Sidepanel stars

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The Silent One
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Sidepanel stars

#1 Post by The Silent One »

I would like to replace the sidepanel stars with more high-res, distinctive versions. It's something I have been working on now and then for a while, and below is what I've got so far.
The first line (blue stars) is working good imo. With the second (white stars) and third line (orange, yellow, red) I'm worried they may be obtrusive (except the red one, I like that one as is); on the other hand, I would really like the stars to have some more "personality" than our current ones. (At the bottom: neutron star, good I think.)
What do you guys think, should I tone them down somewhat or do you prefer a more ornamental style?
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Vezzra
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#2 Post by Vezzra »

Oh, beautiful! :D

There is only one very small quibble I have: the orange and red one are just a tiny bit too similar for my taste. The red one could be "redder", or the orange one more "orange-y", but that's probably just me.

Otherwise I'm all for giving the "more ornamental" style a try. If they should turn out to be a too obstrusive, you can still tone them down a bit.

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MatGB
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#3 Post by MatGB »

I think I like, one quibble, the current set deliberately have a few binary stars in the art to represent that binaries exist but to not complicate things game wise, it would be nice if that can be maintained.
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The Silent One
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#4 Post by The Silent One »

Vezzra wrote:Oh, beautiful! :D
They are fun to make! :)
Vezzra wrote:There is only one very small quibble I have: the orange and red one are just a tiny bit too similar for my taste. The red one could be "redder", or the orange one more "orange-y", but that's probably just me.
I see your point. It may be less of a problem once there are some more (otherwise I'll make some adjustments). The idea to differentiate the stars beyond their color is that each color will have a destinctive character: blue stars are, although really bright, otherwise calm and have a visible core; white stars are very bright and lively, so you can't distinguish their core from their shine/corona; they can have a eccentric subcolor, often green; yellow stars are warm and friendly, their core has a smooth transition into the shine; orange stars are tubulent, they have a tumultous surface with violent eruptions; red stars are trying to fight their looming death, only their core retains some warmth while they become more and more cold and dark on the outside; they are in tumult as well and have a wide shine where they loose their heat. Neutron stars are cold and sad, dark and dead-looking.
So: orange stars should look different from red ones by their general look / surface.
Vezzra wrote:Otherwise I'm all for giving the "more ornamental" style a try. If they should turn out to be a too obstrusive, you can still tone them down a bit.
Good!
MatGB wrote:I think I like, one quibble, the current set deliberately have a few binary stars in the art to represent that binaries exist but to not complicate things game wise, it would be nice if that can be maintained.
Can't think of reason not to ;)
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Bromstarzan
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#5 Post by Bromstarzan »

Just chiming in, looks fabulous!
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adrian_broher
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#6 Post by adrian_broher »

Are those sample images the content you want to add? Because I would really prefer an animated version instead of static ones.
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The Silent One
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#7 Post by The Silent One »

adrian_broher wrote:Are those sample images the content you want to add? Because I would really prefer an animated version instead of static ones.
Yes. I, too, would definitely love to see animated suns, but I have close to no experience with animation. Best I could do at this point is something like below, which is a little dull as there is no change in the corona; I don't know how to efficiently animate that... I will see what I can do.
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#8 Post by Vezzra »

Hm, that example is definitely to... "fidgety"? This looks more like flickering, less than a animation, and would drive me crazy if I had that constantly at the top of the system panel. If we do animations for the stars, it needs to be something far more slowly and smoothly, like the planet animations.

What software do you use to create these images? With Blender it should be possible to create animated star coronas I think...

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Re: Sidepanel stars

#9 Post by Vezzra »

The Silent One wrote:The idea to differentiate the stars beyond their color is that each color will have a destinctive character...
Ah, I see, so you try to differentiate by texture as much or even more so than by color. Interesting approach. Still, the color difference between yellow on the one side vs orange and red on the other side is quite strong, compared to the difference between orange vs red. That just caught my eye...

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Re: Sidepanel stars

#10 Post by The Silent One »

I use gimp (animation features "ripply" and "waves"). How is this working for you?
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#11 Post by Vezzra »

The Silent One wrote:I use gimp (animation features "ripply" and "waves").
Ah, I see. Did you ever use Blender? It's a very powerful tool (especially considering that it's open source), and you can probably achieve much better results with it. However, it's accordingly difficult to master. To say that Blender has a "steep" lerning curve is like saying temperatures in Antarctica are a bit chilly... ;)
How is this working for you?
Much better, the animation speed is still just far too high. But that can probably slowed down by the render code in FO, and that should produce very nice results already I guess.

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The Silent One
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#12 Post by The Silent One »

Vezzra wrote:Did you ever use Blender?
Yes, but several years ago, and just for 3D modelling. Nothing I would get into right now, since I think the results with gimp are pretty decent.
Vezzra wrote:... the animation speed is still just far too high.
Half speed:
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#13 Post by adrian_broher »

The Silent One wrote:Half speed:
For just adding some animation filters to the result is decent and very close to what I had in mind. Well done.
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Vezzra
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Re: Sidepanel stars

#14 Post by Vezzra »

The Silent One wrote:Half speed:
That's already quite decent... can you provide another example with speed halfed once again? If it's not too much work, just curious. Because final tweaking the animation speed can probably done better in FO render code (assuming you can adjust frame rate easily enough there).

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Re: Sidepanel stars

#15 Post by The Silent One »

Vezzra wrote:can you provide another example with speed halfed once again? If it's not too much work, just curious.
Core of the example below is not animated yet, just the corona.
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