spherical projection types, of planets like jupiter on the planet objects in Terragen 2 ? If so a basic heads up would be a great help...
many thanks

[Henry Blewer]

I believe the site you might be looking for is NASA. There is a section of media for artists which includes very large planet images. I think you can get GIS terrain data there also. Take a look around.

[MGebhart]

Try this.

http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/

Marc

[mtompson]

Thanks, I am trying to find out if I can use these maps on planet objects in Terragen 2 ? for example if I wanted jupiter in a Terragen scene?
Many thanks

[Kadri]

Yes you can. Use an image map shader to bring the image in TG2 .

Kadri.

[FrankB]

like I did here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8398.0

The thread is also good advice on remembering to define the center of the spherical projection as the center of the celestial body you are trying to texture

Cheers;
Frank

[Kadri]

like I did here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8398.0

The thread is also good advice on remembering to define the center of the spherical projection as the center of the celestial body you are trying to texture

Cheers;
Frank

This is spot on. I was struggling with this 1 hour earlier befor my pc shut down ( http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8389.msg89430#msg89430  ). Thanks Frank

Kadri.

[TheBlackHole]

For the maps there's here:
http://planetpixelemporium.com/planets.html
or here:
http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/planetary_maps.html
or here:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/spaceart/cylmaps.html
or here:
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html.050613
or here:
http://www.planetscapes.com/maps/cylmaps.html
or here:
http://inkido.indiana.edu/a100/planetary_textures.html
The last one has low-res but interesting maps. I know I have a lot of these kinds of sites. They're bookmarked from when I did nothing but Google planet maps. The first one actually got robbed once. I went there one day and all the images were gone and I couldn't download anything. Apparently some guy in China stole everything from the server. It's now working and that's why there's now a download box instead of the direct link to the maps.

[mtompson]

Many thanks everyone...

[mtompson]

What do you normally do about atmosphere for the example with jupiter? do you still have one? so far I'm getting some nasty results with black patches around the terminator? thanks for any settings help...

[TheBlackHole]

Of course you keep the atmosphere. Make sure the map is projected correctly and add 3D clouds. Go to the cloud layer and set the density shader to your image map for some neat cloud effects.

[MrTomate]

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/

It has the biggest maps i've ever seen, have a look.

ps: to open dds format you need this plug-in for photoshop  http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html

[TheBlackHole]

Ah, yes. I used to have that as my home page for a while. It does have some pretty good maps.

[saturnapollo]

Hi

I'm new to the forum, but have been using Terragen for a few years, probabably in a fairly rudimentary way compared to most on this forum from what I can see.

I discovered this forum when I was trying to find out how to texture planets. Having read the instructions on this thread, I have managed to import and use image map shaders to replicate Jupiter, Mars and the Moon. However even though I have selected spherical projection and made sure the planet's centre co-ordinates are copied to the shader, I can't seem to achieve foreshortening of craters etc as per a sphere. All I get looks like it is a cut out circle with craters getting chopped at the planet edges. Celestia which uses these maps achieves this effect, so I have to assume I'm doing something wrong. On gas giants it is obviously not so noticeable but withplanets with craters and well defined features it is very obvious.

Be grateful for any advice.

Thanks.

Keith

[TheBlackHole]

Your projection center needs to be the center of the planet. Copy/paste the XYZ coordinates of the planet into the center of the image map shader.