I have a little knowledge about them.

So far I have been able to create a new starsphere from an existing one and rename it. Also used different textures in it.

But I have not been able to build one from scratch yet, I'm working on them at the moment, so each day is a bit of a discovery at the moment. I'm happy to share any info I have.

So this is all I know so far (sorry if you know this already):

To edit an existing starsphere, there are normally 2 "vmesh librarys" in most starspheres, this is where you change the name, so you can in effect create a new one.
Using the crc rename it and copy the code/hex or whatever it is into the "vmesh data field" on 5th one down on Int array in UTF editor.
Both have to be changed, otherwise there is a CTD, now the second one down is the bigger file and the one that the UTF editor crashes on most times. So far i have been able to work on the following starspheres, without UTF editor crashing:
Bw06_fp7
Bw07
Ew01
Ew05
Ew06
Iw06
And the most fun - St03b (Dyson)
A tip I learned, is, if you change the starsphere, try it with Hardcmp, if it doesnt show, then the starsphere is corrupt (saves you having to restart FL every time to see if it works or not)
The back ground of the starsphere tends to be labelled "nebula", but when you export the tga from the mip, you can tell which one it is by looking and remembering the background to the system.
The starsphere is a series of seamless tiles, so whatever you replace in there must be seamless. I put in a hubble telescope pic of a nebula and it looked awful !
I think there are something like 6/8 tiles or more, so you cant have an image of one thing unfortunately.
Im have no idea about the other 3db items in the starsphere, sorry.
Currently i am trying to create some new seamless textures for the starsphere's.

Hope this helps a little and again, sorry if you already know all this.

Edited by - Strail on 2/9/2005 3:42:55 AM

Edited by - Strail on 2/9/2005 7:35:30 AM

I don`t know anything about creating starspheres (sorry), but if u wanted to create seamless texture maps, the easiest way would be to use paint shop pro. There`s an option if you select the whole pic then contract (so the selection is in the middle). Not sure if this is very helpfull..

I haven't had any luck in building entirely new ones, either- something about the 3DB structure's very strange. I've been able to replace the existing textures and modify them that way, but I must admit that that's where my spelunking in this area stopped.

Well, I found at leats a way to get rid of stuff on a starsphere that you do not like. Want a starsphere with some black hole,in the background(there are a couple in stock), but without the nebula?
Easy.

Open the starsphere (better yet: a copy with a new name!) with UTF_edit and browse for the Material_Libary.
Most materials are self-explaining. Things like "edge" or "crow" are nebula. If you expand their subnodes and mark the "type" node, you will see the text "nebula" in the right, too. Those are for example your nebula. Now delete all the subnodes of that "edge", "crow" or whatever. That means all kind of "type", "dt_name" etc.
Then create the following subnodes instead:

Type
Oc
Dc

Under "type", enter in string mode:
DcDtOcOt

Under "Oc", enter in float array mode:
0.000000
0.000000

Under "Dc", enter in float array mode:
0.000000
0.000000
0.000000
0.000000

It will erase the texure of that particular part and replace it with a color texture with the color black and the opacity 0, i.e. totally transparent.

Example: Starsphere_St01.cmp after "erasing" all nebula and the smaller stars:


In theory, this would work in any UTF formatted file to make stuff transparent. You can erase nebula, the stars, certain background objects as well as the textures on your favourite ship to make it invisible.

A note to all wannabe-cheat-modders: It will make that stuff invisible to YOU, not to the others.


This is the first majhor step toward customizing the backgrounds, as some of you know I am planning to make a starsphere with the sun image and the stars only. I will now have to look through the starspheres to find one with a simple rectangular shape at the equator and erase all except that shape, and replace that shape's texture with an image of the sun.


A few hours of work later...
...

I made it. Not only did I make it to modify an existing starsphere so that I have the stars and then, instead of nebula, an image of the sun. It was alot of work, because normally the nebula overlay the stars no matter what you do with the textures, the stars get simply cut off where the nebula shape is.

Now, how did I get around this?

What I did, not even expecting it would work:
In opened Milkshape, created a single triangle, moved it insanely far out. Applied a material (no image file) with name glass, so I need no file but MS makes a glass texture automatically (just the fastest way... since I do not want this face to be shown anyway).
I exported the CMP, updated the MAT into the cmp. Then opened the thing in UTF. I exported the VMeshPart/VMeshRef data. Then opened the starsphere, added a new part below the list, named the same as the new cmp thingy: dumpface.3db. Added the nodes andf imported the VMeshRef into it, then added the glas material with the same name etc (or FL would just crash if it cannot find a material).

Then, I took all the entries in Cmpnd and changed the filenames of all the nebula to dumpface.3db. Removed the old nebula 3db and textures totally. What is left is 2 dumpfaces(cuz there were 2 nebula in the original starsphere) that are too far out, tiny and see-through, and a (almost) rectangular shape onto which I put the sun image (which is still not perfect, just so see that it works). And it worked! Stars and sun.

I have to make a better image for the sun yet and deform it a bit, because the "rectangle" is a bit deformed too.

While playing around, I found something out. At least in starsphere, the VMeshData section defines the subparts and their position, orientation, and (!) scale/distortion sort of. Because, I tried setting the sun image thing'S filename for each of the nebula, and HArdCMP showed 3 shapes with sun texture, however at different size, position, orientation and, at leats it looked so, the shapes were distored like parallelogramms. I am not sure about this distortion, but scale and position and orientation is defined there. That is the limit so far. YOu cannot edit those directly. I will give it a try however at creating a custom starsphere. From all I have seen now, I have ther strong feeling it might work. Even if not, by adjusting ng the image correctly in PSP, I will have a starsphere as desired.

Edited by - Mephistopheles on 2/15/2005 8:58:58 AM

This is definitely worth a new post!

I have successfully created a new starsphere. It turned out to be easier than you might have thought. If you follow the way the stock starspheres are made (esp. the Cons section and the sub-entries in the 3db part) it should work with anything.

I built a rectangle in Gmax, 50x50 units, 100 units from the origin. Put a planar mapping on it, collapsed, exported to MD3. Import in MS3D, quick texturing with the sun image. Exportto CMP, MAT file updated int the CMP. Opened that CMP in UTF, and simply made those changes: In the Cmpnd section a Cons\Fix entry, with string data "Root" in the "Fix" leaf node.
Then exported the vmeshref data, made the subentries of the 3db new (just as seen in original starspheres) and re-imported that data.

An woot!, I got my new starsphere. My earlier attempts all failed because I did not think of the Cons entry. From this point, you should be able to put anything into the background, even full 3D meshes, you just won't see it from a different angle so an image on a plane square does the job as well.

EDIT: Just as a side note, if you keep to the scale I suggested in gmax, you will still have to resize it with FlModelTool by about 80-100 times to show up in game as expected.

EDIT: I still can't believe it was that easy. Wow.

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. am you can imagine my excitement, as my understanding of starspheres is still increasing. I found out that the Nebula material type works in an interesting way. It sets the opacity of the texture autimatically according to the brightness. This allows a smooth fade into black (which is then effictively transparently rendered) without making the whole thing with a opacity setting <1. Which, iny my example of the sun image, would also make the very core of the image, the sun itself, transparent.

Edited by - Mephistopheles on 2/15/2005 9:58:48 AM

Mephisto,

Congratulations! Glad to see you've made it. Looking forward to view the Sun while orbiting Mercury

I know that this is an old thread but I have one question for Mephistoles:
Can you make a step for step Tutorial for new starspheres?