Question for Dan

[BigJimW]

      Hey Dan. Good job on the forum!

I have a question for you.  I emailed this awhile ago but I guess you missed it. I'd like to make my
own "sun" in my planetary addons, but I can't for the life of me figure out how. I noticed you made
the bigger sun (and the bigger yellow one). How did you make them? I tried making one and I
made a flat sun!

[DanSteph]

      Hello BigJimW,


Basically the sun is really flat in Orbiter it is made with two polygon that form a square
and the sun texture    is mapped on it.

There is a limitation to the customisation: we cannot change the polygon size so if your sun
is too extended on your texture you will see a ... square. You should keep the border
with transparent color.

My big sun texture is about the max size we can do while still keeping some fade.

Another things is that your texture must have an ALPHA channel that wich tell how much
transparency it have ... take the DXTEX tool from martin and open my sun texture to have a look
how is it made.

Dan

Ps: if you add (url) (/url) (replace () with [])  to your sig it will show as a link

[BigJimW]

Thanks for the URL tip.

I'm gonna give it a try, making a new star. I wanted to make a system based on a red giant,
but I don't want to overwrite the existing sol file. I'm gonna suggest to Martin maybe adding a
configuration that allows custom stars based on system. That would make the lives of solar
system creators like myself so much easier.



Post Edited (03-14-03 01:59)

[DanSteph]

Mhhhh that was I thought you want to make but I'm affraid
my Sun is about the max size we can make. The solution would be to
make the planet orbit much closer of the sun.

Dan