Fun with 3D Stuff (JPL Cassini)

[Guest]

I've been goofing around with 3D rendering lately.

Here is something I just finished using Blender and Bryce 3D (see attachment).

It's my concept of the Cassini orbiter passing by Titan after it's dropped off the Huygens probe, with Saturn in the background.

I got the DXF model from a JPL site that provides them for free (very, very cool).

I imported the model into Blender as a DXF from -- http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/models/, then exported it as an OBJ file to Bryce.

I brought the ship in, put it in the scene, lit it, and threw in a couple of planets.

The first thing that observant observers will observe (thin humor I know, but I've been at this for hours after a full day of staring at a CRT to boot - can ya say fried eyeballs? heh) is that aside from the Saturn not looking all that great, the ephemeris is all wrong. I have no idea what the position of those bodies is supposed to look like this coming January, but I doubt it'll be a postcard-like scene - heh.

Anyway, it was a test to see how the rendering stuff worked. I've got a couple of other animation prjects I'm going to be working on, now that I've got a good understanding of the basics behind 3D.

mh

[quade 4]

Where'd ya get your rings?

The last time I looked on that site they had some really neat maps for the planet surfaces, but nothing other than descriptions of the rings.

Oh, and don't worry too much about absolute accuracy. Most of space is pretty boring and even NASA has been known to glitz it up quite a bit. Shows like Star Trek almost always add in nebula and stuff just to make it look more interesting. A star field background like . . .http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/stars.html . . . would do wonders for your scene. The Tycho one works pretty well. Just make a huge sphere and map the inside.

On the totally unrealistic & extremely stylized side of things . . . here's a show open I did.

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/downloadFile?user=pquade&path=.Movies/BackstageAdventures.mov

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Guest]

Quote

Where'd ya get your rings?

The last time I looked on that site they had some really neat maps for the planet surfaces, but nothing other than descriptions of the rings.

Oh, and don't worry too much about absolute accuracy. Most of space is pretty boring and even NASA has been known to glitz it up quite a bit. Shows like Star Trek almost always add in nebula and stuff just to make it look more interesting. A star field background like . . .http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/stars.html . . . would do wonders for your scene. The Tycho one works pretty well. Just make a huge sphere and map the inside.

On the totally unrealistic & extremely stylized side of things . . . here's a show open I did.

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/downloadFile?user=pquade&path=.Movies/BackstageAdventures.mov

Paul,

The rings were "roll your own", from a flattened torus primitive - heh

And it's funny, but after I posted this thread last night I checked the SSS ephemeris for where Titan will be in mid-to-late January, and darned if it didn't look like my rendering...

I'll check out your link, but since it's probably a big file and I'm {still} on dialup, it'll be a while on the weekend.

mh

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