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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: mtompson on December 26, 2009, 03:24:21 PM

Title: Planet Textures
Post by: mtompson on December 26, 2009, 03:24:21 PM
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
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: Henry Blewer on December 26, 2009, 03:46:32 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: MGebhart on December 26, 2009, 04:05:54 PM
Try this.

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

Marc
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: mtompson on December 26, 2009, 05:23:08 PM
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
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: Kadri on December 26, 2009, 05:52:21 PM
Yes you can. Use an image map shader to bring the image in TG2 .

Kadri.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: FrankB on December 26, 2009, 06:59:07 PM
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
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: Kadri on December 26, 2009, 07:12:31 PM
Quote from: FrankB on December 26, 2009, 06:59:07 PM
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  ;D ). Thanks Frank :)

Kadri.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: TheBlackHole on December 26, 2009, 09:23:52 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: mtompson on December 27, 2009, 03:39:22 PM
Many thanks everyone... :)
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: mtompson on December 27, 2009, 04:13:00 PM
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...
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: TheBlackHole on December 27, 2009, 04:42:02 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: MrTomate on March 08, 2010, 10:11:04 AM
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/ (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 (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html)
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: TheBlackHole on March 08, 2010, 03:33:06 PM
Ah, yes. I used to have that as my home page for a while. It does have some pretty good maps.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: saturnapollo on July 06, 2010, 02:31:26 PM
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

Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: TheBlackHole on July 06, 2010, 03:16:54 PM
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.
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: TheBlackHole on July 06, 2010, 03:24:32 PM
You might also like to play with my fictional planet maps at Maps and Such (http://sites.google.com/site/mapsandsuch/home).
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: saturnapollo on July 06, 2010, 03:34:47 PM
Thanks very much. Unfortunately as I mentioned in my e-mail, I have indeed copied the Planet's centre co-ordinates into the image map shader.

Thanks also for the links to your maps. I will have a look.

Keith
Title: Re: Planet Textures
Post by: saturnapollo on July 06, 2010, 04:05:32 PM
Just managed it. I was copying the co-ordinates into the wrong image map shader.

It looks brilliant now.

Thanks very much for making me re-examine the problem.

Keith