XFile Creation and XFileClasses Effects

[Suicide Junkie]

The straightforward, but horribly slow way would be to make tiny orbiting nebula clouds.

Is it possible to use an animated texture on the planet model?

For people who don't move the camera too much, you could remove the entire planet model, and go with a simple animated sprite for the entire thing. It would boost framerates too.

Gotta come up with a better way...

[MasterChiToes]

So, the problem with using stellar effects for the clouds is that the camera isn't fix on a normal to the axis of rotation... and the effects are not really 3D, so the clouds would rotate over the north pole or something.

A model with two (or more) override-able textures, sounds both like the right way of doing it, and from what I've seen so far, not in SE5's mod-playbook.

Dang, it would be killer to have planets with clouds rotating over the surface... and maybe some climate conditions linked lightning effects in the clouds... and a temperature linked polar ice texture overlaying the land.

Okay, maybe the lightning could be effects... but three layers for terrain, moving clouds and polar ice... *dreaming*

[Suicide Junkie]

I didn't say that.
Using a sprite for the entire planet would start to look strange if the camera were rotated, since the sprites animation would be fixed.

Having tiny cloud sprites rotating around the planet would work, but it would be expensive in terms of CPU to have 100's of cloud bits per planet.

[MasterChiToes]

But those clouds sprites wouldn't be effects added to the planet, they would be independent entities on the map... which as you said would be expensive.

If the cloud bmp's were effects added to the planet, then what I said about viewing angles would apply, right?

[Suicide Junkie]

"Effects added to the planet" is stormcloud like things as I understand it. You'd have to make them small and numerous in order to have them wrap around and follow the surface of the planet.
You don't want to use a large sprite, since they always face the camera, and that would look quite wrong when the effect reaches the edge of the model (part sticking into the planet, part sticking out into space, instead of lying on the surface.

As a completely separate idea, planets could be made as a single sprite with a very long and complex animation sequence.

[MasterChiToes]

I think I understand... I was referring to effects as listed in the XFileClasses_Stellar.txt, like Planet Glow, which is facing the camera, regardless of the planet orientation.

[Suicide Junkie]

So am I.

If you make them small enough, you can use a cluster of sprites in an arc that hugs the planet surface, and then make them rotate around the z axis either with or against the planet's rotation.

My warppoint generator can be set up to do something somewhat like that, although only in thin bands without some custom tweaking...
Think something like the FQM black hole animation, except wrapped around a planet, and using a cloudy white colour instead of incandescent blackbody spectra.
Also, much MUCH smaller, and shallower, and not contiguous