I can hardly wait and I wait with bated breath.

good work Argh - the CMPs were pretty but also performance intensive,i'm curious to see what you can do w/ sph's

i think what i _really_ like about .sph is the control you have over how many repeats a texture goes through,which is very important for raising the resolution on a superscale sph,as well as a built in atmosphere that can be altered a LOT with the txm settings - and they also show up on radar w/ wireframe which is nice

Edited by - Cold_Void on 12/22/2005 8:15:38 PM

What I would like to see more then ever would be water cover planets with bits of city lights to make it look more populated.
Sounds cool what your doing

The only problem i see with TXM is that the textures in there kinda splitted into different pieces... and to find out how they are arranged is the key

I have a feeling that the txm split is already arranged Our man Argh doesn't tend to announce stuff that doesnt work to a pretty reasonable degree

The short answer to a lot of your questions is that:

1. The Freelancer file formats also have splits. These become immediately apparant if one raises the resolution on the TXMs that DA used. IOW, we just don't see them with the standard resolutions due to the sheer blurriness of the 9-level mipmaps used.

2. I have determined that DA used a uvmap that utilizes one endcap and two half-spheres, that have been projected to get pretty good "efficiency".

3. I have figured out exactly how the alpha channels work, and what they're for.

4. The glowmap channels are trivial, but present some technical concerns due to moire.

5. Unlike what I thought, which was that DA was using a tri-based and formula-driven texturing method with a lot of alpha levels being used to create random-looking results... mainly they just worked really hard on the textures, and probably did each mip by hand.

As to why I looked into this... mainly it's because I was, in the end, pretty disappointed with the CMPs, mainly due to problems with the way that my maps were working. Now that I know how DA did it, I won't have to mess around with worrrying about the model/uvmap issues, and will just have to figure it out from a texturing standpoint, which is a lot easier...

the question remains

how to slit a texture so it will fit into the txm and is looking as a whole again in FL

maybe it will help to create a planet with cmp and create a planet in a normal way but with one colored textures (different colors). this way you can see how they are arranged and what parts of the new texture need to be used

(not sure if that will work... its just a idea)

ok forget about that question.... i have found out how it is working

i just have create a planet that is looking like the earth and its pretty simple
i will post a screenshot in a few hours (when i finished the training in SL)

lol ok forget about what ive said... the buttom and top part didnt work correctly


you will need 4 textures to make it working correctly.. so i created a 4th and it was working so far... i only need to find a way to create a uvmap in a way that it will fit to the other 2 textures

Perhaps you should just figure out a single accurate uvmap that works and then post that as a template.

Here's a concept shot, and a download link to my modified TXM. You can change it with UTF Edit very easily. I don't claim that this is uber-neat- I just did one DDS, and then used it for all three maps, and obviously it'd be much more professional-looking if I used three different ones... but here's a basic proof-of-concept for y'all to chew on- sorry about the delay, but there was that "Christmas" thing going on, and I was kind've busy


Click here to download the TXM.

i was trying to create a planet that is looking like earth but that is more complicated then just to create a "random looking" planet


the problem is that coz of the splitted textures its very hard to combine them again... instead of 3 textures you will need 4 (which shouldnt be a problem coz its possible to add a 4th dds)
like i said the problem is to cut the texture of the earth into 4 pieces which can be used on the planet

unless this is not possible or known the txm is useless and i will have to use cmps instead

I did a cmp planet in Tekagis skinned with an earth pic from nasa, feel free to use it
(just give me a mention)

Edited by - unicornz on 12/27/2005 5:02:48 PM

Why do you have to use 4? Just curious... I mean, no matter what projection you're using of the Earth's geometry, you can make it into a series of planar projections... just a thought.

Here are a series of screens of a much more sophisticated TXM with three parts... aside from the clouds, which suck (sorry folks, good clouds are a lot of work), this looks reasonably nice, and could form the basis of some really nice new planets for FL.