Development:Orbital Planet Surfaces
General
This page summarizes concepts and approaches to creating planet surfaces as seen from orbit. Topics of atmospheric entry and close-to-surface planetary topology or atmospheric effects or texturing should be covered in a separate document. Two main topics are covered in this document:
- Development of textured surfaces
- Development of procedural surfaces
References
References apply both to textured and procedural approaches if not stated otherwise.
Wiki References
Planets and Systems
- Listing and description of planet types: Manual:Planet_types
- Editing Systems using milky_way or system files: HowTo:Edit_Systems
Development Roadmap
- Improved planet textures (Higher quality/Fractal Enhanced?): Development:Roadmap#Aspects_for_consideration
Forum References
Texture Requirements
Development Tools
Examples, Including, Testing
Submission Process
Development Needs and Tasks
Improvement Proposals
- Auto-Enhancing Textures
- Fractal Generation System
- More pretty stuff: atmospheres and planet surfaces
External References
Textured Surfaces
Texture Requirements
Image Resolution and Formats
The planet surface graphics format recommended for the game is currently 2048x1024 in png or jpg format.
The image ratio horizontal:vertical must be 2:1, since the texture is wrapped aroud the planet sphere horizontaly around 360 degrees and verticall around 180 degrees. Necesserily, in order for the surface not to appear distorted, your pixel ratio of the generated texture must be 1.0, i.e. a circle must show as a circle when viewing the texture in an image viewer.
The vertical and horizontal sizes should be a power of two (POT). Really, NPOT (non-power-of-two) textures are possible, but really, really, really troublesome. Don't use them. Just use POT. Love the POT. The POT is the mother, the POT is the father. Trust the POT.
That leaves few options:
- 1024x512
- 2048x1024
- 4096x2048
- 8192x4096
Keeping original high resolution image (e.g. 8192x4096 or 4096x2048) versions in stock helps maintaining quality and scalability as game development progresses or typical screen resolutions rise in the future with better hardware available to the players.
Image Properties
Naturally, the images should be seamless (tilable) so that seams are not visible on the rotating planet.
Development Tools
Image Manipulation Programs
GIMP
Gimp is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
Gimp already comes with a great variety of scripts and the library can be extended with your own C, Perl, Python, or Script-Fu plug-ins.
A good starting point for e.g. gas giant texture maps is the 'Solid Noise' filter.
Renderers
POV-Ray
POV-Ray (Persistence of Vision Raytracer) is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports.
With its unique scripting approach and through a large base of available texture, pigment, and material functions there are almost unlimited possibilities to creating surface maps.
Maps can be exported by using a spherical camera setting: camera {spherical angle 360}
Blender
Blender is the open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.
Scripts for blender can be created using Python. No application of blender for creation of planet surfaces is known to the author. Sumbissions are appreciated.
Including and Testing
Submission Process
Development Needs and Tasks
List of tasks: Development:2D_Images#Orbital_Planet_Surfaces
Procedural Surfaces
At the time of writing (June 2006) no known implementation of procedural orbital planet surfaces exists in Vega Strike.
