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Re: nebula creation

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:27 am
by Josh
Yep, you should probably do the coloring from now on :P
I've come to the conclusion that my video card sucks, and I probably won't see the results of this in game for myself, but it's nice to know my contributions will be put to use.
pd wrote:Pixel stars didn't work very well, as they also seemed very flat.
How about hand painted star fields too? So far we've just got Nebulae, star fields would add some variety and might alleviate that problem too.
pd wrote:100% - As you can see, it's still quite blurry. This is about the size you'll see it in-game.
That's a good thing, right? Nebula are supposed to be kind of blurry.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 12:07 pm
by MikkoM
These nebulas that Josh has provided are absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn`t even mind having one of these hanging on my wall.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:44 am
by Josh
Thank you :)
Here's another one in a different style.

Pillars of Atlas (I ran out of good names)
1600x1600, Greyscale
Image

Nordic Light (probably won't do any more like these)
1600x1600, Greyscale
Image

Vulpecula Star Cluster (First attempt at making backgrounds other than Nebulae)
778x658, Greyscale
Image

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:21 pm
by tribunal
Hi all!
I'm complete new to all of this, but may be I can help?
I have my own project (a game, something like Elite-like), so I have created a small util to generate space pics with nebulaes.
And no photoshop or gimp :) only small qt-based util.
here is an example:
Image
If you are interested, I can write more

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:41 pm
by pd
Thanks for the offer, but that's not quite what we are looking for. We need great, "epic" Nebulae - from close up or even from the inside.

Good work on Pillars of Atlas, Josh.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:38 am
by tribunal
No problem :)
Anyway, I will go on working with my generator and may be look at your epic Nebulas.
My generator is GPLed.
Real space is not so epic... but in every space game you can hear sounds of laser shots :roll:

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:28 am
by pd
Probably, but we are not creating a simulation of space, but a game. Laser sounds and epic backgrounds are fun.

Starfields

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 11:10 am
by Josh
Niven Cluster perhaps a bit small
640x480
Image

Asimov Cluster
1024x1024
Image

3 star fields,
11 Nebulae.

I'd say that's a modest start for FreeOrion; If you merge them, you can (sort of) get wider varieties of Nebulae.

Some good colors for Nebulae:
Dark Purple
Orange
Red-Orange
Browns
Dull Teals
Dull Greens
Dull Blues
Bright Blues (Looks even better on stars
Bright Yellows and Golds)
Pink
Sunset colors in general,
And most any unsaturated, grayish, or brownish colors work very well...

There are few really bad colors in my opinion:
Vivid greens (but diluted greens are great)
Straight reds (red is actually very good if you want it to look super creepy [Scorpion Nebula])

But making a color palette that harmonizes is an altogether different animal.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 1:16 pm
by pd
Yep, thanks for that. I agree about the colors.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 10:54 pm
by eleazar
Nice stuff.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 7:02 am
by Josh
Glad you think so.

Wispy Starfield
640x346
Image

Burst Nebula
1024x1024
Image

It's getting hard to come up with new backgrounds that don't look identical to eachother. Any ideas?

Dear god this one took forever.

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:26 pm
by Josh
Rip Van Winkle Nebula
1600x800, 24bit.jpeg, Dull blues and reds
Image

This one took a really long time.

I should get around to doing a backgrounds tutorial sometime, but I'll have to see how to set that up.

Re: nebula creation

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 9:48 pm
by pd
Came out great - nice variation of detail and looseness, nice focal point. What you could maybe try to do is adding more depth. Currently, although there is depth in the nebulae themselves, they are laid out very flat, basically just parallel to the picture plane.
What I noticed is, if I put these into the skysphere, I'm surrounded by flat nebulae. I hope you understand my point, but I'm probably going to illustrate it anyway. Try to put some perspective into this, the nebulae should stretch away at least somewhat, so the player is not surrounded by mere pictures of nebulae.

Foreground, middleground, background.

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 11:33 am
by Josh
I think I know what you mean... You can try recombining the flat images to build some depth, or use them as bases for larger compositions. Does that help?

Re: Foreground, middleground, background.

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 11:49 am
by pd
Yes, that's what I'm going to do anyway. I could also just distort them into perspective myself, maybe supported by some added shading.