Discussing Planet SEAM Removal .Tips Welcome

from Sins Forums
Ok There was A previous post about planet textures. where we discussed how to use polar coords filter in photoshop to remove the seams from our textures. I tried this and i believe I missed something


[img=http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/5082/planetvolcanic02clforumcg7.jpg]



so I shave the strips off the top and bottom of the main planet bottom.

Exactly how big of strips ? since I am trying to make textures. where I can Actually put detail on these merging areas. I gotta get as close to aligned as posible , Is there A certain size these strips should be?


I pretty much understand the whole copying the middle section ,pasting to a new layer then using polar coords filter to get the donut, Again is there some trick to aligning this donut?

and also do I need a copy of this donut on the southern pole also?

And finally ,after I get all that straightened out then i assume I am gonna need to blend the encircled area'of the pic ?
What is the best way to do that,preserving the terrain as much as possible?


As an aside the night side maps,what amout of opacity should i be using?





modding
10,794 views 14 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
This is such a complex process, that the best way to work it out, is to keep trying. I would need to write a very large tutorial in order to make something like this clear. But the one tip I can give, and have given to many others before; Use the Vanilla Textures to see where and how it aligns. One of the Desert textures has good polar areas where you can see where the 'Pole' ends and the unread section begins.

For the Night Side, what? It should be pretty much 90-95% black, with city lights showing over the blackness.

While I'm here though, you should really have a go at making your own city lights on the night side. They are not hard to do, and I think they are the best part of making a texture. Give them a glow, make them strange and crazy colours (I usually use yellow, but am experimenting with other colours now), wrap them round coast lines, at mouths of rivers, places where you would expect to see a city, not in a random places with no rhyme or rhythm.

Any way, good luck, and keep at it ;)
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
You can find tutorials for proper tiling on the intarwebz.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I've been running into this problem with my latest texture. The seams were still there, even after I had fixed the texture so that it aligned perfectly. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that the original Sins textures don't correspond perfectly with the UVW mapping on the planet meshes. When I get home from work tonight, I'm going to load up several of the mesh files in 3ds Max and unwrap the mapping coordinates. Hopefully that will show me exactly where the seams are on the texture itself.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Yea I am to the point where I am going to make A planet template in a grid with numbers big enough to see actually rendered,. then just see exactly where it all lines up ;} once i do that i can just connect the lines on a new image and use it as a kinda transparent layer to guid me while i work these areas.

hopefully this will finally rid me of this problem
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
ok, well, first off, sins uses it's own sphere models. With this comes it's own custom UV's. Sins models don't have a seem that runs to it's poles, we have caps.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
We painted the seams out in a 3d painting package
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Haha, Pmutzu, I've actually done what you're talking about more or less (the grid). I've come insanely close to getting the poles to align, but still seams. I'm going to keep at it though...
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Anyone know why this games uses these cross shaped textures?

Reccomend some program that could view A mesh.?

or anyone know what its size is? (mesh:triangles.polygons)so i could maybe build my own to work with in blender


I can make seamless ,tileable textures. but I want more detail .
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Hi Pmutzu, we do it this way to prevent texture distortion.  Our original method was a single square area stretched mapped to a sphere, and as you can imagine it look horrible on the poles.  The cap method prevented the puckering and made the seams easier to deal with.  
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Whats this? A dev posting in the Modding forum, my eyes must be deceiving me :P :d ;)
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top





what I would like to do is to be able to create a sphere. in say (blender) then just apply my texture to it and remove the seams. but unfortunatly blender seems to wrap it and pinch the poles ,instead of the cross method.I am trying to find some outside method (not in sins )to wrap a texture the cross way.or what do you call that way anyhow?
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Ok I been rooting around on the web. and came across this page, It discusses the various ways of applying spherical textures .


WWW Link

Now of those listed, I cannot seem to find the method that sins uses. At first I thought it was the cube method .

Then again omnitect method is probably the method they use.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I am trying to find some outside method (not in sins )to wrap a texture the cross way.or what do you call that way anyhow?
End of quote


You'd need to manually UV map it I'd imagine. With the sins planet textures, the central 'band' is wrapped around the middle of the planet. This leaves the poles unpainted. For those, a circle is cut from the upper and lower sections of the texture and painted on, so that the textures don't end up all distorted as Craig mentioned. So rather than having a pole-to-pole longitudinal seam with ugly pinching, there is a seam around the arctic circle, a seam around the antarctic circle, and one along the meridian between the circles.