Topic: Photoshop tutorials for making planets and stars

[contingencyplan]

Figure the arteests of the group could appreciate this. Came across it on SomethingAwful. Here ya go - two Photoshop tutorials, one for making star fields, and one for making planets.

Starfield
Planets

Now, let's see what y'all can do with it!

[Recon]

 Hmm, is it just me or are the links missing ?

[contingencyplan]

Yes, it's just you.

* contingencyplan waves hand

- I did not edit my original post... I did not edit my original post...

Ah, forget it - here ya go:

Starfield
Planets

Okay, NOW let's see what y'all can do with it!

[Morgul]

Well, 20 minutes created what you see below. Not very good, and if I spent more time on it, it would look better. Eh, it does work though.

[Morgul]

Here's my first try at a planet. Keep in mind, this is all done with gimp, not photoshop,so half the tools I need are missing.

[Morgul]

Here's a planet done in Photoshop in about 3 minutes.

[Morgul]

... and here's a nice starfield done in Photoshop.

[Morgul]

...and now, here is the final product. (With and without logo.)

[contingencyplan]

So is this just some random planet, or does it have a backstory?

I vote backstory if you're gonna associate it directly with the game via the logo.

[Morgul]

Oh, I could invent a backstory if I wanted to. In fact, this seemes like the perfect candidate for a planet on the edge of NorAellian space. This particular planet is quarantined by the NorAellians, who are so scared of it, they won't even tell anyone it'd name. Something very bad was discovered here long long ago, and though they won't tell the story, rumors are that this is the planet where some of the first spacefaring NorAellians and GikDaa discovered something linked to the Overseers... and well, it either destroyed them, changed them, or both.

(Yes, I personally know the entire story. It will be featured in the Comic, I assure you.)

--Chris

[Caenus]

SNAP!!  I haven't even looked at the tutorials yet.  I'm gonna have to play with it. 

Right now, I'm having too much fun in Ancient Greece. 

If you don't get that, check my art blog: http://www.keithart.blogspot.com

[Morgul]

Did some more work, and I made a 1400x1050 desktop background out of it.

Whatcha think?

[contingencyplan]

Kickass - set it as my desktop.

Deviantart's Science Fiction section has a lot of good ones like this too; that's where I usually go for new wallpapers.

Ugh, first post after my Ninja Gaiden marathon. The keyboard feels weird now. Damn good game, though (just frustrating as all fucking hell at points).

[ryguy_1617]

First, a 20 minute work from this tutorial and last, an original work from before this tutorial that I did -- I felt like posting since it has to do with stars.

[contingencyplan]

The first is cool, but the last is kickass. Two thumbs up on both!

[whitelynx]

I really like a lot of the work that came out of this thread... what I'd like to see is someone doing some new skybox art for the game using these techniques. When doing skybox art, there's a few things to keep in mind:

• There should be 6 individual square images, each representing one side of the cube. (i'd suggest 512x512 or 1024x1024 as the size of each image)
• Each image has to line up with the images that border on it; we don't want nebulas that suddenly cut off at the edges of the cube. (keep in mind, you're creating images for the inside of the cube, so make sure they line up right)
• Stuff at the edges of each image is going to take up less screen space than in the middle, since it is further from the camera and tilted away from it; therefore, stuff in the corners should be "stretched" a bit to make up for the strangeness in perspective. (you can try doing a "pinch" on the finished images, and it might have the desired effect. The image at the bottom of this post is an example of that.)
• Don't make it overly flashy; space may be full of interesting things, but that doesn't mean that there's alway 30 psychedelic-colored nebulas with weird shapes visible from any given point. Something along the lines of ryguy's first image would be great for a skybox.

Think you guys can come up with something? If so, it'll probably make it into the game's test levels. ;D

[Recon]

well, I did a little bit of work on this



http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/1448/screenshotwd9.png

still got a few issues, The stars are generated from the star catalog and draw each frame. The stars are currently rendered last due to a bug with taking screen shots while window was resizing. Will have to ask jorrit if anything has been done about that. I had this working the right ( stars in background) but had that bug crashing app, will have to see if it's a CS bug or somthing i was doing.

Unfortunitly I dont have as much time as I used to code so things going much slower. I need to make this star thing it's own plugin as it currently in the same plugin as stargen which is GPL (Used that pluging as it already loaded the star catalog). and need to work out how to use effects to sharpen and blur the image to make it look better. but it's a start on a dymanic star's.

Basicly it just draws a point for each star on the screen. Things to add
 
   Different colours for different star types
   Different brightness different luminisoties
   Taking faraway stars, drawing them and then bluring them to give shades of space

Comments welcome, is this the direction we want to go with skybox?

Regards