Photorealistic Earth - Page 2 - Simply Maya User Community

# 16 28-12-2006 , 12:24 AM

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beautiful images alienpioneer!
Some stars in the background might look nice

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# 17 02-01-2007 , 06:06 PM

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Hi all! Thanks for the remarks!
Yes, is neccesary to scale the spheres...it's about textures. If you use a low res map on a small
sphere, you won't see any details but the map itself (sometimes i'm amazing myself how stupid can i explain things); otherwise if you use a low res map on a large sphere, you would see nothing but big pixels (it's abouth how many pixels can be put into a UV shell).So, knowing that my map it's a scale map of the earth (8kX8k is about 5km /pixel or smth like that), i scale my sphere proportional, just because things are allready complicated and wanted no more complications. I promise that i will work a bit more at this prj to find some improvements as soon as i have some time to spare. So thanks again and see you here... user added image

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# 18 02-01-2007 , 10:53 PM

Acid44

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Originally posted by enhzflep
@ acid44: :zzz: Yeah, whatever.

Originally Posted by

im just kiddin man

i killed my computer trying to do this....:headbang:

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# 19 02-01-2007 , 11:22 PM

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Yeah? Well, I wasn't.

Being rude like that and then writing "no offence" at the end is not going to take you far in life my friend.

Been there, done that bought the t-shirt. Any fool can call out smart-ass comments, and feel good for two seconds afterwards. All I was trying to do was contribute, yet you give me a reaming, cos I'm like the guys at school that you need help from. user added image

I certainly wasn't TRYING TO HELP for my own sake man..

Oh well, nevermind.
The fact that you've claimed to be just kidding duly noted and accepted. No hard feelings at this end buddy.

By all means, send me nasty PMs, just keep the board positive and constructive. That's what it's here for no?

But back to the issue at hand.

Now, i've not looked into this much at all, but perhaps you could cheat and use a noise function in place of the cloud texture, you may even find it possible to reduce the resolution of all the maps except the colour, without too much impact on the final rendered image.

Or of course, if you didn't plan on getting too close, you'd need nothing like the 8k*8k resolution used. If you've not seen it already, Alex Alvarez over at Gnomon has written an article on texture resolution and how to determine what res you should use for any particular shot.
Say that the planet was going to touch the sides of the screen on an 1024x1024 monitor, Half of the planet will be using up just under 3/4 of the screen (0.707)

So, 1.514 Megapixels will cover the planet and work out to 1 texel per pixel in the center of the planet and more texels per pixels at the edges of the planet.

To put it another way - at that screen res and that size finished image, there's going to be very little if any perceptable difference between an 8k*8k map, and a 1260x1260 map. But your computer will sure notice the difference.

Dunno how much ram you've got, but 1.5 megapixels per map has gotta be easier than 64 megapixels per map, I suppose.

I might just have delve a little deeper into this.. Thanx for the bump.

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# 20 02-01-2007 , 11:32 PM

Acid44

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Originally posted by enhzflep
Yeah? Well, I wasn't.

Being rude like that and then writing "no offence" at the end is not going to take you far in life my friend.

Been there, done that bought the t-shirt. Any fool can call out smart-ass comments, and feel good for two seconds afterwards. All I was trying to do was contribute, yet you give me a reaming, cos I'm like the guys at school that you need help from.

I certainly wasn't TRYING TO HELP for my own sake man..

Originally Posted by

sorry if it seemed offencive it wasnt meant to be at all

sorry man

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# 21 19-01-2007 , 11:35 AM

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Posts: 27

Hi! You're absolutely right! But i was planinig to make an animation with a spacecraft (battlecruiser from starcraft ) that is dangerously close to the planet! In that particular tutorial A.Alvarez don't mention anythink about scaling. I'll try at lower res when i'll have the time! Thanks!

And now i'll give you the link to the very hires maps of the solar system:
https://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.php

Some of them are DDS format.For those of you that are not use to it, it's a colection of mipmaps used in DirectX industries.You can extract the maps using a nvidia utility that's freely downloadable from nVidia site. I highly recommend Gnomon - Digital Sets Dvd's for the texture resolutions and tips.See ya!

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# 22 25-01-2007 , 08:58 AM

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My hat goes off to you enhzflep - I almost felt like I was absorbing pure intelligence when I read your workings out.

Game art WIP - Speeder Bike
Game art WIP - Speeder Bike Rider
Game art WIP - Ornathopter!

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# 23 26-01-2007 , 07:02 PM

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Aww, shucks Petrol - you're too kind.

We've all got our strengths and weaknesses, I just happen to have something of an afinity for maths - provided you don't go getting all parametric on me. Calculus seriously kicks my backside. Too many X's and 'Xs - gimme an example with words, and not a problem - gimme an example with Xs Ys and other abbreviated symbols and I'm off in the land of nod.

Make's me think of a sig I read somewhere. To paraphrase,

I got into science to become famous. Haha - that's like becoming a priest to meet girls....

Simon

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# 24 26-01-2007 , 07:12 PM

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"I got into science to become famous. Haha - that's like becoming a priest to meet girls...."

rofl simon... haha! isnt it boys? or you might be right girls :p

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# 25 11-02-2007 , 07:30 PM

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Originally posted by indigox3
beautiful images alienpioneer!
Some stars in the background might look nice

Originally Posted by

Oy ve! I agree! The stars would be a very nice edition! It's simple too! just take a sphere and make it bigger than your perspective, and give it a granite texture with a few white specs, and everything else is black! That's what we do in class, and it works pretty nicely! Fantastic work!

Sparticus

Expect to excell...

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# 26 15-02-2007 , 01:01 PM

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great work, great detail! I think for the fun of it giving that baby a bit of spin would be nice for a little animation or custom screensaver.

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# 27 15-02-2007 , 04:49 PM

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it's really too bad that the cloud cover isn't already an animated texture... then you could slowly spin everything else, and let the clouds do their natural thing user added image