Celestia Forums

Hi! this is a project I'm doing, the chance of this project finishing before it ends is very high lol XD, but I'll try to do my best to finish the project and you guys test and like it.for now it's just like in the image, the pity is that it's a flat square all green in the middle of the earth lol XD, but I'll try to fix it, any help is welcome, for now there is no download, but if everything goes well I will release it soon

Note: the models are of Mars craters, I'm just changing the textures and locations.

Added after 3 hours 3 minutes:
here is the first version and yes, i did it for three hours, the mountains it is on earth the same way as those mountains on mars, that's because i don't know how to put it on the whole planet, I don't even know if this is possible, but here it is, it's just the first version hope you like it

It looks much better than that "flat" when you land on Earth! When you launch your grounds on the Moon, I would like to use the same base to place these grounds on lunar spacecraft landing sites, for example Chang'e 4.

oh ok, but the real work is to put the latitude and longitude

added 3 more new places on earth with terrains, i'm only using this model because the others get buggy, i can start working on the moon in the next version too

Added after 8 hours 8 minutes:
while the one on the moon, I just added a crater, I don't know if I do one like this on the moon too, even because this topic is about the mountains on earth, but I'm posting this one because a user asked.

If you're going to make custom terrain on the Moon, please leave out all the Apollo sites and Surveyor 3. They will have their own once Project Apollo (Part 4) is published in the future. Thanks

Okay!

A problem: When I try to open some of the .cmod filed in mountain v1.1, cmodview gives errors.

I did not edit the files. They are original as in the zip file.

if it's to visualize what's written inside I usually use a reader or text editor, but if it's to visualize in 3D I recommend cmodview, I hope I helped.

Hello all,

Astronauta, what you are doing is exactly what I am trying to achieve since years ... Congrats for the beautiful results !

As an astronomer, I study ancient Egyptian astronomy. I more particularly focus on the determination of the days of rising and setting of stars visible with the naked eye in the darkness and twilight. For the needs of my Ph.D, I have developed little scripts which mix celestial mechanics algorithms and visibility criteria and lead to the determination, with good accuracy, of the time of rising and setting of stars above the horizon - above a flat horizon only. I would now like to go further and take into account the local relief.

To achieve this goal, I have considered using several softwares like VTProject, Cesium, OpenLayers with Cesium, NASA WebWorldWind, etc. But none of them really answered my needs ... until I re-discovered Celestia. After one month testing its functionalities and studying its functioning, I am convinced that this software could really lead to determine, theoretically and visually, the height of appearance/disappearance of any object above/below the local horizon, hence the instants at which these phenomena occur in darkness as well as in the twilight sky.

i am therefore really interested in what you achieved, Astronauta. Reading the Celestia documentation and the different users contributions - that of GlobeMaker especially (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8917), I understand that the first step is to conceive a 3D model of the Earth terrain on the basis of a DEM and with the help of a software like Blender-GIS or Anim8or. Is that right ? Is this your approach ? If so, would it be possible for you to detail it a bit so that I can conceive my own 3D model ? Thanks in advance.

Of course, let me know if I can contribute to your efforts with my few skills.

Yes, you would need to create a 3D model of the terrain, and convert it to Celestia's cmod format. Astronauta is just reusing already existing models of craters on Mars.

OK, thanks for your answer SevenSpheres. I will try to do this for the whole Earth ...

there is a OLD!!! tool for a whole planet DEM
https://archive.blender.org/wiki/index.php/Extens ... port-Export/NASA_IMG_Importer/

it will run on Blender 2.79 but NOT !!!! newer versions


there is a update posted here
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=3b ... ic=6878&view=findpost&p=248902

for Blender 2.9.1

Hello culturediff. I'm glad you liked it, it just so happens that what I'm trying to do with my addons is just make them beautiful, realistic too but I'm investing more time in making it prettier, for example I have some dummy system addons and all of them (only the one in the "dummy system" topic) have hilly terrain.

Thanks John Van Vliet for your interesting suggestions. I will study the method you suggest tomorrow.

This afternoon, I managed to create a 3D model of the La Reunion Island with Blender + Blender GIS, then exported it in the .x3d and .stl formats. Next step : converting it into .3ds then .cmod, finally import it within Celestia, then turn to the Panorama mode and say : Waouh or ... Aïe

The results you obtained Astronauta are exquisite, really ... inspiring as well. i hope to reach this high level of visual rendering with true geospatial data

Astronauta, I see that you used my Gale Crater on Mars add-on as a basis for your work. Please don't forget to provide credit as well

Hello DaveBowman2001, yes I know this addon is yours I put it very clearly at the top of the topic. as well as the fictitious system addons that I got the umbiel 3D terrain addons and etc.

Hello everybody,

It took me two weeks to say ... waouh - that works ... and that's great !

In detail : I encountered no problem to create a 3D model from a DEM with Blender, then to apply a color texture to it and to convert the resulting 3D model into cmod format thanks to the export_cmod plugin inserted into Anim8or. Then came the time to create a *.ssc file into the /extra/ Celestia folder. The most difficult thing was to correctly orientate the mesh (La Reunion island) above the surface of the Earth. I spent hours trying different angle-axis combinations, using and modifying Orientation [angle x y z] and FixedRotation [Inclination Ascending-Node MeridianAngle]. After reading many contributions from Celestia users on this forum, I finally came accross the clue : this post written by Chuft-Captain : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12465&p=104232&hilit=BodyFrame+Fixed+Rotation#p104232.

And now, everything is OK : I can see the stars rising above the relief of La Reunion Island and setting below the mountains. That's great I now can extend the process to other world areas.

This post just intends to thank everyone of you for your respective contributions. Thank you very very very much for your efforts.

As my knowledge of Celestia will improve, I will submit new Add-Ons in turn.