I promise, this creative act will be as easy for you as jumping into a swimming pool on a warm day! Creativity will wash off everything that needs to be washed off.
Creating a virtual planet is, in essence, not harder than painting over an air balloon. If one tries to do this using the classical art methods, many inconveniences may arise:D But the most important thing is that a virtual planet can stay with us forever. One can bring it back at any moment to add or change something, or just to take a look at it. One may share it with anyone who would want to play with it, create some mountains or rivers or even cities on it... Your small planet may just be a 15-minute adventure, or your first impulse into a some infinity. Sometimes it happens like that. And it doesn't depend on our age, gender, nationality or social status.
All we need for this is Gimp and Blender. Gimp is a 2d pixel-oriented image editor and Blender is 3d graphics editor. Both programs are free open-source software and are very comfortable to use. You can download them legally for free from their official websites.
I think it may be much easier to choose versions which don't require installation. They may be fired up from any folder on your hard-drive, USB stick, etc.
https://www.blender.org/download/
https://www.gimp.org/
https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
This way you can store them in a sub-folder of your project.
This will be your first planet. Blender allows painting simply on a 3d surface. It may seem strange, but we, humans, first painted on 3d objects. Flat surfaces didn't occur that frequently in the nature:D I don't want to dive into too much detail on how to add an image to a sphere in Blender, and I think we should start directly from creativity. That's why I have prepared a Blender file with everything needed to start. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6cbWankBfQ3VWtXNnNZLUt3QUE
To paint we need to enter the texture paint mode. On the left panel we have tabs with tool settings etc. With 't' key we can show/hide these settings. And with Ctrl+UpArrow we can show/hide all panels.
In the beginning it is enough to paint a few general spots. It will be easier for us to customize them later with Gimp. The secret is that by painting here we are painting on a flat image, which has been unwrapped on a 3d shape. We can then save what we have painted and open it with Gimp as a normal image. To do this we need to go to the upper right of the panel with the image and choose Image->Save As Image. It is important to increase the quality of the jpeg file to at least 90%.
Gimp specializes on image editing and will give us many incredible possibilities to enjoy real creativity. We can drag our image to Gimp just from a file browser window.
At the left we have a panel with our tools, and at the right we have a tab with a stack of layers. You can, for instance, duplicate a layer containing the source image, and operate on this second copy. In our case this will allow us to feel comfortable to experiment more freely. It is also a good idea to save the file as Gimp's native 'xcf' format so that we can return to the file as we see it in Gimp (with all the layers etc.) at any time.
In general, Gimp, like Blender, is similar to other software of the same kind. It has almost everything that other graphic techniques always provided, and additionally wonderful instruments that appeared in the digital era. Clicking the right mouse button will show a menu with different submenus. I remember how fantastic it was to discover all this different tools and filters myself long time ago.
To view the result of our experiments, we need to export the image to some universal format like jpeg, png, tga or other file that Blender can understand. In our case it is best to just overwrite the original file we exported from Blender. Then Blender will just read the new version of the file when we reload it.
Sometimes Gimp is perceived as a cheap copy of Photoshop. But when you start to go deeper you realize that in fact it gives much more possibilities for experimentation and creativity. Photoshop is better adapted to making money. But if you want to live, to develop intellectually and emotionally, this is not enough. Gimp is better for this. After all, we live in a time when one can achieve both.
By the way, in addition to the ones you see on the screenshot, there are more advanced fractal algorithms under "Filters/Render/Fractal Explorer." This is why these who discovered this aspect of Gimp love the program. Behind an unambitious general appearance Gimp hides a whole studio/laboratory...
For instance, it is possible we will be working with 3d material with the help of an artificial intelligence, instead of manually like we do now. But this doesn't mean we don't need to know anything or be skillful in anything. Our natural curiosity will not bore us. And we are veeeery curious what's inside and how it works.
Of course, ways of simulating particles already existed for a long time, but they are not easy to use, especially for interactive environments. Probably this is a step for the future. Simulating particles would be very easy for a quantum computer. For now I will share with you a single image, made on a regular laptop with the help of mandelbulber. Of course it's only an toy image - one can not fly there:) I have embedded (with the help of Gimp) a fragment of our Nux project, that was made with the usual surface-only approach. You can download a 4K-sized image here, crop or scale for your screen size and use as a wallpaper.
Also here you can find screencasts of the early stages of modeling a small city in our Nux project. These videos seem to be somewhat meditative, probably it's better to view them in the evening in a sleepy mood:D
And now, when you know some truth about this seductive virtual reality, I can share with you some links:
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/earth-cycles
https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials
Creating a virtual planet is, in essence, not harder than painting over an air balloon. If one tries to do this using the classical art methods, many inconveniences may arise:D But the most important thing is that a virtual planet can stay with us forever. One can bring it back at any moment to add or change something, or just to take a look at it. One may share it with anyone who would want to play with it, create some mountains or rivers or even cities on it... Your small planet may just be a 15-minute adventure, or your first impulse into a some infinity. Sometimes it happens like that. And it doesn't depend on our age, gender, nationality or social status.
All we need for this is Gimp and Blender. Gimp is a 2d pixel-oriented image editor and Blender is 3d graphics editor. Both programs are free open-source software and are very comfortable to use. You can download them legally for free from their official websites.
I think it may be much easier to choose versions which don't require installation. They may be fired up from any folder on your hard-drive, USB stick, etc.
https://www.blender.org/download/
https://www.gimp.org/
https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
This way you can store them in a sub-folder of your project.
This will be your first planet. Blender allows painting simply on a 3d surface. It may seem strange, but we, humans, first painted on 3d objects. Flat surfaces didn't occur that frequently in the nature:D I don't want to dive into too much detail on how to add an image to a sphere in Blender, and I think we should start directly from creativity. That's why I have prepared a Blender file with everything needed to start. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6cbWankBfQ3VWtXNnNZLUt3QUE
To paint we need to enter the texture paint mode. On the left panel we have tabs with tool settings etc. With 't' key we can show/hide these settings. And with Ctrl+UpArrow we can show/hide all panels.
In the beginning it is enough to paint a few general spots. It will be easier for us to customize them later with Gimp. The secret is that by painting here we are painting on a flat image, which has been unwrapped on a 3d shape. We can then save what we have painted and open it with Gimp as a normal image. To do this we need to go to the upper right of the panel with the image and choose Image->Save As Image. It is important to increase the quality of the jpeg file to at least 90%.
Gimp specializes on image editing and will give us many incredible possibilities to enjoy real creativity. We can drag our image to Gimp just from a file browser window.
At the left we have a panel with our tools, and at the right we have a tab with a stack of layers. You can, for instance, duplicate a layer containing the source image, and operate on this second copy. In our case this will allow us to feel comfortable to experiment more freely. It is also a good idea to save the file as Gimp's native 'xcf' format so that we can return to the file as we see it in Gimp (with all the layers etc.) at any time.
In general, Gimp, like Blender, is similar to other software of the same kind. It has almost everything that other graphic techniques always provided, and additionally wonderful instruments that appeared in the digital era. Clicking the right mouse button will show a menu with different submenus. I remember how fantastic it was to discover all this different tools and filters myself long time ago.
To view the result of our experiments, we need to export the image to some universal format like jpeg, png, tga or other file that Blender can understand. In our case it is best to just overwrite the original file we exported from Blender. Then Blender will just read the new version of the file when we reload it.
Sometimes Gimp is perceived as a cheap copy of Photoshop. But when you start to go deeper you realize that in fact it gives much more possibilities for experimentation and creativity. Photoshop is better adapted to making money. But if you want to live, to develop intellectually and emotionally, this is not enough. Gimp is better for this. After all, we live in a time when one can achieve both.
By the way, in addition to the ones you see on the screenshot, there are more advanced fractal algorithms under "Filters/Render/Fractal Explorer." This is why these who discovered this aspect of Gimp love the program. Behind an unambitious general appearance Gimp hides a whole studio/laboratory...
3d-editors developed slightly later than 2d ones, and they are much more progressive. But, I think, we shouldn't concentrate on software too much. Earlier, when a person studied violin, for instance, the situation was very different. Not so long ago, during an average human lifetime nothing significant changed. In our time, most likely, the traditional algorithmic instruments will be replaced by something entirely different, different in principle. Programs will become self-improving. This may change the structure of our lives, our society, or way of thinking. It is possible that such changes may become normal for us.
For instance, it is possible we will be working with 3d material with the help of an artificial intelligence, instead of manually like we do now. But this doesn't mean we don't need to know anything or be skillful in anything. Our natural curiosity will not bore us. And we are veeeery curious what's inside and how it works.
For instance I'm showing here variants of how a simple sphere may appear in 3d material. I won't describe them in detail with words. You can analyze everything yourself. It is also one of the characteristics of our near future - while before we were acting within a more or less specific set of instructions, soon these tasks may be performed by robots. We will be the most effective in domains where strict rules and instructions are absent, and we have to be inventive:) It's not scary at all, and it's fascinating. This is the environment that allowed us to become who we are today and we have created out of chaos everything that surrounds us today. I wish you success on this path, enjoy it and come back again.
Since we have learned something about 3d graphics, let me briefly mention one important thing. Currently there is a significant difference between 3d graphics which is used to generate 2d images in movies, architecture etc., and 3d graphics used in interactive environments. But these two types of display are coming closer together recently. In games the level of detail and effects is very close to the one in movies. But, in order to see it, one still needs expensive video cards. In general 3d surfaces are composed of small 2d elements. All items have only surfaces, and only very rarely there are particles as in the physical world.
Of course, ways of simulating particles already existed for a long time, but they are not easy to use, especially for interactive environments. Probably this is a step for the future. Simulating particles would be very easy for a quantum computer. For now I will share with you a single image, made on a regular laptop with the help of mandelbulber. Of course it's only an toy image - one can not fly there:) I have embedded (with the help of Gimp) a fragment of our Nux project, that was made with the usual surface-only approach. You can download a 4K-sized image here, crop or scale for your screen size and use as a wallpaper.
Also here you can find screencasts of the early stages of modeling a small city in our Nux project. These videos seem to be somewhat meditative, probably it's better to view them in the evening in a sleepy mood:D
And now, when you know some truth about this seductive virtual reality, I can share with you some links:
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/earth-cycles
https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials
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