Sky sphere

[corthew]

I'm working on a sky sphere so we can eliminate the border at the horizon.

You probably don't want to look straight up but that is true even with the official sky images. At least the one's I've seen.
There are several sky images, (no I didn't do the images, I'm just doing the sphere but the images I'm including are free and I'll include that info in the addon).

What I need to know is how to make more than one image available from within MS for a prop. I know you can just change the image but then you have to browse to it don't you?

Its easier and will preserve the current mapping if you can select from a list.

Any help is appreciated.

I'm creating the sphere in Misfit. Do I need to do anything there to define the image options or is that all handled from within the Modders Workshop, and how is that done?

[Poulet Noir]

Hi corthew,

There are two ways you could do this, both of which take place in the modder's workshop rather than in Misfit.

In modder's workshop, once you've created your 'part' or 'template', you should hopefully* see a 'copy material' button below the materials listing. Click on that and it should copy your original 'material_name[0]' listing to 'material_name[0]_00' if you click on the new one, you should be able to change the texture file for your skydome and once saved/published/etc you'll be able to change the texture in Moviestorm by clicking on the dome in the set-building view.
*I say hopefully, as I've noticed that sometimes you don't get that option, but I haven't figured out why.

The other way to do this is to create differently textured skydomes as a 'parts'. Then when you click on the skydome you should get a pop-up menu to choose between them like you do with the primitives.

I hope that's clear enough!

[Ben_S]

If your prop is template based (initially, sketchup imports will start this way), then you would need multiple templates, each with a different texture for the diffuse map (and possibly the other maps).

If it is parts based (as Poulet Noir was sugesting), then you can either have multiple parts, or multiple material variations on a single part. You will need a single template that specifies which part to use as the default (create the template last).

The reason 'copy material' is not always an option is that if you are using a template based object, then one cannot have material variations, but one can have them for parts based objects, or for bodyparts.

[corthew]

Ok, a few issues I'm trying to work through.

First, I tried using the image sample files for each image because the actual images are extremely hi-res in the neighborhood of 10230x2600 or higher.

In misfit they looked fine but in MS they are blocky.

I tried one of the hi-res ones then in MS and it looks amazing but again. very high res.

The one I referenced above is over 2meg.

Is there a way to get the size down substantially without seriously sacrificing quality?
What would be an acceptable size for a sky image?

Second, is it possible to change the scale of the gizmo? the rotational parts are outside of the sphere and are very difficult to get to. If it could be at the center and about half the size or less, that would work better for this.

[Ben_S]

If you want to be able to reduce image size without sacrificing quality, then you can possibly repeat it over different parts of your mesh.

Using very high res images is going to result in something that works on good graphics cards with lots of memory, and possibly doesnt work on lower end graphics hardware. You might need to provide a warning if you distribute the addon with high res textures in it.

The existing sky textures in Moviestorm are 1024x256.


The gizmo scales with the object it is attached to. If you made your sky sphere scaleable, then you could scale it down prior to moving it with the gizmo.

[corthew]

If you want to be able to reduce image size without sacrificing quality, then you can possibly repeat it over different parts of your mesh.
Using very high res images is going to result in something that works on good graphics cards with lots of memory, and possibly doesnt work on lower end graphics hardware. You might need to provide a warning if you distribute the addon with high res textures in it.

They're too beautiful to chop into pieces.

I'll play around with different sized ones viewed from within MS and see what is acceptable loss and possibly release it with two sets of each image, one for low-res and one for high.

[lucindamc123]

I use SKY Dome Tutorial by Sketchycat from 3d Warehouse in Sketchup. This is a photo mapping tutorial so that one photo wraps around an entire prop. I have made several sky domes. You can also resize the image as the size you use in making props by photo mapping in Sketchup is 910 X 910. After I have made the prop and imported it into Moviestorm I resize the image to 256 X 256 and save it as a DDS file. There is no loss in quality. Using photo mapping is great. It allows you to paint even parts of a prop with a photograph. Here is a link to his tutorial.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/det...amp;prevstart=0


I use photographs to make all my props now when I can because they look much more realistic.

[corthew]

I use SKY Dome Tutorial by Sketchycat from 3d Warehouse in Sketchup.

Thanks Lucinda. I've got it looking nice. It goes around the entire terrain and extends down far enough that you don't see a border.

I just need to play around with lower quality images until I get something acceptable for both size and quality.

Just not enough hours in the day.

Its not something that needs to be added until the scene is ready to be rendered anyway but I still don't want adding that one thing to crash a low end system.

[lucindamc123]

the quality of the image does not decrease when you make the size smaller and change it to a DDS file. You can check that out on any of my models.

[corthew]

the quality of the image does not decrease when you make the size smaller and change it to a DDS file. You can check that out on any of my models.

It does if its being stretched the same amount.

Like this:

........
........
........
........

That has a resolution of 8x4.

If I change the resolution to 4x2 keeping the area it covers the same I get:

. . . .

. . . .

Lower quality.


I could make the sphere smaller of course but that would defeat the purpose.

[lucindamc123]

I haven't seen your sphere but when I use the photo mapping, the image does not stretch. I use a hi res image size of 910 X 910 and it paints the entire object. Another nice thing about photo mapping is that when I create the image and load it into a prop (the image is also a prop) and place it in front of the prop, like a panorama backdrop, it will paint the entire backdrop as one image. (not tiled) You can also resize the prop image to paint smaller items or parts of items. For instance I just created some sand bag walls that I need or Vautrin. The original props were very high poly. I painted them with my hi res sand bag image and then photographed the prop, front, sides and top and then I made those photos size 910 X 910 and made them into props. Copied the prop image into the sand bag wall prop and just placed it and rescaled it according to where I wanted the images. Since the image was created from a 3d Prop with an image on each sandbag, it still has the depth of the original model.

When I created the character props, I did the same thing for their skin, hair and clothing. I should do a video with my web cam so I can show you what I am talking about.

[kv]

Scaling an image really does affect it`s quality no matter what format you use, if you take a high resolution image and lay it on a model then shrink the size of the image later, the program you are using then has to stretch it out to fill the area, this means bigger pixels. This applies to video games to, notice if you load a game that has options for texture quality, you select the low quality and end up with the same texture image but poorer quality and not as sharp.

Resizing a texture is fine if you are tiling your texture on a model and originally use an excessive sized texture, of course that texture will not look as good if it was made say 128x128 as opposed to 512x512.

Take a look at most of Moviestorms default sky`s, most are blotchy and lacking any crisp detail.

[lucindamc123]

I am not getting any loss of quality when I reduce the size of my images and change them to DDS but that may be because I am using photo mapping through Sketchup.

[corthew]

I am not getting any loss of quality when I reduce the size of my images and change them to DDS but that may be because I am using photo mapping through Sketchup.

Unless your textures are tiled you're getting a loss of quality when you reduce the resolution. Resolution=quality of image.

You may not be noticing the loss but its there.

Either that or it may simply have been that the original resolution was too high to display fully on your computer. If you're displaying an image at 1080x720 fullscreen on a monitor that is 1080x720 then you're seeing the image at its true resolution.
If however you are displaying that same image on...say...a building wall that only takes up about a quarter of your screen then you are only actually displaying that image at 540x360 resolution. You would need to reduce its resolution below 540x360 to begin to see a degradation of quality.

So you may be right that reducing your image resolution doesn't reduce their quality but that may only mean their resolutions were too high to be displayed fully anyway.

[lucindamc123]

I have a 23 inch monitor set the the highest resolution and I just changed the image on one of my props that had a DDS Small image to the high resolution original jpg image and it looks exactly the same.

[corthew]

I have a 23 inch monitor set the the highest resolution and I just changed the image on one of my props that had a DDS Small image to the high resolution original jpg image and it looks exactly the same.

Here is an example of what we are talking about with resolution.



you may need to click the bar at the top of the image to open it separately to
see the whole thing.
The first image is 333x797 resolution.

The first half of the other two maintains that same resolution but of
course they are cut roughly in half vertically.

The middle image had the resolution of its right half reduced by half.

The last image had the resolution of the right half reduced by half then the
image was resized or stretched to match the left half in size.
But the resolution is still half that of the left side.

If you can see the difference in this but you're not seeing a difference when
you do the same thing on your computer you may have the image resolutions
too high to begin with.


Could you send an image of what you're seeing on your screen and could
I ask what resolution your monitor is set at and what the resolutions are
for one of your images before and after you change it?

[lucindamc123]

my screen resolution is 1920 X 1080. When I use an image for photo mapping, it is always 910 X 910 and then I change the size to 256 X 256 and save it as a DDS file. The reason the size is 910 X 910 is because that is the exact size you have to make your image to use the photo mapping with Sketchup. Why don't you try that tutorial and you will see what I mean.

[corthew]

When you're looking at the object its mapped to on
your screen, how much of your screen does the
object actually take up? A 256x256 image
displayed at its full resolution on a 1920x1080
screen will take up roughly the same amount of space
as the text in this message I'm typing is going to
take up when I'm done. If you were displaying a
910x910 image in that same space visually it
would look the same but you would actually only
be viewing 256x256 pixels because your graphics
card or the software it was being displayed in would
reduce its resolution automatically based on the
available pixels in that small area that could be
printed to. So to reduce its resolution manually
wouldn't change it from your perception but it
would save your computer a bit of work.

[corthew]

This message has been moved to a different topic.

[lucindamc123]

The original images I use are always very hi res so reducing them in size makes the resolution better. Haven't you noticed that with images? When you take a small image, like 256 X 256 and increase it in size, it is blurrier, but when you take a real hi res image and reduce it in size, the image is sharper.