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[pixel_rice_bowl]

As rendered in game (click for full resolution)

Texture previews


I have created a couple several dozen planet textures and would like to release them to the community for modding. These textures were created in Blender / Krita and the first image shows many of them as rendered in game from the intel screen. There are probably 20-25-45 65 production ready textures, and I decided to include several alternatives and polished drafts as well in case these are useful to modders.

Change log:

Spoiler

January 7, 2025: there are now 70 textures, including some draft versions. Recent additions include magma variants, additional gas giants, a frozen world, and several barren planets. More Terran planets are planned, but no ETA.

December 19, 2024: the package has been reworked a little. Some poorer quality textures were removed--although still accessible in a drafts folder--and the total number of planet textures has been about doubled. A few drafts are included and marked as such, but are included because they were good enough during in-game testing. Two star textures and a nebula background texture were also added for experiments.

[close]

Here is Google Drive link that contains a .zip with the planet textures, a truncated .blend file with some of the materials (temporarily removed to fix a small issue), and a text file with some suggested names for planet types:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eEpJu5jADoiSxJMOhuLUOVmQIzAiKqIl?usp=sharing

(And a quick update folder that I've been throwing new textures into before lumping them into the main .zip https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14ibrWpjrfInxB_LSaVRytXNZNdwAEaoF )

Some notes:

• Planet textures were created in Blender by using procedural materials, sculpting with high resolution height map brushes, and/or grunge textures. Final materials were UV unwrapped / baked across a UV sphere to match (as best as I could tell) Starsector's in game requirements.
• Some of the textures could be better. I'll add more to the pack if I have time or other modders have specific requests.
• All textures should follow the appropriate size and type conventions for vanilla Starsector. For example, gas giant textures are half the size of standard planet textures, lava glow textures are .png instead of .jpg, etc. There are many files, however, so it's possible I've made mistakes here.
• For the Blender file, I would have included all the materials but: (1) some materials use textures brushes and/or grunge textures that I purchased and so can't be redistributed by themselves, and (2) I was stupid and accidentally purged my cache of materials unattached to objects which caused me to lose ~1/4 of the created materials.
• I would eventually like to make a short YouTube tutorial on how to create these kinds of textures in Blender, but I don't have an ETA. (Life has been busy!)

Permissions: you are free to use and modify these textures for any Starsector mods. No attribution is required, as I don't care about credit. All feedback welcome.

[Dadada]

Looks absolutely stunning. 

[NikoTheGuyDude]

we have never been more back

[MiniDeth3]

Incredible work!

[Crimson-.-]

Gorgeous, great work.

[JamesTripleQ]

Very nice, I might add a few of these to Unknown Skies.

[Killer of Fate]

Sulphur Hell feels like something you'd get from a planet with extreme tectonic activity but not enough gravity to hold that atmosphere together. Io, moon of Jupiter, basically. Thank you so much for making these. This has been something I have been looking for.

[Benjallen]

Pretty please make more, these are fantastic!

[pixel_rice_bowl]

Here is another set, as rendered in game. I'll add the texture files to the shared folder when I have some spare time later this week. Feedback always welcome.

I've learned some additional techniques over the last two weeks, so I'll be revisiting some older textures to refine them. I plan to create additional textures (possibly: more gas giants, desert / arid, shattered / fractured, dense atmosphere, another tundra type, and others I'm forgetting) then get working on a mod that adds a large selection of these textures as vanilla-friendly planet types and/or add them to the pool of possible planet textures for vanilla categories (preferably without altering any core world planets). The goal is to add variety without significantly changing colonization balance, meaning no new resources and only a few (if any) new habitability bonuses or hazard penalties that are in line with vanilla conditions. I don't have an ETA for this, but I'll drop a note when/if the mod is finished.

[ithis]

Can't wait to see that! There's so much needed variety in these - what sold me was the arid variants that weren't just 'temperate but sandy'.

[happycrow]

These are gorgeous and I hope somebody makes a lightweight/standalone module that can use them. The base textures are hardly shabby, but... so pretty!

[Dadada]

...

N I C E !
Also: #MakeCratersBigAgain #AgainstRenewableSurfaces 

[Killer of Fate]

can you make some cloud textures please?

first planet made using your textures

Spoiler

[close]

Cold desert world, like the desert of Kazakhstan

Also, it's okay about cloud textures. You don't have to make them. The vanilla ones fit just fine.
Maybe don't build the cloud textures into the texture itself. And just let the vanilla fill the cloud textures.
Cause putting cloud textures into the texture makes it look flat.

[happycrow]

(is this a case of DL'ing into a directory and things will populate with a textfile tweak, or do you need actual skills to put these IG?)

[pixel_rice_bowl]

can you make some cloud textures please?

first planet made using your textures

Cold desert world, like the desert of Kazakhstan

Also, it's okay about cloud textures. You don't have to make them. The vanilla ones fit just fine.
Maybe don't build the cloud textures into the texture itself. And just let the vanilla fill the cloud textures.
Cause putting cloud textures into the texture makes it look flat.

Nice! I've been making new cloud textures, but they require a bit more work than I expected to look okay in game. I don't know which planets you have in mind for cloud textures baked into the actual texture (maybe the water planet one?), but I doubt I have the time to change that. Maybe this is something I could do as a final detailing pass when the pack is finished.

(is this a case of DL'ing into a directory and things will populate with a textfile tweak, or do you need actual skills to put these IG?)

These are just image files for now. A very basic mod to add vanilla-friendly planet variety using these textures is in the works, but no ETA. If you want to just try them, you can go to the core game files, find the planet textures, back them up, and replace whatever textures you'd like, just making sure to keep the same naming convention.