Making slick looking planets and invasion maps in DoGA CGA is a snap.

Fracplantest.exe is a command line generator for making fractal maps.
PlanetGen.exe is a windows front end to the command line program.

Frac_planet.L3P is a simple part file that assigns a texture to
planet_450.SUF (ball2.suf or ball3.suf will also work.)
Frac_Planet.L3M is a motion editor file that sets up lighting
and camera settings for taking nice renders of the planet.

Planet1.jpg and planet2.jpg are some sample planet maps to use.
DoGA CGA can read in several different image formats.

1. Start PlanetGen and select file > new.  This will open a dialog
   for setting planet generation parameters.  I used 512x256 images
   for testing.  Click on the 'generate' to contine.  On my 400 Mhz
   machine at work, it took 3.5 minutes to make a map.

2. Save the map to disk, I suggest planet_[seed number].bmp for
   file names.

3. To make a planet, simply open up frac_planet.l3p with the parts
   assembler, load/edit the planet_[seed number].bmp file via the 
   texture manager, and save.

4. To make an .X model, simply export the L3 model.  To make a
   FOTS/TCOM2 invasion map, we'll need to render the planet with a
   better set of tools.  Open the frac_planet.l3m file with the
   motion editor.

5. The camera in the parts assembler is too close and creates a
   fish eye lens distortion of the planet.  The motion file has
   the camera set up with a more distant and narrow 'lens' and
   some directional lighting along the equator.  Render the North
   pole view as a 256x256 image.  Instead of moving the camera,
   from the side view panel, rotate the planet 180 degrees and
   then render and save the South pole.  Do not save the motion
   file when you exit as you'll eventually get north and south
   mixed up.

7. Open template.bmp file and cut and paste the north and south
   pole images over the template and aligned with the invasion
   grid.  Setting pure black as your transparent color will make
   it easier to line the polar images up with the grid.  Save
   you work under a new file name.  Cut and paste the template.bmp
   back in with magenta (RGB 255,0,255) as the transparent color.
   This will re-draw the grid lines.  Save your work.

That's it.  Once you have don this a few times, it's a peice of
cake.

Extra stuff, I've include some non-essential files as examples.
Test1.bmp is an example of a finished invasion grid or colony
DAT.  Test2.bmp has simply been tweaked for web pages with a
white background or for e-books.  Test3.bmp is a gray scaled
image suitable for printing on most printers.  After I converted
test2.bmp to grayscale, I saved it under a new name and re-painted
the grid lines in a light shade of gray to make them stand out.
--
TAZ