How to create a looping video of a planet?

[parduz]

Hi, an sorry for my english, as i'm italian.

I will like to use Celestia for a near-future RPG game (not a PC game, but a pencil and paper game ).
As a game master, I will like to show to players some nice space animations using my PDA. I've tryied to capture some videos of a rotating planet, or moon, but 'cause the "realism" of celestia i've not found a way to make a video which can loop continously without a "break" between the end and the begin of the movie.
There's some way to obtain a seamlessy movie of a rotating body?

Thanks in advance.

[Abor]

I know little about Celestia and didn't try to do this but...

If you've been rotating the body by accelerating the time, then the problem could be caused by the sidereal timespace realism and the clouds movement. I don't know how to freeze the planet time and keep it rotating without breaking the whole universe but you can try this dirty trick:

Set "RotateAcceleration 10" in celestia.cfg, run Celestia and stop the time. Then capture a movie while using Shift+Numpad2/4/6/8 to simulate an horizontal, vertical or diagonal (two keys) rotation. This should give a "loopable" sequence.

If you don't want the moving background, hide all those objects. I think that you could add an static background later with a video edition program. However this would be funny because the result would suggest that you have a "binary" system planetLockedByTidalForces+invisibleStar where the star illuminates always the same side of the planet.

[rthorvald]

i've not found a way to make a video which can loop continously without a "break" between the end and the begin of the movie.
There's some way to obtain a seamlessy movie of a rotating body?

My "Wired Earth" Add-On includes a simple CELscript that loops the Earth in a 24-hour period endlessly (well, a few thousand times). It is completely seamless: it just repeats the same date over and over, while allowing free navigation around the globe.

Of course this only looks good if you turn off the stars.

You can use it as an example, and mod it to work for any planet: it is just a few lines of text, so you don??t need any programming knowledge.

- rthorvald