Animated planet files

Development of artwork, requests, suggestions, samples, or if you have artwork to offer. Primarily for the artists.
Message
Author
vishnou00
Space Kraken
Posts: 157
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 3:15 am

#16 Post by vishnou00 »

Has somebody looked into MNG format? It has support in DevIL, delta compression, alpha channel and PNG or JPG compression. And of course, animation.

http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/

noelte
Juggernaut
Posts: 872
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:42 pm
Location: Germany, Berlin

#17 Post by noelte »

yes.

framesets are obsolate. We now using spheres with mapped textures.
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#18 Post by Geoff the Medio »

What about for animated textures? Storms and lightning and such? (how is this normally done?)

vishnou00
Space Kraken
Posts: 157
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 3:15 am

#19 Post by vishnou00 »

Well, wouldn't bitmap animation be useful elsewhere? Like animated heads for leaders, explosions/smoke trails in battle viewer, etc. It could be an alternative to handcoding eyecandies.

Like Geoff suggested, it could be used to animate textures, with a much lighter memory footprint than framesets, if you can extract a frame from the mng directly to a texture (hence not having every frames loaded in memory, just the mng file).

LonghornXtreme
Space Floater
Posts: 31
Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2004 1:54 am

#20 Post by LonghornXtreme »

XVID is completely open source. It is mpeg4 "compliant" not Mpeg4. If and when FO gets to the point where it needs to add video to put the polish on the game such as in high resolution fully rendered 3d and the like... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take the time to learn a proper video compression technique. Macroblocks are not necessary anymore!

Hehe... sorry bout my rant....

mart7x5
Space Floater
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed Oct 29, 2003 4:24 pm

#21 Post by mart7x5 »

civ3 uses flc, or so-called flic files, which are compressed animation files. DirectX allows also for animation using sprites, or one can use simple bitmaps and flip them on screen, in 2D. These are quite good options.

guiguibaah
Creative Contributor
Posts: 441
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2003 1:00 am

Planet textures

#22 Post by guiguibaah »

Hi - just took a glimpse of the textures on the planetary spheres, just wanted to say they look really nice!

However, I noticed that it is all one texture envelope per planet. In the future, will there be a texture for the planet and perhaps an overlapping texture for the atmosphere?

great work!
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#23 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I asked tzlaine if he could do multitexturing, but he didn't reply.

(I was also thinking of having a texture for the night side lights, and perhaps texturing to show infrastructure levels...)

I asked Obiwan if he could make cloudless versions of the planet textures, and he said it's possible, but would be difficult and time consuming due to having lost the intermediate files with layers that he used to make the final clouded images.

Tyreth
FreeOrion Lead Emeritus
Posts: 885
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 6:23 am
Location: Australia

#24 Post by Tyreth »

All these things are possible, it's just a question of priorities at the moment.

There are other more important artwork matters at the moment than atmospheric textures, but it is certainly possible to do them later. Priorities in particular:
* Production UI beautification
* Tech icons

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

#25 Post by eleazar »

I made 6 new planet skins, including 3 gas giants.
you can get them here. (EDIT: link removed. decent skins added to trunk) It's a 1.4 MB download.
Geoff the Medio wrote:(I was also thinking of having a texture for the night side lights, and perhaps texturing to show infrastructure levels...)
That sounds very cool!
Geoff the Medio wrote:I asked Obiwan if he could make cloudless versions of the planet textures, and he said it's possible, but would be difficult and time consuming due to having lost the intermediate files with layers that he used to make the final clouded images.
The advantage of creating most planets from a separate planet and atmosphere layer is you get much more variety in appearance. You could have 2, or 3 densities of clouds. Desert planets would tend to have light cloud cover, while swamp, ocean planets would tend to have heavy cloud cover. I could create some separated cloud/planet files for testing purposes.

Edit:

This is verging on off-topic, but it is connected.
There are 3 ideas in the following graphic:
Image

1) Currently there are "Gaian" planet graphics. In the description Gaian planets conform itselves to its inhabitants. So Gaian worlds might not be Terran at all. So let Gaian planets be indicated by something else, like a green halo. The planet graphic inside will be the same as whatever is ideal for the residents. Without such a halo, terran and Gaian planets look too similar anyway.

2) The Stars look odd jammed into the upper-right corner. Why not make a bigger star graphic centered like so. I can redo the graphics.

3) The sidebar could benefit from a line on the left edge to separate it from the starmap. Without a nebula underneath, everything tends to get jumbled together.
Last edited by eleazar on Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:46 pm, edited 4 times in total.

tzlaine
Programming Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1092
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:33 pm

#26 Post by tzlaine »

I haven't tried these in-game yet, but the PNGs themselves look pretty nice. One thing, though -- the inferno and barren planets are nearly identical. Was this a mistake? I think it would be pretty hard to tell them apart as-is.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#27 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:I made 6 new planet skins, including 3 gas giants.
Your Barren04.png and Inferno04.png look the same, aside from some blurring of the highlights on the inferno version. The image also doesn't look anything like the other barren planets, so I assume that was what you were intending it for...
I could create some separated cloud/planet files for testing purposes.
Please do.
Can someone point me to the document that explains different planet types
From the design document:

Terran - Earth-like. Normally holds an abundance of life.

Ocean - Covered with liquid water. Life abounds.

Swamp - Venus seen through the eyes of pulp science fiction writers. Humans would find the atmosphere unbreathable, the flora/fauna hostile and poisonous.

Toxic - The real life Venus. Sulfuric and harsh on humanity, paradise to certain strange breeds of life.

Inferno - Hell in Space. Much like Toxic, except hotter with a lot more lava. Carbon based life doesn’t thrive here.

Radiated - A barren world bombarded with Radiation from a nearby star or in some cases a planet with an independently radioactive surface. Life as we know it doesn’t exist, some wildly different species live here anyway.

Barren - Luna. A dead world by our standards, space-borne organisms often use these rocks as breeding grounds.

Tundra - Earth minus much of its water and heat. Staunch life can still thrive here.

Desert - Earth minus much of its water. Pulp science fiction ideal of Mars and Arrakis (Dune) are examples. Temperatures can vary wildly with the time of day, still within the range of liquid water. Terran life is mildly comfortable here.

Gaian - Gaia worlds are, despite the name, not exclusively paradise for Terran dwellers. They are sentient planets designed by long-forgotten ancient creators to reshape themselves to the whims of their inhabitants. Exceedingly rare, extremely valuable-- some cultures worship Gaian planets as gods.
and which can be terraformed in to which?
Terraforming hasn't been designed or implemented yet. However, a reasonable assumption would be that any terraforming (or unintentional environment changes) will generally happen between adjacent environments on The Wheel of Environmental Preference:

Code: Select all

     Terran -----Ocean
        |          |
        |        Swamp
      Desert       |
        |        Toxic
        |          |
      Tundra       |
        |        Inferno
        |          |
      Barren----Radiated
The way the planet graphics are set up implies that all the aliens prefer human-ideal worlds
I'm not sure what you mean by this... the graphics are just files... how are they "set up", and how does this imply anything about environment preferences of races?

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

#28 Post by eleazar »

tzlaine wrote:I haven't tried these in-game yet, but the PNGs themselves look pretty nice. One thing, though -- the inferno and barren planets are nearly identical. Was this a mistake? I think it would be pretty hard to tell them apart as-is.
Mistake. :( Looks like i saved the inferno over the barren. Will delete the extra from the .zip.

Thanks for the detailed answer Geoff. I guess we were out of sych. I edited out part of my post, after i found some answers, but the now gone part of my post is much of what you replied to. I might have more to say about that later.

User avatar
pd
Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 1924
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:17 pm
Location: 52°16'N 10°31'E

#29 Post by pd »

2) The Stars look odd jammed into the upper-right corner. Why not make a bigger star graphic centered like so. I can redo the graphics.
I like this super sized star picture at the top. The reason why the sun was put into the upper right corner is that it fits the illumination of the planets - but it still looks nice with a much bigger and centered star picture.
3) The sidebar could benefit from a line on the left edge to separate it from the starmap. Without a nebula underneath, everything tends to get jumbled together.
I agree. Notice that the UI is anything but finished. In the future we are going to develop a less spartanic UI with cool looking buttons an other UI widgets :)

Btw, take a look at the tech icon thread if you are interested to help.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

#30 Post by eleazar »

pd wrote:
eleazar wrote:2) The Stars look odd jammed into the upper-right corner. Why not make a bigger star graphic centered like so. I can redo the graphics.
I like this super sized star picture at the top. The reason why the sun was put into the upper right corner is that it fits the illumination of the planets - but it still looks nice with a much bigger and centered star picture.
Thanks. I'm not sure how things work around here. Is that enough of an endorsement to confidently proceed?
pd wrote:
eleazar wrote:3) The sidebar could benefit from a line on the left edge to separate it from the starmap. Without a nebula underneath, everything tends to get jumbled together.
I agree. Notice that the UI is anything but finished. In the future we are going to develop a less spartanic UI with cool looking buttons an other UI widgets :)
Is anyone currently developing it? I saw a number of threads on the topic, but they seemed to die out. I could be interested in working on this.
pd wrote:Btw, take a look at the tech icon thread if you are interested to help.
Yes, i did see that is your main graphics need at the moment. But if you don't mind i'd rather introduce myself to these forums doing a few things, i'm more confident i can do well. :wink:

Perhaps a brief introduction would be appropriate here:
I've worked on the art for Battle for Wesnoth for several years, and have made minor contributions to a few other FOSS games, all under this name "eleazar." I tend to bounce around between different art projects, because i try to keep it fun for me. Though i usually will eventually finish what i start.

My skills are primarily Photoshop-centric, though i like to concept and brainstorm as well.

I've only every played Moo once, though i a big fan of TBS games, especially galactic conquest and RPG games.

Post Reply