A brief How-To for Virtual Textures


Contents

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0.0 Introduction.

    Celestia's Virtual Texture (VT) is a way to simulate a gigantic TeraByte surface map image by using much smaller images. This Web page describes two different ways to make a VT work: one drastically simplified, and one that's "full function".

    You don't have to read all the sidebars.

Sidebar 0
I've made this "How-To" for Virtual Textures as brief as I can. I like to read and I like to write. Using VTs depends on lots of details in the many features that Celestia provides. As a result of these three influences, my description of VTs in the Textures document is long and complicated. Many people would rather not read about all of the variations: they want a quick and short introduction.

This is my attempt at providing brief descriptions of two different approaches to Virtual Textures: one that's minimal and one that's more complex.

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1.0 A Minimal VT Addon Framework.

    This Addon only shows you how to use a single hires virtual testure for the Earth. If you want more, you'll have to do a little work: Read on.

Sidebar 1.0

A Virtual Texture is specified by

  • a Texture declaration specifying the image file name
  • a .ctx file taking the place of a JPG or PNG image (the CTX file is in an appropriate textures subdirectory),
  • a directory for this VT containing level directories,
  • up to 13 level directories containing all of the tiles (small images) that make up the Virtual Texture image.
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1.1 A VT Addon Framework.

  • MinimumVTFramework.zip (4KB, 4Mar07)

    This Zip archive contains a minimum VT structure: a CTX file to define the Earth's VT and Level sub-folders to contain the tiles used to draw it.

    To use this framework, first download the Zip file above. Then "explore" in it to find the files listed below. "Extract all files" won't do the right thing.

    1. Copy the file earth.ctx into the folder Celestia/textures/hires
    2. Copy the folder earth-levels and all of its contents (folders named level0 to level12 -- level zero through level twelve) into the folder Celestia/textures/hires
    3. Copy the tiles from the Virtual Texture Addon of your choice into the framework's folders level0 through level12
    4. Run Celestia
    5. Type Capital-R several times
    6. Enjoy the view!

    Note: Celestia v1.6 will replace the keyboard shortcuts "r" and "R" by selections in the Render menu.

Sidebar 1.1
Too many Addon authors have provided VTs consisting of Levels but with no way to use thim. This document describes a way for you to enjoy those orphaned virtual surface textures.

This VT defines only a structure for a virtual high resolution surface texture image for the Earth. It allows you to augment the Earth image that Celestia provides by using your own or someone else's Level tiles.

This framework can be modified to apply to other planets or to provide additional enhancements to the Earth's image. You'll have to give the CTX file a different name (e.g. mars.ctx or earthnight.ctx), you'll have to edit the CTX file itself so it points to a corresponding directory of levels, and you'll have to provide that directory of levels.

Please take the time to peruse the readme file that's included in the .zip archive.

  1. The .ctx file describes the structure of the Virtual Texture. Like a JPG, PNG or DDS image file, it needs to be in one of the textures subeirctories.

  2. The folder earth-levels contains many sub-folders. They're named level0 through level12. Make sure they stay inside the folder earth-levels. They should not appear within the hires folder itself.

  3. This Framework does not contain any images. If you try to use it without providing the necessary images, the Earth will look quite strange. You can find Virtual Textures for the Earth (and Mars) on the MotherLode.

    You do not have to populate all of the level sub-folders. Only the very first one, level0 must contain files. If you want, you can leave all of the others empty, or you can populate some of them with just a few images of your favorite regions on the planet.

  4. When Celestia starts, it automatically takes you to the Earth.

  5. Typing a Capital-R (R) several times tells Celestia to display its higher resolution surface texture images (lores -> medres -> hires), so you can view the Virtual Texture you've just installed. Typing a lower-case-r (r) several times tells Celestia to display its lower resolution surface texture images (hires -> medres -> lores), so you can compare them with the Virtual Texture you've just installed.
Note: Celestia v1.6 will replace the keyboard shortcuts "r" and "R" by selections in the Render menu.
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1.2 Required Components of a Minimal VT.

    A drastically simplified Virtual Texture (VT) consists of
    1. Giving the VT the same name as the Texture that Celestia is looking for.
    2. Placing the VT in Celestia's hires folder /textures/hires
    3. Providing a CTX file to define the VT's virtual image
    4. Providing several Levels of tiles for improved closeup quality

    The MinimumFramework Addon above provides all but the tiles.

Sidebar 1.2
This VT structure provides a virtual CTX image named earth.ctx As a result, it improves only the base surface coloration of the Earth when you type the capital-R command.

This minimal VT does not necessarily provide improved specular reflections. It does not improve night lights or mountain shadows.

If you happen to provide level tiles which include an alpha channel, that alpha channel will be used for specularity. For more information about alpha channels and specularity, see the Textures document.

You can improve the night lights by providing a separate VT named earthnight.ctx with its own tree of levels named earthnight-levels.

To add shadowing for the Earth's mountains and valleys, you have to provide a different SSC catalog. See section 2 below.

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1.3 Minimum Framework Details.

  1. The name: Celestia's solarsys.ssc specifies
    Texture "earth.*"
    so the Virtual Texture .CTX must be named earth.ctx

  2. The location: Celestia looks in its textures subfolders medres, lores and hires for surface texture images. hires is empty: put the VT's CTX and its levels there.

  3. The VT's CTX file defines the levels and tiles that compose the Virtual Texture. See textures.html#2.5.2.

  4. Each progressivly higher numbered level folder contains tiles to be used for progressively higher resolution surface textures:
    • level0 must contain 2 tiles: the eastern and western hemispheres.
    • level1 can contains as many as 8 tiles: the eastern and western hemispheres, each split into 4 equal quadrants: two north of the equator and two south of the equator.
    • etc.

    If you use this framework, you must copy the tiles from the Virtual Texture Addon of your choice into the Level folders.

Sidebar 1.3

  1. Celestia's solarsys.ssc catalog uses wildcards (.*) to specify the filetypes of the Textures that it wants. Celestia recognizes four different image file types: .CTX (virtual textures), PNG (Portable Network Graphics images), JPG (JPEG compressed images) and DDS (Direct Draw Surface texture images).

    By using the same name that Celestia wants, you don't have to create your own SSC catalog to tell Celestia the name of the Virtual Texture.

  2. Celestia assumes that the textures subfolders lores, medres and hires contain progressively higher resolution surface texture images. Because of their size, no hires textures are included with Celestia. They're only available as Addons.

    Celestia's keyboard commands lower-case-r and Capital-R let you select images from among these three folders. "r" selects lower resolution folders. "R" steps to the higher resolution folders. Celestia v1.6 will replace the keyboard shortcuts "r" and "R" by selections in the Render menu.

  3. The details of the declarations used in a CTX file are too complicated to include here. Please read textures.html.

  4. Detailed descriptions of the sizes and names of the tiles are in textures.html. That document also provdes links to tools that can be used to create the appropriate small tiles out of the individual gigantic images that these Virtual Textures replace.

    The major advantage of VTs is that the various levels don't have to be fully populated, which saves a lot of disk space. Only level 0 has to contain tiles. The other, higher resolution, levels must be present but can be empty. You can provide just one or two tiles in the final and highest resolution level folder, level12

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2.0 A Full Function VT Addon Framework.

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2.1 A VT Addon Framework.

  • EarthMarsVTFramework.zip (21KB, 4Mar07)

    This Celestia Addon provides a framework for virtual textures for Earth and Mars. You must populate its levels with tiles.

    To use this framework,

    1. Restore the Zip archive into your Addons folder or into Celestia/extras/
    2. Copy the tiles from the Virtual Texture Addons of your choice into the framework's folders level0 through level12
    3. Run Celestia
    4. Right-Mouse-Button-Click on the Earth. (On a Mac you can use Ctrl-Mouse-Click)
    5. Select the Alternate Surface HiresVirtualTexture
    6. Enjoy the view!

Sidebar 2.1
This "full function" Addon provides a complete framework for VTs for both the Earth and Mars, but only the framework. Detailed surface image tiles are not included, but the level directories for them to be put into are here. You can populate as many as 13 Levels in each of this framework's six VTs to provide more details on the surfaces of both the Earth and Mars. You must provide tiles at least for level 0 of each of the six VTs.

  1. Restoring the Zip archive using your favorite unZip program should restore all of the files and directories in their correct nested structure.
  2. Like the Minimum Framework, you'll need to copy into this Framework the Levels of tiles from a Virtual Texture that you've created or downloaded.
  3. Since this Addon uses AltSurface declarations in its SSC catalog, the RMB popup menu is used to select the high resolution Virtual Texture. The R command used by the Minimal Framework is irrelevant for this Framework.
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2.2 Required Components of a VT.

    A Virtual Texture (VT) consists of
    1. An Addon directory containing the VT
    2. An SSC Catalog specifying the VT Texture
    3. A textures folder containing the VT's image
    4. A CTX file defining the VT's virtual image
    5. Several Levels of tiles for increased closeups.

    The Framework Addon above provides all but the tiles.

Sidebar 2.2
A complete VT Addon for Celestia has to include all of these components. Too often, however, Addon authors take shortcuts and provide only part of what Celestia needs to describe their Addon. They expect the user to be able to add the missing components or to put the VT into an appropriate directory.

Unfortunately, there are many interactions that you have to understand in order to make a VT addon work correctly.

  1. This Full-Function Addon Framework includes a directory explicitly for the Earth and Mars suite of Vitrual Textures.

    The Minimum Framework above makes use of Celestia's own Texture directories. Intermediate frameworks are possible, too. E.g. one might provide a separate Addon directory for each planet.

  2. This Framework includes an SSC catalog which defines two AltSurfaces -- one for the Earth and one for Mars. These AltSurface definitions each specify several high resolution Virtual Textures, for surface colors, specularity (reflections), night lights (cities, forest fires, etc), and shaded mountain sides.

    The Minimum Framework above makes use of Celestia's own SSC catalog, data/solarsys.ssc. It cannot provide enhancement VTs for any texures that aren't mentioned there.

  3. This Framework defines a textures/hires folder which is used to contain all of its Virtual Textures.

    The Minimum Framework above makes use of Celestia's own hires texture folder, textures/hires.

  4. This Framework provides six CTX files which are used to define six Virtual Textures. See Section 2.4 for a list.

    The Minimum Framework above only needs to provide a single CTX file. It provides a hires VT that is an alternative for only the Texture image map of the planet's surface.

  5. The six corresponding *-levels directories each contain 13 empty levels* directories. Those are the directories that you have to populate. level0 must contain two image tiles: one for the eastern hemisphere and one for the western. The others can be full, empty or contain only the tiles which portray the areas that you are most interested in.

    See the Textures document for a complete description of all of the levels and their tiles.

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2.3 Optional Configurations of a VT.

    There are several different ways VTs can be installed into Celestia. Section 1 above describes the simplest method.

    This second Framework Addon uses AltSurfaces: Right-Mouse-Button-Click pops up a menu which lets you select among several different Alternate Surfaces.

    See the Textures document for more information about Alternate Surfaces.

Sidebar 2.3
A VT could be put into Celestia's own textures/hires directory and the VT could be given the same name as is specified in Celestia's own SSC file. Then you can use r and R keys to select it. (See Section 1 above.) But then you're stuck with that one VT hires choice. You have to do a lot of renaming of files to try a different VT.

This second Framework Addon is much more general than the first. It defines an AltSurface that you can select using the Right-Mouse-Button. You can augment its structure to include other textures for Earth and Mars or to define textures for other planets, too.

If you have a single-button-mouse on a Mac, you can use Ctrl-Mouse-Click to emulate the right mouse button. However, you really should consider upgrading to a 3-button wheel mouse. Too many software packages expect you to have a full-function mouse. You don't need a fancy one: a usable wheel mouse costs $10 or less.

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2.4 Framework Details.

    To install this Addon, extract the Zip file into your Extras or Addons directory. It will create the catalog EarthMarsVT.ssc, textures directories and six .CTX files within the Addon's directory /textures/hires/

    Then you should copy some other Addon's VT Level directories into the appropriate directories within this Addon's textures/hires directories.

    You must provide Levels for all six folders (at least level0)

    1. earth (basic coloration)
    2. earth-spec (water reflections)
    3. earth-night (city lights)
    4. earth-normal (mountain shadows)
    5. mars (basic coloration)
    6. mars-normal (mountain shadows)

    In each case, copy the level0 through levelwhatever directories into the *_levels directory.

Sidebar 2.4
Yup. That's a lot of files to populate all the levels of all the textures: close to 2 GigaBytes. Or more.

I hope you tried the drastically simplified version described in Section 1.0 first.


Contents


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A.0 Appendices.