[1.2.1] Outer Planets Mod (2.1) - Active development has moved, see first post for new thread

[Garbonzo]

2 hours ago, The White Guardian said:

Hmm... First of all, space engine textures are not horrible. It depends on the exported planet or moon. Textures from a procedural planet do not look stockalike, indeed, however textures that have been exported from hand-crafted planets look a lot more stockalike. It is, however, not optimal, and it requires a lot of S.E. knowledge as well as computer knowledge or money: exporting 4K textures needs a decent GPU, otherwise you'll need to edit your computer's settings and wait a long time. What is true about the S.E. textures though is the qualilty: heightmaps often aren't good enough for good coastlines, and normal maps often have very little effect. Therefor, when I use textures from S.E. I often recolor it in GIMP as well as create the normal maps using GIMP, not S.E.

However, for people who are new to Kopernicus modding, I do advise using S.E. since it tackles the texture problem without having to understand advanced Kopernicus stuff like fully procuedural planets. Posting the planet pack is something completely diffrent though, that is not a good idea. However, tackling the lack of textures through S.E. allows new modders to skip the texture issue and head on to the basics of making a planet with Kopernicus: a simple, templated body with custom scaledspace and some basic PQS mods like VertexHeightMap, which can then be improved to look stockalike.

Also, getting S.E. textures to work is actually really easy. Just export the textures as .png, load them up in GIMP, and:

- Export the Planet_color as a .DDS file with the DXT5 compression

- Export the Planet_height as a .DDS file with the DXT1 compression

- Export the Planet_normal as a .DDS file with the DXT5_nm compression

GIMP cannot export as .dds by default, but there is an excellent .dds plugin that also adds DXT5_nm

The problem with SpaceEngine is that it is too easy: people might rely on it too heavily and flood the forums with Kopernicus addons that are basically planets ripped from S.E. and dumped into KSP, which is not what Kopernicus is for. If we would want to see S.E. planets, we'd just install S.E. which is why the only textures I often use from S.E. are the color and heightmaps, which are then recolored and edited, and a normal map is generated afterwards. The result is a planet that doesn't look like it came from S.E. but instead looks more KSP-like.

 

Conclusion: feel free to use S.E. as long as you don't rely on it too heavily and, if possible, do not use S.E. textures when you put something online, unless the textures have been edited to look stockalike. Kopernicus wasn't made so that people could start pulling planets from S.E. then dumping them in KSP, and flooding the forums with S.E. planets. While it is harder, making your own textures or coding a procedural planet results in a better pack, and packs that don't use S.E. textures are appreciated more. Using S.E. textures for educational purposes is fine, but making packs full of S.E. textures is something completely different and should be avoided.

Okay. Thank you for the tips! If I were to go about making my planets without S.E. How would I go about it? What do I need to know or learn and how do I make a custom texture?

[KillAshley]

9 hours ago, The White Guardian said:

*snip*

i know you use it, however how you use it and other people use it are two very different things. Usually people just find a random planet and export it, which is why i always tell people not to do so. No offense was meant dude, however having a million generic SE packs is a nightmare for Thomas and myself. So yes if they are heavily edited then they can be good, but most people don't do that unfortunately

Thanks for the good write up for him dude.

6 hours ago, Garbonzo said:

Okay. Thank you for the tips! If I were to go about making my planets without S.E. How would I go about it? What do I need to know or learn and how do I make a custom texture?

why dont we move this over to the kopernicus thread instead of spamming this one

[The White Guardian]

3 hours ago, KillAshley said:

i know you use it, however how you use it and other people use it are two very different things. Usually people just find a random planet and export it, which is why i always tell people not to do so. No offense was meant dude, however having a million generic SE packs is a nightmare for Thomas and myself. So yes if they are heavily edited then they can be good, but most people don't do that unfortunately

Thanks for the good write up for him dude.

No offense was taken either. Indeed, simply taking planets from SpaceEngine is a nightmare to Kopernicus and creativity altogether: in the end, if you use textures from a pre-generated planet, it isn't truly your work, is it? It's much more rewarding to build a planet yourself, and see Kopernicus bring your idea to life rather than re-creating an old idea. So yes, a million S.E. packs is a nightmare to me too.

 

And about the write up: happy to help.

[The White Guardian]

10 hours ago, Garbonzo said:

Okay. Thank you for the tips! If I were to go about making my planets without S.E. How would I go about it? What do I need to know or learn and how do I make a custom texture?

Hmm... I agree with KillAshley that we should move this conversation to the Kopernicus thread rather than the OPM thread, since this falls under Kopernicus and not OPM.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/103277-105-kopernicus-beta-06-december-28/

This is the link to the Kopernicus thread. Please ask further questions about Kopernicus there. To answer your question: firstly, you map needs to be a certain size depending on the type of planet you are making.

Small bodies (Gilly-Pol sized): 1K color & heightmaps, 2K normalmap.

Gas giants: 1K colormap. Optionally 2K normalmap.

Large planets (Ike-Tylo sized): 2K color & heightmaps, 4K normalmap

Oceanic planets: 4K textures

For your information, 1K means 1024 pixels wide, 512 pixels tall; 2K means 2048 by 1024 pixels and 4K means 4096 by 2048 pixels.

The only things you really need to keep in mind are that the left and right ends of your map need to line up perfectly, and something trickier: there needs to be a special blend effect at the poles. As for the blend effect, I have no idea how to do that. So, if you're going to make custom textures, I advise using a flat normal map as well as a basic color map (simply the paintbucket in Paint) then using the PQS mod VertexPlanet to create a planet. Next, use Kittopia to export the textures for ScaledSpace.

Again, for further questions, please go to the Kopernicus thread.

[Garbonzo]

5 hours ago, The White Guardian said:

Hmm... I agree with KillAshley that we should move this conversation to the Kopernicus thread rather than the OPM thread, since this falls under Kopernicus and not OPM.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/103277-105-kopernicus-beta-06-december-28/

This is the link to the Kopernicus thread. Please ask further questions about Kopernicus there. To answer your question: firstly, you map needs to be a certain size depending on the type of planet you are making.

Small bodies (Gilly-Pol sized): 1K color & heightmaps, 2K normalmap.

Gas giants: 1K colormap. Optionally 2K normalmap.

Large planets (Ike-Tylo sized): 2K color & heightmaps, 4K normalmap

Oceanic planets: 4K textures

For your information, 1K means 1024 pixels wide, 512 pixels tall; 2K means 2048 by 1024 pixels and 4K means 4096 by 2048 pixels.

The only things you really need to keep in mind are that the left and right ends of your map need to line up perfectly, and something trickier: there needs to be a special blend effect at the poles. As for the blend effect, I have no idea how to do that. So, if you're going to make custom textures, I advise using a flat normal map as well as a basic color map (simply the paintbucket in Paint) then using the PQS mod VertexPlanet to create a planet. Next, use Kittopia to export the textures for ScaledSpace.

Again, for further questions, please go to the Kopernicus thread.

 

9 hours ago, KillAshley said:

i know you use it, however how you use it and other people use it are two very different things. Usually people just find a random planet and export it, which is why i always tell people not to do so. No offense was meant dude, however having a million generic SE packs is a nightmare for Thomas and myself. So yes if they are heavily edited then they can be good, but most people don't do that unfortunately

Thanks for the good write up for him dude.

why dont we move this over to the kopernicus thread instead of spamming this one

Okay. Thank you for all everything, this gives me a lot more information for using kopernicus. Yeah, Im sorry for filling up the OPM thread. And I didn't know that so many people just throw out S.E. packs, so I definitely will try to learn textures without just slapping an S.E. texture on everything.

 

[Jodo42]

An updated 64k config including the Plock/Karen system would be greatly appreciated.

[Zekario]

Does Sarnus' moon Hale have a real-life counterpart?

Edited December 31, 2015 by Zekario

[Jodo42]

43 minutes ago, Zekario said:

Does Sarnus' moon Hale have a real-life counterpart?

It's somewhat like Saturn's moon Prometheus.

[Sigma88]

5 hours ago, Jodo42 said:

An updated 64k config including the Plock/Karen system would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure what 64k actually changes, if it's just a matter of rescaling bodies you could try using my new mod (Dimensions).

it's still a work in progress, so backup everything before installing

Edited January 1, 2016 by Sigma88

[Jodo42]

@CaptRobau issue resolved. Turned out to be unrelated to OPM.

Edited January 3, 2016 by Jodo42

[SkyKaptn]

Here are a couple of images of Sarnus. The rings are wrapped behind the planet (or the planet is not obstructed from the ring system) I get this both in tracking station and also being there in person. Running stock OPM and openGL. Is there something more to do than just copy/paste OPM to gamedata?

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1046&authkey=!AEruG55imdsSbSg&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1045&authkey=!APIo3b-aeY3oDH4&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

Edited January 1, 2016 by SkyKaptn

[tychochallenge]

4 hours ago, SkyKaptn said:

Here are a couple of images of Sarnus. The rings are wrapped behind the planet (or the planet is not obstructed from the ring system) I get this both in tracking station and also being there in person. Running stock OPM and openGL. Is there something more to do than just copy/paste OPM to gamedata?

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1046&authkey=!AEruG55imdsSbSg&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1045&authkey=!APIo3b-aeY3oDH4&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

I'm getting the same problem too

[CaptRobau]

Could you both share a screenshot of your GameData folder as well as specs of your PC (OS, etc.) 

[SkyKaptn]

5 hours ago, CaptRobau said:

Could you both share a screenshot of your GameData folder as well as specs of your PC (OS, etc.) 

i7 4790K @4GHz, geforce 980 running openGL. Win10

Gamedata folder. ModuleManager at the bottom, did not fit screenshot:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1051&authkey=!AHrd5YNqe__3kGQ&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

Edited January 2, 2016 by SkyKaptn

[Proteus]

bugged anomaly-easter egg?

Spoiler

i went to slate,and found this "cave" or some kind of structure that looks like a water cave,is this supposed to be some kind of reminder that there was oceans/lakes on salte once?

and here the thing,i think the anomaly is buged,because the structure is at least 300 -500 meter about the ground, "hovering" if you can say that..

 

[Sigma88]

10 minutes ago, Proteus said:

bugged anomaly-easter egg?

  Hide contents

i went to slate,and found this "cave" or some kind of structure that looks like a water cave,is this supposed to be some kind of reminder that there was oceans/lakes on salte once?

and here the thing,i think the anomaly is buged,because the structure is at least 300 -500 meter about the ground, "hovering" if you can say that..

 

spoilers

Spoiler

if it looks something like this it's probably the tylo cave. since slate uses tylo as a template, every tylo easter egg will be found on slate as well

 

[CaptRobau]

Yeah that's the reason. When I do a round of polish on all of the old bodies in the future, I'll be sure to fix small oversights like these.

[The White Guardian]

3 hours ago, CaptRobau said:

Yeah that's the reason. When I do a round of polish on all of the old bodies in the future, I'll be sure to fix small oversights like these.

Perhaps using a template that has no easter eggs, such as Dres or Eeloo, will fix the issue? (Note: as far as I know Dres, Laythe, Eeloo, Minmus, Eve, Gilly and Pol have no easter eggs. Ike perhaps as well, since 'the boulder' hasn't been seen for a long time now.

[Sigma88]

7 minutes ago, The White Guardian said:

Perhaps using a template that has no easter eggs, such as Dres or Eeloo, will fix the issue? (Note: as far as I know Dres, Laythe, Eeloo, Minmus, Eve, Gilly and Pol have no easter eggs. Ike perhaps as well, since 'the boulder' hasn't been seen for a long time now.

it would be enough to add this to the planet's Body:

Template
{
name = whatever
removePQSMods = PQSCity
}

or something along the lines of that

 

also, @CaptRobau I noticed that you are using an outdated SigmaBinary template, if you are planning to release a 1.9.2 in the near future, make sure to update that

(I've already pinged you in another thread with this, I'm posting it here also because I'm not sure you have notifications on)

Edited January 3, 2016 by Sigma88

[CaptRobau]

Saw it and I knew that PQSCity will do the trick. The first will come in 1.9.2, the second will be taken into account for 2.0

[ProtoJeb21]

I, unfortunately, have some bugs to report involving Slate. I sent a huge multi-part vessel (put together with help from Hyper Edit) to Slate, and when I got into its SOI I couldn't click on parts of my orbit. Later, when I went back on KSP to continue my mission, I undocked the Miner Lander Terra from the main vessel to collect ore from Slate's north pole. But when I started my decent and went into map view, all the orbits were gone! After pressing "Tab" like 2,000,000 times, I focused on my vessel and tried to go back to flight mode. I, instead, was focused onto Slate. I exited to the KSC and went to load the lander via the tracking station. The orbits were back, but in the corner with the active vessels and tracked asteroids was...nothing! I could not focus on Terra no matter what I tried, and I also couldn't exit the tracking station! I had to force log-off of KSP because of that. CaptRobau, has this happened before with other versions? And is their a way to fix it? (BTW: I'm using version 1.9.1 of OPM and version 0.6.3 of Kopernicus alongside Interstellar Adventure Revived.)

[SkyKaptn]

On 1.1.2016 at 9:30 PM, SkyKaptn said:

Here are a couple of images of Sarnus. The rings are wrapped behind the planet (or the planet is not obstructed from the ring system) I get this both in tracking station and also being there in person. Running stock OPM and openGL. Is there something more to do than just copy/paste OPM to gamedata?

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1046&authkey=!AEruG55imdsSbSg&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=B4AFFF9E93C1F333!1045&authkey=!APIo3b-aeY3oDH4&v=3&ithint=photo%2cpng

Found out what was causing this. After removing visual mods 1 by 1 it was clear that Scatterer was the culprit. I will post in that thread.

[CaptRobau]

Thanks, I'll put that in the OPM OP too

[1of6Billion]

Call me a N00b, but I can't seem to get this puppy going.

Installed this pack and Kopernicus like described in the OP, but no cigar.

 

Did I miss something?

Edited January 5, 2016 by 1of6Billion

[CaptRobau]

A screenshot of your GameData might help me, as would mentioning your version of KSP.