Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Tutorials & Resources For Mappers

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The Yak
Posts: 351
Joined: 20 May 2012, 05:36

Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by The Yak »

So what happens when you take NASA high-res imagery, distort by polar coordinates, and turn it into a skybox? Well something along the lines of this...
Image

That's from an image taken from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/), which is a gallery of regularly updated photos of the sun taken at different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum... cool stuff.

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Sun
----------------------------------------------
Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... ungold.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... ngreen.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... ncomp1.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... unblue.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... ealsun.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... undark.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... dcream.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... unpink.dds
----------------------------------------------
Nebula
----------------------------------------------
Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... nebula.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... nebula.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... nebula.dds

Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... nebula.dds

----------------------------------------------
World Map
----------------------------------------------
Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... rldmap.dds

"Inner Core" recolour:
Image
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/583 ... pburns.dds

--------------------------------------------------

Pack available on Springfiles:
http://springfiles.com/spring/developme ... boxes-pack
Last edited by The Yak on 09 Jul 2013, 04:44, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
The Yak
Posts: 351
Joined: 20 May 2012, 05:36

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by The Yak »

100% filter free baby, only polar coordinate re-mapping so it can be made into a six sided cube :-)
Last edited by The Yak on 08 Jul 2013, 00:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Beherith
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Joined: 26 Oct 2007, 16:21

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by Beherith »

How did you do the polar coordinate distortion? I made a skybox from some NASA Eta Carinae nebula images and the distortion always bothered me.
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The Yak
Posts: 351
Joined: 20 May 2012, 05:36

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by The Yak »

Beherith wrote:How did you do the polar coordinate distortion? I made a skybox from some NASA Eta Carinae nebula images and the distortion always bothered me.
In GIMP I just used the Polar Coordinates dialog, circle depth 100%, 0 offset, checked Map from top, uncheck To Polar, and from a spherical sun ending up with something like:
Image

There's always going to be some distortion transforming an image like that, but it makes it very easy to just import into Cube The Sphere and split it into 6 seperate images, and then just re-assemble in ATI Cubemapgen.
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smoth
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Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by smoth »

neat! I will have to try this some day!
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knorke
Posts: 7971
Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by knorke »

I wanted to see one ingame...download...copypaste into map...suddendly armageddon! So I had to add a new picture to my interblog.
Looks very impressive ingame..

Also nice how one .sdd is 24MB but zipped it is only 4MB. Or still a bit big maybe for something that is only visible when looking up?
Oh and mirror to springfiles?
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smoth
Posts: 22309
Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by smoth »

could you later move this to the resources area? that would make it more readily available to people
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The Yak
Posts: 351
Joined: 20 May 2012, 05:36

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by The Yak »

added a few more to the first post, pack now available on Springfiles
Also nice how one .sdd is 24MB but zipped it is only 4MB. Or still a bit big maybe for something that is only visible when looking up?
Not necessarily only visible when looking up, but also around edges of map, even more visible if there is /voidwater used like with the asteroid maps. More commonly, good reflective water/bumpwater settings should noticably the reflect the sky.
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knorke
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006, 01:02

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by knorke »

ah yes it can reflect in water.
But around the map I can not see skybox? Unless there is reflective water of course.
Or maybe the maps I tried do not have a skybox with a "bottom" or is it some map setting?
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The Yak
Posts: 351
Joined: 20 May 2012, 05:36

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by The Yak »

You mean if it's a dry map? Yeah, as long as water isn't visible and /waterplanecolor isn't used bottoms of skyboxes should show up fine.

Image

Granted, this is where the downside of my method is apparent, the bottoms of the skyboxes are distorted more then other parts.
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Beherith
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Joined: 26 Oct 2007, 16:21

Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by Beherith »

VRgrid map edge extension works well with these skyboxen.
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knorke
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Re: Spacey Skyboxes from high-res NASA Solar photography

Post by knorke »

I had already added the thread to resources page on wiki:
http://springrts.com/mediawiki/index.ph ... ldid=26921
There is no need to move threads to this forum to archive them, because there is such resource collection page.
Now nobody (except moderators) can comment on the thread anymore and give feedback or ask question. Not even Yak himself.
...

All that was discussed before:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=27779
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