high res rock texture question

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:51 pm

i'm jsut wondering why the highres rocks are bright and dark in places
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/1981/bgrnd03rq7.jpg
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7372/bgrnd05yl3.jpg

shouldn't they be light all over, i'm just thinking its dam hard to see them, also when playing with my highres rock project (was on hold for a while) its easier to see the effect of some of the displacement mappings if they were brighter.

i'm just wondering why they have these dark patches, (top/bottom i could understand as perhaps with spherical mapping they will get closer and addup to a brighter colour but stripes..? )
and whether they could be made a uniform brightness? (they do appear very dark in game some times)

Zapper · Post by **Zapper** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 5:30 pm

madpeople wrote:QUOTE (madpeople @ Feb 27 2007, 02:51 PM) i'm jsut wondering why the highres rocks are bright and dark in places
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/1981/bgrnd03rq7.jpg
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7372/bgrnd05yl3.jpg

shouldn't they be light all over, i'm just thinking its dam hard to see them, also when playing with my highres rock project (was on hold for a while) its easier to see the effect of some of the displacement mappings if they were brighter.

i'm just wondering why they have these dark patches, (top/bottom i could understand as perhaps with spherical mapping they will get closer and addup to a brighter colour but stripes..? )
and whether they could be made a uniform brightness? (they do appear very dark in game some times)

Its an artistic expression

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:19 pm

Mad, the dark region top and bottom were in the originals. Actually, the base color in those is the original texture. And yeah, it has to do with the mapping, basically the top and bottom correspond to a row of triangles kinda like/|/|/|/| . Each triangle gets arranged around the polar vertex, and you'll get 8 or so really nasty radial seams if you don't do it just right. So the dev's probably did it to make the seams less visible, but I think it also helps add the effect of lighting in the sector. Although I think it does help the lighting effects a little bit indirectly.

I agree that overall things are too dark, I took some measures to improve things, shooting for the dark and lights of the crater overlay to average out, but I didn't really get it right. If you can tweak things, go for it, if I get some time I'll try to play with them too.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:19 pm

i cant really tweak things, image editing isn't my speciality...
if someone with image editing skills could make the darker regions brighter then that would be helpful /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Dogbones · Post by **Dogbones** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:42 pm

Leave the darker/ish rocks. They are not glow in the dark and unless your ship has headlights (really really strong ones) rocks in space tend to be dark. Yes they are a bit hard to see, but that is sort of the point and the charm of flying in space. If everything were day glow colors (I am exaggerating of course, but you get the point) it would not be much of a space sim.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:07 pm

your ship's hud isn't glass, its a computer generated image based on your sensor data.

seriously, they are completely black on some sides

adaven, you made the highres rock textures right,
and am i right in thinking you had the rock texture, then you made some other parts darker and the the whole stretching stuff etc.

well, can i have a copy of the rock texture that has been stretches as necessary (or is that only needed for planets? and nebulas?) without the dark bits.

i'm not sure about the mapping going funny, ok, it may go funny on the top of the spheres, but other than that it should be fine, i have been making new rocks, so i would like to test highres textures on them which don't have parts darkened just to see how much of an effect it makes.
if there are funny bits, they can be darkened and i can advise you on the results of my tests..
p.s. if you wanted you could also make a greyscale elevation map and i could re-make my new rocks with that.

right now i am using the texture to make them bumpy (as well as noise), it makes them bumpy, but craters aren't nescessarraly dips, they change depending on the shadows etc..

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:08 am

Mad all I did: Original MS rock textures sized at 2048 ----> Add crater layer (overlay mode) ----> Slight tweaking of crater brightness (nasa images too dark for overlay mode, maybe I didn't do it enough)

I'm not really understanding what you are asking for, but there are no "fully illuminated" textures floating about. The original alleg devs made one whole side darker on most roids, probably to add to depth feeling.

I like the elevation map idea, maybe we can do something with that.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:30 am

oh, i just thought you got a rock image from nasa and made it darker in the same places as the ms ones..

i would very much like the texture to be brighter

the elevation map would be cool, the window of opportunity is open because i'm interested in modding the rocks, and my mod has not been generally released yet.. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

mesial · Post by **mesial** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 1:15 am

How about introducing your rocks with the introduction of this map?

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:03 am

hmm, not sure about tieing releases together, it means you have to wait for the one that takes longest to develop, maps are quick to make, and we haven't started testing the rocks yet