Celestia Forums

Hi there, I am a new user of Celestia (I downloaded it oh...about 5 minutes ago) It was reccomended to me by my geology teacher because I am looking for something to design planets with.

I want to be able to zoom to a surface at any distance, have accurate topography and labels for places. Most of all I want to have full control over the design of my continents.

I browsed around the scriping section, but its all greek to me. The extent of my programming skills is HTML. Some of the 'how-to' links were broken and the others were confusing, so I don't quite know the extent of this program.

Can I do all that with this program and if not does anyone know what programs might be good for me?

Welcome,

Yep you can do all this with Celestia; dig the forum for "normal map", "virtual texture" (VT) to begin, to give you ideas of what is possible.

Many users are designing planets, try out some post by D. Edwards, for fictional stuff, Mars, Earth, search for the Gigantic Earth maps from Fridger, well just dig a bit and you will find some wonderfull piece!

Elyneara wrote:Hi there, I am a new user of Celestia (I downloaded it oh...about 5 minutes ago) It was reccomended to me by my geology teacher because I am looking for something to design planets with.

I want to be able to zoom to a surface at any distance, have accurate topography and labels for places. Most of all I want to have full control over the design of my continents.

Celestia uses pictures as surface maps on a sphere. It can only show what is in the pictures you provide. On the Earth's surface it can show a resolution of 10 meters/pixel or better -- which is equivalent to a whole-Earth map that's 4 million pixels across.

If you provide a 3D model of a region, you can get as detailed as you want within that region.

If by topography you mean mountains, valleys and craters, Celestia isn't so good at that. It can draw shadows on a sphere so it looks like there are mountains and valleys, but it can't draw mountain peaks that stick up in the air unless you provide a 3D model of the region containing the mountains.

Celestia's Locations feature can label positions on planets' surfaces as precisely as you want in Latitude, Longitude and altitude.

I browsed around the scriping section, but its all greek to me. The extent of my programming skills is HTML. Some of the 'how-to' links were broken and the others were confusing, so I don't quite know the extent of this program

Scripts are used for dynamic control of Celestia. It doesn't sound like that's quite what you want.

Celestia uses SSC files (Solar System Catalogs) to define planets, models and maps.

Can I do all that with this program and if not does anyone know what programs might be good for me?

Celestia will not automatically fill in the gaps that you don't provide (except with a blur). Some programs generate random terrain.

Celestia will not create mountains that actually stick up in the air. Some programs will do that.

I've never actually used either of those types of programs, so someone else will have to discuss them.

I've collected a list of programs that can be used for different aspects of planet creation at
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/#7.1.2
Maybe that'll help.

How about just using Google Earth? You don't sound like being ready to go through the learning steps a complex program with the power of Celestia inevitably requires...

Good luck,

Bye Fridger

oh ok, I did want mountains that stick up and such. Celestia is still cool though.

The links you provided have a program called Bryce 6, it looks good, is it?

t00fri wrote:How about just using Google Earth? You don't sound like being ready to go through the learning steps a complex program with the power of Celestia inevitably requires...

Good luck,

Bye Fridger

well i like learning stuff like this.

Sorry: I can't say much about Bryce. It's a commercial 3D modelling product, although sometimes they have specials. (Bryce 5 was free for a while when they were first promoting Bryce 6.) I've looked at its user interface, but that's about it. It was just too different from anything else I've ever tried to use. Hopefully someone else can comment about it.

if you want to create models and images of local regions, you might want to try Terragen at http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

Bryce is great... I use it a lot for environmental subjects though.
Here's a quick scene to give you a taster... I'm no expert however.

ah bryce looks nice. Terragen does too.

with either of them would I be able to use the 3-D files in with Celestia or would I be able to zoom out to a full planet view in the program itsself?

The answer to both your questions is "Yes."

3D models (in 3DS format) are in addition to whatever surface map is being drawn on a planet by Celestia.

t00fri wrote:How about just using Google Earth?

Or NASA World Wind (as long as we're talking about displaying, not creating, the data)

bh wrote:Bryce is great... I use it a lot for environmental subjects though.
Here's a quick scene to give you a taster... I'm no expert however.

WOW!!