How badly do the stock planets need a retexture?

[Alpha 360]

So, I followed the instructions for the first minutes of the video originally in this post. I have created my own "planet" height map using the MS Paint. But, how do I do the coding part? Do I copy and paste a planet's code into MS Note, fiddle around, change the link for the height map and then fiddle around some more? That is what it seems like in your videos. 

Thanks for the help though, @Gameslinx. This has really widened my horizons. 

Happy Explosions

Edited February 22, 2018 by Alpha 360

[klgraham1013]

1 hour ago, Curveball Anders said:

I'd most likely turn the art down to get even better gameplay

 

...but...what if...you could have both!?

[Curveball Anders]

3 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

...but...what if...you could have both!?

There will always be a tradeoff, in design, in code, in memory management.

And I will always opt for function over form.

[Gameslinx]

7 minutes ago, Alpha 360 said:

So, I followed the instructions for the first minutes of the video originally in this post. I have created my own "planet" height map using the MS Paint. But, how do I do the coding part? Do I copy and paste a planet's code into MS Note, fiddle around, change the link for the height map and then fiddle around some more? That is what it seems like in your videos. 

Thanks for the help though, @Gameslinx. This has really widened my horizons. 

Happy Explosions

This isn't really the thread for it, but definitely do a quick google search for TWG's tutorials i mentioned earlier. They are what got me going.

You will need Notepad++ and Gimp (both are free). Notepad++ is extremely useful for config editing, and Gimp is a very powerful image editor. Steep learning curve, but practise makes perfect

2 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

There will always be a tradeoff, in design, in code, in memory management.

And I will always opt for function over form.

The average PC has around 8GB of RAM. KSP uses hardly any of that amount. Bettering the planets will have a minuscule impact on the performance and RAM usage. If there is any impact, just turn down the texture quality...

[Curveball Anders]

1 minute ago, Gameslinx said:

If there is any impact, just turn down the texture quality...

Which was my point from the start, I'd just tune the graphics down.

 

[Gameslinx]

17 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

Which was my point from the start, I'd just tune the graphics down.

 

For others, they wouldn't have to turn the graphics down. Point is, stock planets need to look better and this doesn't have to be higher res textures. Better terrain and a texture update without resize would have no additional performance impact.

[klgraham1013]

1 hour ago, Curveball Anders said:

There will always be a tradeoff, in design, in code, in memory management.

And I will always opt for function over form.

...and I would want my game, movie, music creator to strive to be the best they can in all areas.  There are to many examples of games, even from small teams, that accomplish both amazing gameplay and art to think we can only have one at the expense of the other.

[Gameslinx]

8 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

It looks good at a glance, but if you strip away the visuals (EVE and scatterer), the planet has no terrain detail at all on the desert and grassy regions apart from the canyon. The ocean doesn't cover the land which is coloured blue - it falls short.

The planet isn't complete and lacks detail, which is why it doesn't look good from orbit or surface. You can tell a planet is good on the surface from its orbital look if you can see the normal map.

[panzer1b]

I would say fairly badly, since the planets (or at least most of them), have low res textures with tiling issues (look at Eve's surface in some areas, obvious repetition), and generally complete lack of any real detail on the lower level on the surface (i mean you got major hills and such, but no real bumps on a smaller scale).  That said, planet surfaces are by no means the only thing that needs a visual overhaul in the stock game.  The default skybox is terrible (im pretty much never gonna stop using texture replacer).  The stock oceans are trash with very obvious tiling/repeating textures, bad texture res, scatterer does much better, ect.  The sky glow around planets is really lousy as it just looks so fake, not saying it has to be scatterer levels of detailed with all the sky lighting effects and fog, but it can be made much better then it is.  Land shadows are also terrible, with ships being lit up when behind a mountain and other similar situations.

Note that none of that even mentions things that i feel should be in the game like clouds or dust particles.  The thing is, the stock game is visually very bland especially if you are someone that uses or has used even a few of the visual improvement mods.  Id even say that 100% stock, it is really not fun to play KSP for very long periods of time as i get annoyed at the lack of any visual details and the only thing thats visually good are ships and the like.  Overhauling the planet surfaces alone wont really solve the problem entirely, but if the devs actually put some effort towards improving some of the stock textures itd be a much more enjoyable game (at least for me personally, maybee i wouldnt have to use half a dozen mods to make the game look nice).  Still, if its not possible, at least if the devs pulled all the planet textures out of the .asset files so that modders could make easy and quick texture mods without resorting to the laggy mess that is kopernicus (dont get me wrong, its a great mod, but it does come with a performance hit which im not willing to take when all i care about are raw textures and i have no interest in altering planet geometry or adding more of them).

Ofc, i have serious doubts that anyone in the dev team cares about this, since priorities at this point in the game's life seem to be just about everything BUT visually overhauling anything.  That died when porkjet left, as did any hope of a comprehensive stock parts overhaul, but at least i have ven's mod which fixes the ugliest parts (mk1-2 pod im looking at you).  Anyways, sorry for the little bit of a rant, but i really hate the fact that any sort of art pass seems to have been shelved or such low priority that noone bothers doing it.

[KerikBalm]

20 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

It looks good at a glance, but if you strip away the visuals (EVE and scatterer), the planet has no terrain detail at all on the desert and grassy regions apart from the canyon. The ocean doesn't cover the land which is coloured blue - it falls short.

The planet isn't complete and lacks detail, which is why it doesn't look good from orbit or surface. You can tell a planet is good on the surface from its orbital look if you can see the normal map.

Actually, its got quite a bit of detail... if you didn't recognize it... that's mars with an ocean and green around the edges... we have some pretty heigh res height maps of mars... the thing is that mars just does have a lot of flat areas...

but thats not to say that it lacks detail, but at certain altitudes, it does look pixelated:

Spoiler

^Thats not to show pixelation reallym just more detail

^I forget which mons this is, its not olympus, but its one of the other big 3 on the tharsis plateau (the steepness is exaggerated, of course)

^Olympus mons

^Noctis labyrinthus

More Noctis labyrinthus, getting close to vallis marinaris

Vallis marinarus in the distance

I forget what these valleys were called

Earlier versions before the color map was changed:

Sorry, but I don't think its a matter of a heightmap that lacks detail... since its a real heightmap from a real planet, I'd say it has exactly as much detail as it should have, given the resolution of KSP heighmaps (the high res martian heightmaps are much higher  res than the 2048x4096 that are standard for KSP/kopernicus planets)

Also, the ocean does cover the land covered blue, the two tones of blue is meant to indicate shallow coastal waters, like this:

Edited February 22, 2018 by KerikBalm

[Gameslinx]

13 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Sorry, but I don't think its a matter of a heightmap that lacks detail..

It definitely is a mix of that and a lack of pqsmods.

The pixellation is due to a high resolution heightmap coupled with no pqsmods. You NEED pqsmods for planets of large size otherwise you're stuck with rounded edges.

I see what you mean with the coastal, but I can't see any shine on it, which made me think it was land. 

And keep in mind that Mars is HUGE, 1 pixel on your heightmap will cover miles of land, missing out entire hills and even sand dunes which can be made using PQSmods.

It is a lack of detail on the heightmap and a lack of pqsmods. 

[KerikBalm]

yes, mars is huge, but Duna... not so much, again, its not that the heightmap isn't detailed enough, its as detailed as any other heightmap which would have the same pixel to area ratio.

and yes, I have tried with using various pqs mods to add heightnoise, but I haven't found any good combination that preserves the features I want (the delta islands, the impact craters, the streams and valleys, etc), without basically being pointless and not noticable.

[Gameslinx]

5 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

but I haven't found any good combination that preserves the features I want (the delta islands, the impact craters, the streams and valleys, etc), without basically being pointless and not noticable.

Then you're using the wrong pqsmods and the wrong settings.

Again, check my planets and planet heightmaps - that's how I get around the pixellation.

[KerikBalm]

Well, I took a lok at some of your configs, you seem to use  something like this

Spoiler

                VertexHeightNoiseVertHeightCurve2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           //whoever copies this is ew - Gameslinx
                {
                    deformity = 3000
                    ridgedAddFrequency = 75
                    ridgedAddLacunarity = 2
                    ridgedAddOctaves = 8
                    ridgedAddSeed = 5473
                    ridgedMode = Low
                    ridgedSubFrequency = 50
                    ridgedSubLacunarity = 3
                    ridgedSubOctaves = 8
                    ridgedSubSeed = 1
                    simplexFrequency = 17
                    simplexHeightEnd = 6000
                    simplexHeightStart = 0
                    simplexOctaves = 8
                    simplexPersistence = 0.5
                    simplexSeed = 0
                    order = 50
                    enabled = True
                    name = VertexHeightNoiseVertHeightCurve2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           //whoever copies this is ew - Gameslinx
                    index = 0
                    simplexCurve
                    {
                        key = 0 0 0 0
                        key = 0.2 0.1 1 1
                        key = 0.6311918 0.2 1.432598 1.432598
                        key = 1 1 0 0
                    }
                }

On all the ones I've looked at so far... I don't want to add random ridged patterns to my height map, I'f tried using those, perlin, etc, I didn't find any to be satisfactory.

[Gameslinx]

22 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

On all the ones I've looked at so far... I don't want to add random ridged patterns to my height map, I'f tried using those, perlin, etc, I didn't find any to be satisfactory.

It is random based on a curve, meaning you can control where it is applied.

Squad does use this, but not to its full effect. They really need better heightmaps in order to increase the diversity of terrain and improve the overall look, which is what we want.

[Opus_723]

I would honestly just like more varied terrain. More canyons, cliffs, mountain ranges, craters. Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus are alright in this regard, but the rest of the planets are quite flat and featureless. Duna in particular, as almost everyone's first interplanetary trip, is a bit disappointing. I just want something like the Valles Marineris. Maybe some actual glaciers instead of white ground. One or two grand features like that on each planet. That would make my whole game.

I think textures are secondary to this. If I had more cliffs I'd be buzzing them with ships, racing down canyons, and base jumping Kerbals. That's what would actually make planets more fun.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Opus_723

[KerikBalm]

Yea, I think its the terrain itself, not the texture that needs an overhaul. Moho should be like Mun (although Mun has some crater that are way too big IMO), but even Mun needs more canyons and maria (not just crater basins). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rille

Duna isn't as bad as people make it out to be, it does have some canyons, but it lacks finer details, even at the heightmap level, It needs some drainage channels (I do see some features like this in Gameslinx's heightmaps, and IMO they are the best feature of many of his heightmaps) and such. A few prominent volcanoes wouldn't be amiss either. Perhaps some cliffs or ledges to mark an ancient sea shore. FYI, duna with some water:

Spoiler

and a higher water level:

Before treatment with any graphical mods:

Green added to edges:

Scatterer applied:

 

Dres could use procedural craters, as could parts of duna and every moon/planet without an atmosphere. Joolean moons could use fault lines similar to Europa, ganymede, etc... they are likely to be ice worlds, and there should be visible "ice plates" Eeloo has this to an extent, but it could be much better. There could be mountain ranges adjacent to some of the plat boundaries, for example.

In general, there is nothing that resembles features formed naturally as a result of plat tectonics in stock KSP (and I would say in that is mostly true for Gameslinx's bodies as well) - there should be, and I'm sure it could even be done procedurally.

Edited February 23, 2018 by KerikBalm

[Gameslinx]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

plat tectonics in stock KSP (and I would say in that is mostly true for Gameslinx's bodies as wel

Check Scorch, Sonus, Butai, Gaia and Niebos in GPO

Check Wasteland and possibly Valiant in After Kerbin

Check Eden in Before Kerbin

I agree with the rest of your points, terrain is squad's weak point here.

[alphaprior]

Ok you are really talented you made a heightmap in MS Paint and coded in Word never seen that before! 

All your work so far is stunning. Will definitely download your Stock System Makeover if you decide to do it. But seriously stick with Photoshop and Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code (don't know if it works with game files).
As much as I love KSP it doesn't go deep into details like most games I'm kinda disappointed they focus on gameplay but they miss variety and detail in things like maps which could provide a much better gameplay at the end.

I'd like to see more detailed planets both in texture and diversity with mountains, cliffs, lakes, volcanoes etc. Whatever is possible in balance.
For me heightmap is the most interesting part and texture comes second but a better than stock for sure.

I've seen your interesting idea to use nebulae for heightmap creation but what if you were using real heightmaps and alter them however you see fit? I have done it for other games and works like a charm. 

[Gameslinx]

1 hour ago, alphaprior said:

I've seen your interesting idea to use nebulae for heightmap creation but what if you were using real heightmaps and alter them however you see fit? I have done it for other games and works like a charm. 

I used to use real ones, but I've found other better methods of doing this and achieving better effects.

Ksp's terrain system doesn't really like overly detailed or high contrast heightmap as they can cause terrain pixellation. This is overcome by using a slightly less noisy heightmap and adding the extra detail with noisemods in the config.

I'm definitely sticking to Photoshop and Np++. Paint is a horrible program to use and the entire video was just to show how even with terrible tools you can make good planets. 

 

Fly safely.

[TheProtagonists]

I don't really feel like the stock planets need facelifts to just make them look better, I feel like the general thing is, as you mentioned, the lack of close up features. I don't mean there should be more easter eggs, but rather, larger scaled features that make certain locations more memorable.

The only such feature I can think about in stock is, ironically, the Canyons on Dres, supposedly the least interesting planets. I mean, I don't hear much about "that Tylo impact crater" or "that mountain on Eve" or much else...

So I feel like the lack of features like Dres Canyons on most stock planets are the biggest issue I'd like to see a change.