Actually I dont know at this stage. My thread is titled Dont Panic after Hitchhikers obviously but I have to say I am starting to panic !Originally Posted by jfrazierjr
I did some tests on blender and I can write out an obj file in perl but it doesnt handle text very well. ViewingDale handles text easily but its 2D. I also looked at POGL which is a perl based OpenGL interface and thats easy to use but... actually ill spare you details... but it looks like its not going to do more than screen sized unless I can figure some more stuff out on it - but that would be a good way of doing it. Then I thought that maybe perl writing image magick instructions would be good like the thumbs script is doing. That could draw all of these stars... I dunno still. Right now I am leaning to Perl generating a big ViewingDale file but with some extra stuff done in blender which I will composite into the scene. What would be ideal is if I can render stuff in blender and also have the transform for its camera to 2D so that I can do stuff in 2D at the same time and the coords would line up. Thats not easy tho.
Dont worry - not gone completely doolally. Were testing whether the thumbnail generator does animated thumbs...
Edit -- Actually I know it wont currently. But I might be able to check if its a gif and maybe even if it has more than one frame to it. I'll see if I can botch it into the thumb script code.
Last edited by Redrobes; 11-06-2008 at 08:26 PM.
Thumbs are now GIF aware ! Basically, all images get converted to PNG type thumbs except GIFs which stay the same even if they don't animate.
Guys, I have a WIP which id like any C&C's on please. Its not necessarily finished yet - I can tweak a lot of it. Its totally scripted so I haven't so much as brushed a single line so I can make wide ranging changes to this I think.
This is going to be the center illustration on a info panel on a ship deck so ill add some more border to it and more information about the places but just from the point of view of the galactic sector information how does this sit ?
Its a big map so I have the overall view and a close up. Ill post the full thing at the end. I knew it would be big and complex which is why I went for a scripted solution. I used Perl Magick and added a 3D layer to the API so that I can call all the primitives in 3D - which took a while to set up and get going but its great now if a little hard to understand the set up of it.
Anyway - looking for any comments. More stars ?, Less ? Brighter ? Bad font choice ? etc
### Latest WIP ###
I feel like this is perfect.
Map realistic three-dimensional space.
I think the concept is fantastic! It would be great as part of a large composite like you have in mind.
Very impressive. I like the 3D effect. As soon as I saw it I had a bunch of questions run through my head...specifically: How and/or why is the galaxy plane where it is? I was thinking of that in the making of my map; the Z coordinate is 0000.00 where the "selected" planet/system is. Bah it is hard for me to decribe...
Anywho a map that can make ya think is a good one!
Firstly, why is there a galaxy plane at all ? I dont know the exact physics answer but I know its to do with it having a low energy state. I assume that when stuff has movement (kinetic energy) in random directions and in space with gravity then everything starts to orbit. I am guessing that collisions occur removing energy of the system from some directions until you have an overall moderately stable system. I know that if all the orbits were in a spherical bound then they can lose energy and keep orbiting by flattening out. I cant remember why exactly tho - something about angular momentum and stuff like that. So galaxies tend to go flat - especially at the edges.
So this map being on the outer rim of the galaxy is sorta flat and I have chosen to use cylindrical coords to map sectors. So the first number is the rotary value, the second is the radial value and the third is the Z height from the plane. Since this one is 000 then its the one on the plane so this sector has the plane going right through it. I have arbitrarily chosen it to be in the middle. I am guessing that like the earth is not perfectly spherical the galaxy does not have an exact plane either though I would think that with the number of stars present then a really precise figure of where that abstract plane lies could be determined.
I had thought about doing something like this but didn't know where to start so I'm glad you are doing itNice job and of course I love the concept. Can I issue a fatwah to see the Fatwaa system mapped?
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Cool idea...
Personally wouldn't add to many more stars, or maybe just more "un-named" ones, and I think the fonts are fine (a bit small on the first map - but still readable for the most part)
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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