Celestia Forums

I recently found this site:
http://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/asteroids3D/web.php?page=project_main_page

It contains models of asteroids based on lightcurve data, including many that wouldn't be the "usual suspects" (Ceres, Vesta, etc.). Is there any way one could use these in Celestia?

Thanks

-M-

Someone would have to write a program which converts their 3D format into something Celestia can use.

I've written some simple tools to convert these models into Celestia cmod files. It's a fairly convoluted process:

- Convert the asteroid model to a Wavefront OBJ file (via a Python script)
- Convert the OBJ file to an ASCII cmod (via a C++ program that uses the assimp library)
- Process the cmod file to generate surface normals (cmodfix)

Many of the models contain a lot of very long, skinny triangles which can produce artifacts when rendering; quality can be improved by using a tool like MeshLab to remesh the models.

I'll post a link to the models that I've converted as well as the tools that I use. Matt Wronkiewicz has already created an add-on with about 40 of the light curve derived asteroids models:

http://www.wronkiewicz.net/moreasteroids.zip

--Chris