Planet Animations

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:47 pm

If i wanted to make new planet animations for botf, what steps would I need to take and what format's can it be converted from? such as can I convert it from AVI, or would i need separate screenshots?

I have recently downloaded a program some of you may be familiar with, called Celestia, so far ive downloaded nearly 4 GB or addons, ranging from Romulus/Remus to Borg systems and stations.

Thanks for any help and instructions.

Tethys

Post by **thunderchero** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:56 pm

this would depend there are 2 types

1. shown in main screen: these are like gif files a series of images that can be created with UE but are very limited in size if images (all the same size).

2. shown in battle screen: this is controled by a hob file and uses a 2 gif files with 16 images on each gif.

hope this helps

thunderchero

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:45 pm

i will test my earth animation first, once its complete... hope this works... frames are same, size we wont kno til its done... update soon...

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:55 pm

it is not allowing me to "generate" the animation using 24 tga files... do they need to be smaller? currently rendered at 918 x 690 px

Post by **thunderchero** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:58 pm

lol 918 x 690 px that would take up entire screen.

thunderchero

edit; export one of each size small, med, large those would be max size of images

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:04 pm

ok i reduced the size down and its working so far...

116 x 116 animation lol... i think i should go smaller

Post by **thunderchero** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:08 pm

Tethys image sizes should be so they will fit on screen.

40x40 for large
24x24 med
16x16 small

this is why most do not even attempt to change them

thunderchero

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 2:39 pm

i am thinking about only having 2 sizes for animations, meaning that small planets would use medium animations, medium would use medium and large animations, and large would use large animations... but i will play around with this (reason being i dont like how the small planets look lol)

i will post my first animation when complete.

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 3:51 pm

working ingame animation of the new earth for Galaxies Mod... one of many new planets

: znooif.png (97.19 KiB) Viewed 7402 times

: 2vrtttx.png (97.52 KiB) Viewed 7402 times

: 2e21mx5.png (91.54 KiB) Viewed 7402 times

it is 48 frames long with 100 ms delay between frames (i think it was 100 might be 150)

what do you guys think?

Post by **Mentat** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:05 pm

Looks awesome Tethys, I am really looking forward to see more of those.

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:05 pm

ty Mentat... Mars and Venus are next on my list of to-do's... however I am contemplating whether or not to make them 24 frames such as the vanilla versions... resizing and resaving 48 images from jpg to png becomes a bit tedious after the first 10 frames... lol

edit: cool i found an open source bulk image converter so now no worries about resaving the files, just resizing them

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 8:50 pm

Here you go... Sol as it should have been... without Pluto

: jk97yd.png (92.66 KiB) Viewed 7401 times

all are working animations

Post by **Mentat** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 8:53 pm

Most excellent Tethys. I mean some may say this is cosmetic, ... I simply say, good work!

Post by **Tethys** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:09 pm

ty Mentat... notice I didnt change Mercury since i could not capture the needed screenshots to create an animation... i plan on releasing all new animations for all planets and stars, and perhaps even asteroid belts (if i can find a good addon for them on celestiamotherlode.com) for release with ST: Galaxies Mod... sizes may change but probably not

Post by **KrazeeXXL** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:17 pm

On a few places BotF definitely needs some cosmetics imo

And the planets really looked 10 years old. Good work Tethys! I really like it and would like to see more of it!