Celestia Forums

A while back I used to dabble with Bryce as a way of rendering space art. I never publicly showed those renders. Not that they were bad, but Bryce just didn't render planets the way I wanted it to. When I first found Celestia I was looking at it as a way to do things differently. My intent was to render planets with it and then build space art projects from there. Well I got hooked on Celestia and my more artistic side was put on hold. Well after doing numerous textures and doing a few screen captures from planetary surfaces I have seen that Celestia can be used the way I originally intended.
Now I am not saying I am leaving the Celestia community or I am going to stop making textures, but the space art bug has bitten me once again and I feel the need to do some trial projects to see if indeed I want to get back to what I originally wanted to do all along.

To give everyone an idea of what I am talking about I submit these two pictures I have very quickly put together. They are of course captures from Celestia and other images merged in Photoshop. They give a very simplistic idea of what my intent was from the get go.
So enjoy.

-


Don. Edwards

Don,

I would say that your new pictures look like a reasonable start

It would be reasonable to say that with VT technology we could see the first photo in Celestia quite soon...when chris impliments displacement VT technology...

Fun stuff Don! Very nice artwork.

Don. Edwards wrote:When I first found Celestia I was looking at it as a way to do things differently. My intent was to render planets with it and then build space art projects from there. Well I got hooked on Celestia ...

Seems to happen to a lot of us. Personally, I was creating a video of an imaginary inter-galactic voyage ... that still isn't finished.

-Don G.

Don. Edwards wrote:Now I am not saying I am leaving the Celestia community or I am going to stop making textures, but the space art bug has bitten me once again and I feel the need to do some trial projects to see if indeed I want to get back to what I originally wanted to do all along.

Making celestia panoramas from those pics should combine both I (hopefully) think.
I would really like to go on a sightseeing tour on a nice fantasy planet that has dozens of panoramic points that one has to have visited (according to the 'Galaxy Guide for the Space Travelling Tourist')

maxim

don wrote:

Don. Edwards wrote:When I first found Celestia I was looking at it as a way to do things differently. My intent was to render planets with it and then build space art projects from there. Well I got hooked on Celestia ...

Seems to happen to a lot of us. Personally, I was creating a video of an imaginary inter-galactic voyage ... that still isn't finished.

Am I the only guy here who found Celestia as a means of exploring the "known" Universe?

You mean it isn't as exciting when it's used for it's intended purpose?
Don't know about you guys...

I get my rocks off just touring around what's real.

Take care, Bob

, Wow, just my $.02, but those pics are beautiful, I just set #1 as my wallpaper , I hope that is OK with you Don.Edwards

Bob Hegwood wrote:Am I the only guy here who found Celestia as a means of exploring the "known" Universe?

Ahhhhh, but Sir Hegwood, what is real and known?

Do you really know what it's like to be on any one of Saturn's moons looking at Saturn -- at sunrise, or sunset? Or on any moon of any planet (aside from Earth's moon)?

Did you know that a dusty sunset on Mars would be blue, instead of red?

What does it really look like just under Jupiter's clouds?

You see, in space, there is a VERY LARGE gap between the unknown and the known. Which leaves a LOT of room for speculation, and artistic freedom, unless you really know what an entire atmosphere of sulphur (or whatever) really looks like.

Just my nickel's worth...

-Don G.

I use Celestia indirectly in some pictures I do: I've written a VB.net program that will convert stars.dat to a MegaPOV 1.0 scene file which gives realistic starfields, e.g. in this render of the planet of HD 209458 (sorry about the shameless plug ).

Celestia could be useful in positioning moons and stuff in a realistic way though...

don wrote:Ahhhhh, but Sir Hegwood, what is real and known?

Do you really know what it's like to be on any one of Saturn's moons looking at Saturn -- at sunrise, or sunset? Or on any moon of any planet (aside from Earth's moon)?

You know, I knew I was gonna get in trouble for saying that...

No sir, I do NOT know... Of course, that's why I love Celestia. It attempts to do what no other "Astronomy" program does for me. In other words, it takes me as close as I can get to the "real" thing.

You see, in space, there is a VERY LARGE gap between the unknown and the known. Which leaves a LOT of room for speculation, and artistic freedom, unless you really know what an entire atmosphere of sulphur (or whatever) really looks like.

Agreed, but that wasn't my point. I asked if I was the only guy who found Celestia after looking for something to explore the real universe. In other words, I went looking for astronomy software.

Sorry, I don't have any spare change.

Take care, Bob

Bob Hegwood wrote:Agreed, but that wasn't my point. I asked if I was the only guy who found Celestia after looking for something to explore the real universe. In other words, I went looking for astronomy software.

Okay, I was just razzin' ya Bob.

I didn't "go looking" for anything. Celestia was brought up in the video editing forum I belong to, and I came directly to it. Lucky me I guess.

As to anyone else, I suppose Fridger, Selden and quite a few other went looking for astronomy software, and then found Celestia. Or had one of their illustrious colleagues recommend it.

Bob Hegwood wrote:Sorry, I don't have any spare change.

Cheapskate!

-Don G.

don wrote:
....
As to anyone else, I suppose Fridger, Selden and quite a few other went looking for astronomy software, and then found Celestia. Or had one of their illustrious colleagues recommend it.

-Don G.

Good question, Don;-).

After being here for so long (exactly 2 years), I almost forget how I came across Celestia. It went definitely via OpenUniverse, a forerunner of Celestia. I think, Chris also was a member of that crowd before...

I accidentally found OpenUniverse in the SuSE Linux distribution and immediately thought that after a lot of additional work, something like this would be "unbeatably" great...

Thereafter, I had lots of discussions of "principle" with my long-time email friend Elwood Downey (the creator of XEphem) about merging 3d OpenGL graphics with a precision emphemeris application like XEphem . He was very much against it as a matter of principle;-) and I could not resist following the "Celestia promise"...So I quit my 11 year lasting "assignment" to XEphem development and started thinking about Celestia;-)...

Bye Fridger

don wrote:I didn't "go looking" for anything. Celestia was brought up in the video editing forum I belong to, and I came directly to it. Lucky me I guess.

I just tried to find out when my first encounter with Celestia must have been. Turns out this probably was mid-2001, when the german computer magazine c't included Celestia 1.1.0 in a CD Rom filled with various Shareware or Free Software. I throw away the paper edition of that magazine long time ago, but still have the electronic edition on CD (original short article - in german - is also available at: http://www.heise.de/ct/shareware/default.shtml?prg=5809&art=5674&T=celestia&os=7&l_sw=1&l_aw=1).

I don't know why, but they had used a screenshot of IE showing an image from shatters.net, instead of a screenshot showing Celestia
Funny, the image they used for their screenshot is still there at shatters.net - compare:
http://www.h-schmidt.net/celestia/ct-2001-14-p130-pic39.jpg (this is from the electronic edition, which includes images only with poor resolution & color)
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/images/mars-phobos2.jpg

Seems that didn't stop me back then , though I haven't been using it continously until recently.

Harald

Nice Artwork Don I do hope you keep us up to date with what you are up to, I would like to see the rest of your work.

Bob Hegwood wrote:Am I the only guy here who found Celestia as a means of exploring the "known" Universe?

I get my rocks off just touring around what's real.

I am totally with you there Bob, I do hav a small Starwars Universe
But I rarely visit it, I love having the most up to date data about our known universe.

I do add little bits of flare here and there, Like My Pluto texture is Fridgers LOK texture, which is as much as we know but I also own Don and Preasepes more artistic version as alternate textures too.

OMG! I hadnt thought about using celestia in that way. I too had used bryce for space art but was never happy with the shadowing and other details.

Don: perhaps a tutorial on how to use celestia in place of bryce would be an idea?

Darkmiss wrote:I am totally with you there Bob, I do hav a small Starwars Universe
But I rarely visit it, I love having the most up to date data about our known universe.

Okay, thanks Paul. Please Don't mis-undertsand me here. I absolutely love Don's use of Celestia to produce artwork. I think its innovative and brilliant.

All I'm saying is that there is nothing wrong with using Celestia to explore the universe too. This program excels in taking your average forklift driver to any part of the universe that he's interested in. Can't find that with any other astronomy program I ever used.

I too have all kinds of science-fiction addons, from UFO's to 2001 to 2010. You know what though? The more I find out about our own real universe, the more I find that it seems to be much stranger, more mysterious and more beautiful than any of the imaginative and fictional universes I've ever read about or seen on the silver screen.

Just me...

Take care, Bob

I TOTALLY agree with you. Reality IS the ultimate science-fiction story. Human mind just can't keep up with nature.

When I was in my youth, I was fascinated with science-fiction (and still is, to a certain degree). But now I'm a physicist. Reality is MUCH more interesting than any science-fiction.

Going back to what Don. Edwards was saying, I think such art can contribute to Celestia's development in giving guidance, even setting targets or standards, as to what Celestia's output should look like. It's what I'd like to do, but can't yet: illustrate what things should look like, and explain why.

People with an eye for realism and accuracy combined with a talent for art and a knowledge of science can create compelling images of real or hypothetical places about the universe. Paintings by Chesley Bonestell and William K Hartmann are fine examples of this: not only were they stunning to look at, they were 'accurate' as far as we knew. As the code and configurations for later versions of Celestia converge on higher astronomical accuracy and more visual realism, other people who want to create fantasy settings can take more confidence that all phenomena and elements within them are portrayed in a way constrained to that realism and not a direct artefact of their inputs.

I know that people who aren't very much into the technical details of astronomy wonder just why some others keep on about that this or that being "just not right", or saying "it wouldn't be like that". The reason is that for those of us who know more and more about astronomy and spot inaccuracies more easily than others, we desire more strongly to actually see for ourselves what it would really look like, and are more starved of satisfaction through our own fussiness. We filter out the 'fantastical' and are left with few acceptable portrayals to thrill us.

I'm sure there are some who have sat through science fiction movies and noted that the special effects showed something that can't be and it spoiled it for them. A classic for me was the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (with Donald Sutherland), where a gas giant planet was shown hanging over an alien world with a gibbous phase facing away from the star that should have been illuminating it. It bothered me, and it bothered me more that it didn't matter to most people. Yet after astronomy buffs plugged away at Hollywood, we now have more regular observance of planet phases regarding local starlight, and I am happier.

Yet, we now have people noting a desire for Celestia to show realistic landscapes, horizons and vistas when on planetary surfaces. The work of Don. Edwards could help lead the way, not in coding, but in aesthetics. Whether you want to tour the universe to explore what's really there, whether you want to generate stunning images, whether you want to make movies, our desires are for something that produces images in abundance that are accurate and realistic in both astronomical and visual terms when given plausible* user inputs. Even so, Celestia presently goes a long way towards fulfilling those desires.

* Compleat fantasists should still be able to have their way by inputting 'implausible' (ahem) inputs, or even re-coding open source. There's space for us all.

Spiff.

nice work and if any one is interested
this is my desktop background
a screen shot

and a link to the full size
http://johnscelestiapage.no-ip.com/Background.png

I'm sure there are some who have sat through science fiction movies and noted that the special effects showed something that can't be and it spoiled it for them. A classic for me was the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (with Donald Sutherland), where a gas giant planet was shown hanging over an alien world with a gibbous phase facing away from the star that should have been illuminating it. It bothered me, and it bothered me more that it didn't matter to most people. Yet after astronomy buffs plugged away at Hollywood, we now have more regular observance of planet phases regarding local starlight, and I am happier.

Now, on considering the dynamics of the solar system in Pitch Black, particularly regarding how to get two ring systems of different inclinations round a planet, and how the planet's orbits could be that close and still be stable... :p