AD ASTRA: A Reimagining of Stock and The Outer Planets Mod - "It's Cloudin' Time"

[G'th]

Road Map:
All initial terrain sets generated and in-game. After my impending break, the EVE stage will commence and the following is a list of planned things to do, which may include terrain redos for selected worlds. 

Sun - Settle on a texture, figure out how Coronas work, look at other possible additions.  Make bespoke sunflare for the mod. 

Moho - Brighten Terrain, add subtle ablation effect. 

Eve - Adjust normals to be less wonky.  Polar Vortices, global aurorae. 

Kerbin - May undergo full redo (i keep learning new techniques help),  Wants new auroras and improved cloudsets using new techniques. Finalize Scatterer settings. 
Mun - Add Dust
Minmus - Definitely wants a full redo, but also wants dust and dynamic vapor plume for cryovolcano

Duna - Add contrasts to Red plains.  Add cloud and dust sets, aurora spikes, etc. 
Mic/Ike - Mic Normals need adjustments, and I also haven't looked at Ike in 20394814 years, so decide if I still like it. 

Dres - Adjust color saturation and add additional contrasts. 
Bop/Gilly - Decide if want to stick with unintended "twin" look. 

Jool - Wants full cloud set; will include bespoke flow maps, additional storms, and complex polar regions. 
Pol - Retexture lava flows, bring better consistency between on-surface and on-orbit looks. Dynamic ash plumes. 
Vall - Needs another redo - a little less of everything to smooth it out. Dynamic water vapor plumes
Tylo - Wants a redo - I can do the mountain ranges much cleaner. 
Lypso - Terrain needs to be darkened, need additional contrasts. May actually just get fully retextured. Happy with the colors, not so much with how plastic-y it ended up looking. 
Laythe - Full cloudset needed. Perma foggy oceans, polar vortices. Aurorae. 

Sarnus - Wants full cloud set, as per Jool. also need to look into intended Ring experiment; we may be able to achieve much better ring quality (like, absurdly  better) than is on offer by any mod, but need to test the theory. 
Hale/Ovok - These moonlets are perfect. No adjustments needed. 
Eeloo - Wants slightly less jacked normals, otherwise good to go. 
Slate - Brightened desert areas, larger polar regions. Skid mark region needs some contrasts added to blend it better.  South pole may need to be completely replaced if intended fix doesn't work out. 
Tekto - Darkened cloud set needed. Cloud textures to be remade in same style. 

Urlum - Cloud set per Jool and Sarnus. If Sarnus Ring experiment works, additional ring will be created for Urlum. 
Tal/Polta/Priax/Wal - These moons are good to go. 
Knut - Need to adjust for spikes. Too many of them. 

Neidon - Cloudset per other gas giants. May also receive a new ring. 
Thatmo - Wants dust set. 
Nissee - Should be set. 

Plock/Karen - Plock wants an atmo added, additional dust effects.  Both worlds may receive normal adjustments. 

 

Next stages after the EVE stage:
Biome, Parallax and Launch Site integration - I sourced a rather huge amount of different objects to use for scatters and have a pretty good grasp on how to make use of the new shaders, and integrating them will work best with launch site integration for Kerbin as I'll need to adjust things anyway. As I'll need Biomes this will be the time to do those as well. 

Other Mod Integration and Beta Testing - At this stage I'll be opening a Discord and inviting interested users to help me both test the mod and shake down bugs (mostly in terms of finding wonky terrain bugs as well as placing easter eggs.  This will be the time when I start generating compatible configs for the pack for all your standard mods. 

Edited November 22, 2022 by G'th

[MoeKitsune]

Kerbin looks absolutely beautiful! Are you gonna tackle Parallax scatter for OPM or are you just gonna do the clouds and such?

[G'th]

5 minutes ago, MoeKitsune said:

Kerbin looks absolutely beautiful! Are you gonna tackle Parallax scatter for OPM or are you just gonna do the clouds and such?

Eventually yes. All in good time. 

[Doc Shaftoe]

Well, I know what system overhaul I'll be using once you're done! Ad Astra was my favorite with JNSQ, but I've been using a stock system lately as an excuse to run the new parallax. Those shots of Kerbin look incredible and I can't wait to see what you come up with for the rest of the planets! 

[G'th]

Today I made the executive decision to completely replace the Mun with a moon of my own making; the stock Mun is just...nasty, and would be far too much of a pain. Even repainting it isn't going to save that swiss cheese looking...

anyway, today's efforts were spent slamming my head into Kopernicus to get the replacement working.  And we finally have a success (I used JNSQ's Mun as the baseline to have something to load in as I worked at the config, so now its just a matter of replacing the assets with my own), which means we can move on to actually creating it.  Incidentally, this will be the first planet that I have actually created entirely from scratch so this will be an interesting experience. 

 

[Space Kerbalisation Tech]

@G'th Great Mod! I know this is still a work in progress, but can you tell me the dependencies needed for ad astra (i.e. mods more than just eve and scatterer)? Will it support parallax? Thanks in advance and looking forward to the release. 

[G'th]

Other than EVE and Scatterer it will need Kopernicus and OPM. (Though i suppose itll be easy enough to make OPM an option) 

Parralax is a far future thing. One day.

[G'th]

Over todays frustrations this mod is now graduating to full on planet pack. I still plan on integrating OPM (because my philosophy of why redo what someone else has already done is still important, and ultimately also because I couldn't think of any names ), but fully replacing the stock system is looking to be a necessity.  So yipee, config work for me 

[G'th]

I learned an awful, awful lot of about Kopernicus today. Special thanks to @OhioBob for his totally badass help. 

This is an initial look at the new Mun, which is now my first successful attempt at a completely bespoke world in KSP. 

[G'th]

[MoeKitsune]

Very JNSQ-ish, I really like it!

EDIT: Saw you were thinking of redoing the stock system, and honestly I think that's probably a good idea as JNSQ's development is frozen I believe. Would you consider making a version of the system at JNSQ scale?

Edited October 15, 2022 by MoeKitsune

[G'th]

15 hours ago, MoeKitsune said:

Very JNSQ-ish, I really like it!

EDIT: Saw you were thinking of redoing the stock system, and honestly I think that's probably a good idea as JNSQ's development is frozen I believe. Would you consider making a version of the system at JNSQ scale?

Its kind of up in the air atm.  I want to be able to provide the mod at fully stock scale for those who want it (and even without OPM for those who want just better visuals for the stock system), but I also appreciate not having to rely on Sigma Dimensions as well. 

Most likely the mod will, as a base, be the stock system at stock scale, and then one can download and install patches to add my eventual take on OPM, and then another to scale the entire system stock+OPM, most likely to something resembling KSRSS. 

[Rutabaga22]

OMG a G'th visual for stock/OPM?! This will be awesome.

[G'th]

The new Mun seems to be in a pretty solid state, for now. The actual surface needs some love (i'm still learning the nuance in jacking up the settings so I'm getting some heckin crazy mountains lmao), but in scaled space we're in a pretty good spot. 

[G'th]

Next up on the docket, now that I've become a member of the Tangram cult, is to completely resurface Kerbin.  The idea is to keep to what the original looks like (Ie, mountains will be where you expect them to be, and the land masses will largely be unchanged), but with far greater detailed terrain. 

[G'th]

Ya know, when I first repainted Kerbin I basically didn't know what I was doing. I just jumped in head first and made the best thing I could. 

But now I've learned quite a lot. Here's the new Kerbin. 

Still needs some tweaks to bring out the details at high orbit, but its looking great so far.  Next steps are to figure out how to make the surface work in my favor. In resurfacing I did my best to maintain the same general height for the marked locations (Ie, stock launch sites and such), but some are still off, and I also haven't even looked at what everything else looks like thus far, so that will be fun. 

I'm particularly proud though of the ocean on this one, and will be stealing the relevant textures from myself for SOL

[Doc Shaftoe]

I don't think I've ever seen a better looking version of Kerbin.

 

[thunder175]

On 10/16/2022 at 11:16 AM, G'th said:

Its kind of up in the air atm.  I want to be able to provide the mod at fully stock scale for those who want it (and even without OPM for those who want just better visuals for the stock system), but I also appreciate not having to rely on Sigma Dimensions as well. 

Most likely the mod will, as a base, be the stock system at stock scale, and then one can download and install patches to add my eventual take on OPM, and then another to scale the entire system stock+OPM, most likely to something resembling KSRSS. 

JNSQ has the optional patches for 10x as well. Although honestly I would prefer and highly recommend a native 6.4x rescale mod to this. 6.4x is what I have personally used for years but of course using Sigma Dimensions. I'm kinda disappointed that 6.4x rescale has seemed to fallen out of favor over the years. 6.4x also enables the use of BDB since its built in Bluesmurff patch maxes out at 6.4x. Your excellent work on the stock planets in combination with the BDB parts pack would probably have me in tears of pure blissful joy...

Edited October 23, 2022 by thunder175

[G'th]

Further refinements. Better coastlines and no more random fake rivers lol. 

Not quite perfect, and I also jacked up the normals so that'll need some love. 

[rettter3]

5 hours ago, G'th said:

Further refinements. Better coastlines and no more random fake rivers lol. 

Not quite perfect, and I also jacked up the normals so that'll need some love. 

I don't know how you made this look so great, but it's absolutely awesome. I'm hyped and love your work

[G'th]

50 minutes ago, rettter3 said:

I don't know how you made this look so great, but it's absolutely awesome. I'm hyped and love your work

It will only get better

Perfectionism will do that. Plus, now that I've basically graduated to big boy planet modding I've basically entered the Matrix. 

[G'th]

How about a little crowd sourcing?  I didn't originally intend to end up resurfacing every world, but now that I'm fully dedicated to the Kool Aid, that's what we're gonna do, not just for the stock worlds but also for OPM (because lets face it, they old yo). 

The general intent is always going to be to retain the original idea of the bodies, and to simply improve on them dramatically.  So for instance, Laythe will still look like Laythe, but will have more interesting terrain and, in cases where its appropriate, will take cues from the real world that inspired it.  For instance, I already know I'm going to put a huge canyon on Duna to speak to the essence of the Mariner Valley, but I have a neat twist in mind to really sell it.  Ike of course is nothing like Mars' real moons, so my vision is an Ike that's missing part of itself...possibly it might even have a subtle ring of debris? :O  

And so on for the rest of the worlds. 

But, as good as my ideas often are, sometimes I get stumped, especially when its something weird, like Minmus. 

So I put it to my loyal like-clickers and passer by. What would you add to Minmus? Or any other world for that matter?  

My ideas thus far for Minmus are of course to retain the smooth, icy plateaus and plains (and to also make them reflective), and I think I want to squeeze in a cryovolcano somewhere, or at least something akin to one, given Minmus is supposed to just be a big old comet. I also think I'm going to introduce "younger" craters to the plains regions I end up creating, where a singular crater would crack the ice, so to speak, which would help break up the flat areas a bit, and I've actually sourced some really nice dunes to add to the plateaus for the same effect. 

But what else? Is there anything else? 

Shoot your shots. 

[Leganeski]

OPM Eeloo is currently cratered fairly evenly, but I think it might make more sense for it to have distinct leading and trailing hemispheres like a few of Saturn's moons.

[MoeKitsune]

I would like to see Dres given a big white crater like Ceres. Also maybe make it look less like a discount Ike, maybe taking inspiration from the tan and brown Ceres looked like through Hubble.

EDIT: Also for the OPM worlds, I would say that the one think I wouldn't change is Ovok since it's kinda supposed to be a featureless egg moon.

Edited October 25, 2022 by MoeKitsune

[Doc Shaftoe]

It'd be awesome if you could give Sarnus a hexagonal polar storm like Saturn's.