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

[G'th]

Ovok. Unironically my best creation so far, just for the sake of precisely recreating this little e g g in 2022. 

[Birdman31]

precious space egg

[rettter3]

Will you also be doing a 2.5x /2.7x Version? I absolutely love what you are doing and I would really like to exchange Jnsq with this mod (regarding, that Jnsq is basically complete/not being worked on anymore).

[G'th]

1 minute ago, rettter3 said:

Will you also be doing a 2.5x /2.7x Version? I absolutely love what you are doing and I would really like to exchange Jnsq with this mod (regarding, that Jnsq is basically complete/not being worked on anymore).

Its actually being built directly as a 2.5xish version. Its not exactly 2.5x and is more a mix between 2.5x and 2.7x.  I'm thinking the idea will be for people that want it at stock size that I can offer a patch that scales everything down. 

 

And here's Hale. Slightly different color palette on this one, but it looks nice for a little gob of gunk. 

 

[wasmic]

Wow, this looks absolutely stunning - and what a massive amount of work you've gotten done in such a short time! Really impressive.

I have a bit of critique too. The red bands on Sarnus are kinda bluish in tone, which - to my eyes - clashes with the warm, orange ochre-ish tone. I think they would be much easier on the eyes if you increased the lightness slightly and reduced the saturation a bit on both the red and yellow bands. That way you can also bring the yellow bands a bit further towards the first yellow again, rather than using the orange-salmon colour.

As for Eve and Duna, they both look absolutely amazing - much more realistic than the stock ones. However, I think they lose a bit of their "identity", so to say. I think Duna in particular would do well with having its hue adjusted slightly towards the red, making it closer to the stock planet in hue while keeping the more realistic lower saturation of the version you've made here. This would make it more reminiscent of its stock version, rather than just being Mars-coloured. Maybe also adjust Eve's clouds/atmosphere ever so slightly towards purple and away from blue; the current version looks more like a blue-grey planet with a purple and green tint, rather than a purple planet.

Ovok looks amazing, but I think Mun, Dres and Tylo must be the most beautiful among all the worlds you've made so far. Dres just got actually interesting!

Edited November 10, 2022 by wasmic

[G'th]

I agree on Sarnus and Eve; finetuning them gonna be a task to tackle for the EVE stage of things. Sarnus in particular carries that blue hue throughout because the actual planet itself underneath the clouds is solid blue. Thats still going to be a thing (it is for a very specific reason), its just going to be a matter of adjusting it so it looks the way it needs to. Jool ironically would have the same issue if it weren't for the fact that its a dull grey under its clouds, making it basically undetectable. 

As for Duna, its due for another redo, and yeah bringing it closer to the original hue is going to be part of the changes; part of the reason for the current tone was actually more to get Mars right rather than Duna right.

I think both it and Kerbins redos are gonna be on the docket today before I keep going with the OPM worlds. I think especially with the success of the two OPM remakes so far that my skills have advanced enough to where these will hopefully be the last redos I do for these worlds. I have (and had) a clear vision for what these worlds ougbt to be and I think now I can get closer to my mental image than I could have the last time I tried. 

And I don't think its a coincidence those three worlds in particular are your favorites. All three directly sample various parts of the highest resolution height maps Ive been able to find, those being Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and Ceres. 21k,41k,96k,and 21k respectively, to illustrate that. Working with that much data its pretty easy to see how the worlds that do the least to distort the original data end up looking fantastic.

Mun technically is all four worlds smashed together (in a very curated way), while Dres is a Mercury/Ceres kitbash, while Tylo was a Mars base with Ceres and Mercury brought in for additional details. 

[G'th]

What I hope to be the definitive final surface for Kerbin.  The atmosphere is definitely gonna need a lot of poking, prodding, and tweaking to really get right for what I want, but the surface is like, 99% perfect, and also 99% accurate to the original Kerbin .

[KerbalOnKerbin]

My gosh, that is absolutely stunning! Do you know what the performance overhead/minimum system requirements will be for this once it's out? Keep up the awesome work!

Edited November 11, 2022 by KerbalOnKerbin

[G'th]

1 hour ago, KerbalOnKerbin said:

My gosh, that is absolutely stunning! Do you know what the performance overhead/minimum system requirements will be for this once it's out? Keep up the awesome work!

Its mostly going to depend on two things. What texture resolution you opt for (all my stuff runs from 2k-16k), and whether or not you get Parallax.  If you opt out of Parallax and go for a lower resolution, then its basically no impact. 

If you go full send into 16k + Parallax, then it'll be pretty heavy, but not so heavy that the game is unplayable. 

[G'th]

First go at a "final" Duna. Ironically I nailed the terrain I was going for but now the color mapping is proving problematic. I got the violent iron oxide red I was going for (and managed to balance for it so that we have blue sunsets), but obviously the poles got washed out, and its a bit monochromatic for my tastes, which also ends up obscuring a lot of the details. So that will need some love. But we're getting there. 

And for reference to whats to come for Duna, among the various weirdo Mars things I'm going to emulate (because of course I am), I also plan on specifically tuning its eventual dust storms to be somewhat like this:



Obviously we aren't going to be able to have that dust get kicked up by speed racers or whatever these things are, but thats the sort of visual I want for the Dust storms.  Its Duna, so we can have fun with it

[Rutabaga22]

To make Duna less monochrome you could have some different minerals worked in there. Maybe add some oxidized copper, some cobalt blues.

My forums glitched for a sec there

Edited November 11, 2022 by Rutabaga22
To make Duna less monochrome you could have some different minerals worked in there. Maybe add some oxidized copper, some cobalt blues.

[G'th]

Added some additional contrasts. 

[G'th]

Threw out the old color map and started over.  Not entirely certain if I love this or hate it. 

 

[Rutabaga22]

7 hours ago, G'th said:

Threw out the old color map and started over.  Not entirely certain if I love this or hate it. 

 

Is that Mic I see?

[G'th]

7 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Is that Mic I see?

that is in fact Mic

[G'th]

New Pol.  Same general idea as the original, but much closer to OG Pol as well as Io. 

[Da Kerbal]

this stuff is amazing, i didn't even know this was possible! it looks like ksp3 not gonna lie. is it gonna be ported to ksp2 eventually?

[Doc Shaftoe]

Duna looks great! The second version is definitely a little too red. A rustier color might look good. Pol looks nice too, I'm loving the Io influence!

[wasmic]

16 hours ago, G'th said:

Threw out the old color map and started over.  Not entirely certain if I love this or hate it. 

 

I think the red in the canyons here looks rather unnatural. It feels too saturated. Too purely red. It feels more like a dark crimson than a red ochre. I liked the previous version more, actually - the red oxide colour, with some spots and streaks of yellow and black oxide.

It's really impressive how many different hues iron oxide is capable of taking on. Red, black, yellow, brown... even some surprisingly vivid oranges if you apply hydrated iron oxides onto a white base. Most artist's paint ranges have a lot of different iron oxide pigments available. Transparent and opaque, in various colours. They're usually very nice to work with, too.

I think that something that's mostly like this one: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/224860633525518347/1040710915177324574/screenshot3.png, but with some streaks of yellow ochre and dark areas reminiscent of this one: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/224860633525518347/1040826873954963537/screenshot10.png would be just perfect.

But damn, you're a machine. So many immensely pretty images. Jool is stunning. Pol will take some time to get used to, but I like it a lot too. I'm sure that whatever you do, it'll turn out lovely.

Edited November 12, 2022 by wasmic

[G'th]

I can definitely get behind some more color on Duna; I'm thinking we can introduce that in the cratered regions, as I think thats where a lot of it would show up, with some streaks depositing off in the plains. Most likely Not-Killimanjaro and Not-Mariner Valley will keep to their current colors though, as they represent real time resurfacing. 

 

And yeah, Pol is peculiar, given that both it and its inspiration Io are fundamentally just ugly little sulfur stained rocks. 

 

2 hours ago, Da Kerbal said:

this stuff is amazing, i didn't even know this was possible! it looks like ksp3 not gonna lie. is it gonna be ported to ksp2 eventually?

Hopefully. It'll depend on how planet making ends up on KSP2. Supposedly theres a lot more going on under the hood in that regard so we'll have to see.

Generally as long as I'm able to achieve everything I want to do with it that I can do now in KSP1, then it'll get ported. But until thats possible, I'll probably stick to KSP1.

[Da Kerbal]

1 hour ago, G'th said:

Hopefully. It'll depend on how planet making ends up on KSP2. Supposedly theres a lot more going on under the hood in that regard so we'll have to see.

Generally as long as I'm able to achieve everything I want to do with it that I can do now in KSP1, then it'll get ported. But until thats possible, I'll probably stick to KSP1.

good to know, thanks!

[G'th]

New Vall.  

Annnnd a neat little shot of the entire Jool system from Tylo (Pol is the tiny little dot to the right of Vall). 

[Probird_23]

Kinda liked the old Vall better, but this one also looks pretty neat!

[G'th]

Vall is proving to be a hard one to really nail down. I'm pretty satisfied for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get another redo in on it before the end. 

But in the meantime, I think I nailed the ever loving !#$*!#$ out of Eeloo. I wanted to keep closer to the stock Eeloo, but I also included some craters to speak to the OPM version of it (which just slaps randomized Voronoi craters over top the original, kinda weak)

 

[G'th]

Eeloo is just so great looking. Just keep outdoing myself.