That is amazing. The arms look straight out of a Hubble photo.
Last edited by euio; 11-22-2009 at 10:55 AM.
One of those Alternate Earth History people.
Thank you! It's a LOT of work on the other hand...
Another update... I've finished the galaxy and added 'longitude' and 'latitude' lines and started transforming it into a galactic map
I've shrunk the original map down by 50% to make 'zooming' possible. I've attached the image in original size as well.
That's looking pretty delicious.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Everything's great but the bar. It needs more substance. I'd suggest rotating it until it covers most of those core stars, and then filling stars in the significant gaps still present in the bar.
One of those Alternate Earth History people.
You're absolutely right, I've thought about it myself as well. In this version I've added quite a lot of stars to "flesh" it out.Originally Posted by euio
I've also added another 'zoom' map and a close-up of the inner part of solar system and a planet...
Last edited by Andartar; 11-24-2009 at 01:34 PM. Reason: typo
I think it needs more glow, but definitely a great improvement thus far.
Something to think about is that almost all galaxies have more than a billion stars in them. (Dwarf elliptical galaxies have closer to a billion and some of the more massive spiral ones have as many as a trillion stars.) The Milky Way has somewhere in the range of 100 to 400 billion stars. So if that map (3030x3030 pixels)was of the Milky Way each of the pixels on the map would have more than 10,000 to 40,000 stars in it. The dots you see on the images of the galaxies I posted are almost all in our own galaxy. (i.e. the stars that look like they are part of that galaxy are just really far away stars in our own galaxy in front of the distant galaxy.) However you will see some blue dots on most galaxies and those are the very rare blue giant and super giants that give off more light than 10,000 to 60,000 times that of our Sun. Also there are regions of star birth that give off a lot of light because of the densely packed stars in them. Blue giants represent 0.13% and blue super giants 0.00003% of all stars, so you would have about 130-520 million blue giants and 30-120 thousand blue super giants in that galaxy if it had about as many stars as the milky way.
So the glow I mention is the combined light of 10,000 to 40,000 stars in each pixel. They are more densely packed in the arms and grow more dense the closer you get to the core and are sometimes shrouded with gas. The blue stars you have dotting the arms right now easily represent those blue super giants but you need some glow to represent the couple thousand stars per pixel that exist even in the "dark" areas between the arms.
Last edited by wormspeaker; 11-24-2009 at 02:14 PM.
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
Nice tutorial. I modified it a bit. Some changes were beneficial. Others... meh.
First change was between step 6 and 7. I used the Lasso Tool to select a couple of irregular areas at opposite corners of the crossed threads image. I feathered that selection(at I think about 60-80 pixel radius) and hit delete. This made a couple of void areas which added interest. They allowed for a suitably tight Twirl, while allowing for strongly distinct spiral. I think this idea was successful.
On the whole, I think my threads are too solid and distinct. Looks good from a distance, but up close it looks... odd. I need to do this again to work out where I went wrong. I think there are a few places where a much less smooth Spatter might have been in order.
One last touch was at the stage of adding the individual star lights. I got lazy and used Glitterato on a separate layer. The left example is of the Glitterato layer applied using Color Dodge blendmode, the right used a Soft Light blendmode. I'm leaning slightly in favor of Soft Light, I think.
I didn't get around to 3d effects yet.
What do you think so far?
Astrographer - My blog.
Klarr
-How to Fit a Map to a Globe
-Regina, Jewel of the Spinward Main(uvmapping to apply icosahedral projection worldmaps to 3d globes)
-Building a Ridge Heightmap in PS
-Faking Morphological Dilate and Contract with PS
-Editing Noise Into Terrain the Burpwallow Way
-Wilbur is Waldronate's. I'm just a fan.
su_liam, the effort looks good though as you say it could certainly use some refinement.
A couple of suggestions:
1.) The dots you have around the galaxy (glitter effect?) should all be blue, you would not be able to detect the individual light of any star smaller than a blue giant or super giant from this range. The background color of the galaxy should be a bluish white with a little bit of reds and yellows thrown in sparingly. (The average color of a galaxy is skewed a bit bluish because even through there are fewer of the blue stars they give out a little more light than the smaller white, yellow, and red stars combined.) (Some galaxies appear somewhat reddish and I'm pretty sure this is due to redshifting rather than a accurate representation of the color, and conversely some galaxies appear very blue and I think this is due to blueshifting. Although the age of the galaxy and ho much star formation is ongoing will also effect the color of the galaxy.)
2.) The "dark" areas between the arms should have some glow. If you look at the image below you will note that the "dark" areas between the arms are still brighter than the intergalactic space around the galaxy.
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
su_liam: For this map I barely used the first steps of the tutorial, and did some adjustments of my own, and since then I've totally deviated from it. Your galaxy looks quite nice but I think it has the same problems that my first try had: too tightly spun. But it certainly has potential!
wormspeaker: I've added some more dust and increased the glow of the stars. I know that it probably isn't enough but I will keep it that way for the moment and invoke artistic license
It could use some more glow, sure, but it looks pretty good now.
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
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