Is there some kind of Journal for graphic stuff you are going to publish this work in? I mean, if this is a new method of creating skyboxes economically, you really should. Spread the word and never let us spot Gothic 3-ish skies again.
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Stellaris Development Diary June 27th - New Skyboxes
- Thread starter Aerie
- Start date
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When I first logged into the Beta, this was the first thing I noticed, and I was very surprised with how well it looked; the ambiance of the lighting really sets the tone of the system and makes each one feel more unique. Honestly, before then, the skybox wasn't something I looked at, but now its worth looking at. Good Job.
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This was the first change in the beta I had noticed. Suddendly my home system looked marvelous. It was a real wow effect as I didn't expected this change. Thank you very much for trying to make our experince even better!
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Procedural skybox generation could be an alternative.
Edit: his code is public domain and he is fine with developers incorporating his techniques into their games.
Edit: his code is public domain and he is fine with developers incorporating his techniques into their games.
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Ehehehe, you should ask CCP, how they did it with the stars in EVE Online, you can see the stars of neighbouring systems brighter then the normal background stars.
Wow Aerie, I understand that you're a graphics technician, madly in lust with pixels, textures & things compressed, but you could have saved tons of thought and energy, notwithstanding the wonderful skyboxes you came up with, by just summing it all up with your words: "we do this in-engine in an earlier rendering step and then add a bit of color correction on top. This way, we can also subtly influence the colors of the ships, which makes them blend in a lot better. All in all, it produced a great result." Wonderful work Aerie!
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I do have to say i like this change a lot, except for the yellow systems.
Something is off with the color correction in yellow systems, it looks like there is to much cyan and green left in there, making the yellow look artificial and wrong.
Something is off with the color correction in yellow systems, it looks like there is to much cyan and green left in there, making the yellow look artificial and wrong.
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Im actually not too fond of "fruit jelly" style of space background. Every space game and movie must have it novadays. Look at the sky at night.
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Those new skyboxes look just amazing, but it was really interesting to understand the process of creating them. I would love to hear more like this in future DDs
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Totally agree. i actually made a post about the new backdrops right when the beta was released. They are far to colorful and saturated. It actually distracts from the beauty of the solar system itself. It makes focusing on individual things within the solar system more difficult.
They also don't correlate with the actual background of the galaxy at all. Just random over saturated colors! If you play with black and your primary and secondary flag color you can see this. It's almost jarring going from the galaxy map to the solar system map.
I don't question the quality of this work, just the artistic direction.
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Nice work. Sci-fi actual space games tend to have indeed boring skyboxes. The issue is also that real space is pretty dark, and that NASA space pics are amplified or fake colored, so everyone expects unrealistic fantasy art. I find the 1.2 sky, though, too sharp, as if ... it would need to be more milky and smooth? Not sure.
Any chance to get access to the shader files? If it is just shader coding, of course. I'm not that bad at these things...
- Here's rather a star dust implementation: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Mll3zj
- This is also some nice particle work: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdKXzc
- Also a rather soft space screen: http://forum.unity3d.com/attachments/spaceskybox01-png.84913/
- This nebula generator is also interesting:
Here are some composition ideas
- The background, not the planet or the front assets: https://images3.alphacoders.com/127/127957.jpg
I would also parallax move the background a bit with the mouse cursor, in order to show a tiny bit of depth. In general, I would go straight 3D and play with different levels
I think that the space background should be always more artsy than technical or realistic. Because space itself is dull, empty, and boring. And in games like Stellaris, I still have constantly to look at that background. It is also interesting how Master of Orion (not that I'm playing anything else than Stellaris, of course!) solves this topic. Interesting issue though. Look forward to more.
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If you plot an autopilot course, it will also draw lines between each system on your route directly in the starfield/background.
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I for one welcome our new sky(box) overlords!
In all seriousness, this is a cool devblog and I appreciate the effort in delving into how the tech interacts to create the game. My personal hope is to see many more such over time, exploring your (Dev) thinking processes. It's always illuminating.
--Khanwulf
In all seriousness, this is a cool devblog and I appreciate the effort in delving into how the tech interacts to create the game. My personal hope is to see many more such over time, exploring your (Dev) thinking processes. It's always illuminating.
--Khanwulf
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I was limited streaming but attempting to get more of my friends on board for a multi player. The new patch has me going from 14/18 late game research core worlds to 14/5 with -880 something instead of nearly positive 500 energy. I have a mod to do more but I spent centuries to expand my basic core cap. Would be a 13 without mod...I love the game but am not going to play it again for months . Several months as I was playing this instead of others I had needed to. Sorry for language but FUCKED feeling right now. Don't know how to review. If this is going to happen often; go fuck yourself. If this is a glitch could be bad timing. I now have to move on.
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Would something like an adjustable opaqueness for the cloud effect work as a quick solution for being inside/outside a nebula?