You, sir, are absolutly insane.

In a good way.

Seriously.

How you did it all is simply mindboggling.

Coming up with a mod name is the hardest part.

It's not too confusing...

I'll be releasing planet system mods using the tools I've created.

I won't be releasing the tools.

There are a lot of neat and interesting fictional planet textures available. This mod attempts to make them available for Sins.

In regards to your other question, Sins can't dynamically generate systems during gameplay, so I'm pre-generating systems as separate mods. I'm also generating some planet textures myself and will build my own fictional system. I may combine the planet textures I like the most into one single mod down the road. If you like variety in planets then you might enjoy this. Either way, I'm creating this because I like seeing the different planets and plan to use some of them in my mod as well.

I have around 12 other systems picked out I'd like to convert already (13 if you count mine).

Awww crap, you beat me to it. 

I was also trying to come up with a way to easily switch planets between games to give more variety with less game load. Also added a good chunk to http://soase.weebly.com/add-planets.html

I made up some blocks to represent the sizes of the icon set required for planets. Now I can use this single image to determine how to lay out my new planets icon sheet. icons_planets_set.xcf is a Gimp project file for a single planets icons. Make sure both layers are on and the icons layer is selected. Line up a copy of each icon over the proper block. Turn off the yellow Background Layer and save as TGA.

 Some examples from Sins Plus

City	Forest	Grass

 See http://soase.weebly.com/new-planets.html for the rest of Sins Plus. This page is a WIP.

This shows a new 512 x 512 sheet will fit 12 sets of icons with little waste area. To add more than 12 create a sheet 512 x 1024 that will hold up to 24 icon sets or even 1024 x 1024 will hold 48 sets. I was thinking that multiple sheets of 12 sets might be a good way to switch the extra planets loaded. icons_planets_x12.xcf is a Gimp project file for 12 planets icon set. Make sure both layers are on and the icons layer is selected. Line up a copy of the icon set created above onto 1 of the 12 placements. Turn off the yellow Background Layer and save as TGA. I am hoping to have a collection of icon_planet_sets.tga so people can easily build there own icons_planets_m0d.tga sheets.

planets_m0d.brushes has all the brush locations for the 12 sets of icons. Just rename or match up the brush name with the planet entities brush links.

Also working on http://soase.weebly.com/planet-bonuses.html and a way to easily add your own choices to each planet.

I never thought about the undetected and mainview needing different sizes.

I did start on this before as I really didn't like the ticks that Celestial Bodies added so I should have remembered. Maybe each planet size should have its own set so the large PICTURE_PLANET brush image can be sized to suit.

EDIT:

Desert Giant
	1st attempt at resizing. The bottom 2 will need render shots from XSI but you get the idea.
Desert
Desert Dwarf
Desert Moon

I don't care for the ticks either... The different main view icons make it look much neater anyway.

I also like the picture sets you've got their for the different planet sizes (I may shamelessly use that )

I take projections from 3d-coat to make my icons...

Removed section due to redesign.

With Rendering in XSI I can use lights for great effect. I still need to test the Giant icons in-game as I don't want them to large, just noticeably larger.

I haven't been able to get 7DS's "DeadlyForge" anywhere and haven't had the time to hand create it but within it is a "supermassive black hole".   Neat concept (I know, it's a star).  Would be wonderful to see that done as well. 

Along the same line, supermassive Blue stars and red super giants would be great adds in the stellar models--all could use the same "extra large" mesh--and for the insanely creative it provides one more planet mesh to work with.

So I would love to see Red Super Giants, Blue Super Giants and Supermassive Singularities.

I'm also wondering if an invisible star could be made--one that is physically there but doesn't show in game.  A small, very low count one would be useful for creating no-pass zones in plasma storms and the like and using them to generate additional ranged effects from them.

i once was going to add a blackhole, then i read that blackholes were invisible, and though "wow, that would be boring as hell." and gave up.

No black hole is completely invisible.  They emit non-visible energy as they "evaporate" which gives off heat and that heat in turn excites gas near the singularity--as does it's magnetic field.  Also, matter is "falling" into a black hole at near the speed of light--dust makes quite a sparkle as it collides at that speed.

So a black hole would have at the very least a diffuse glow about it--even if it was simply a dusty grey slightly lighter than space.  Most black holes will have swirling clouds of glowing gas about them and some will be brighter than entire galaxies.

The large star sizes is what I am looking for--which would also make an interesting "superplanet".

Is there a way for texturers out there to make truly seamless textures for planets?  A tutorial might be nice for that aspect.

Nova's approach would be really nice for "artificial  worlds" or worlds with permanent, man-made  capturable structures about them.

I wish.  I don't do warez and I ain't got the cash to spring for it.

So MyFist0/Rus--what IS with the redundant textures he's talking about?

Basically they took something out of the fridge and didn't clean up the stain it left (yay analogy)

After re-reading the OP I was wondering how this script would work. I was hoping that my tutorial could be incorporated into a working planet mod but not sure if thats possible here.

I was thinking of having all the planet entities included but having a script that would load a new entity.manifest, brush.manifest and GalaxyScenarioDef. I did at one time make a UI that renamed files so have 4 or 5 files like

• GalaxyScenarioDef_SOL
• GalaxyScenarioDef_RIGEL
• GalaxyScenarioDef_TENORIAS

Each system would have its own brush file and planet_icons.tga with different brush.manifest for different systems.

Then upon picking the desired system the UI would rename the original GalaxyScenarioDef to GalaxyScenarioDef_ORG then rename the picked system to GalaxyScenarioDef then do the same for the brush.manifest and entity.manifest. Almost instant new planets without loading all the assets from all the planets.

I updated post 5 with different size icon templates and corresponding brush files

Click the planet to jump to the weebly page. Download includes the Dwarf, Standard and Giant mesh, icons, textures and XSI scenes. This page will act as a template for other planets as I add them. Images and icons are from 3d renders.

Should I start a new thread, post on different page or keep bumping this thread.

Crap I forgot the GF icons.