Mimas & Herschel Crater

[ron]

has anyone considered building a 3D model of Mimas to replace the existing sphere with an object that can better model the giant herschel crater. The 3D model itself can be a simple sphere for the rest of the moon but giving the herschel crater some relief should make it more impressive and better demonstrate it's size.

ron

[Matt McIrvin]

Bjorn Jonsson (who I think is the author of Celestia's Saturn ring texture) experimented with bump maps and triangle meshes for Mimas in POV-Ray:

http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/3dtest/

This data could probably be translated into something usable by Celestia. There were some horizontal artifacts apparently generated by his bump-map-extraction method.

[Bob Hegwood]

has anyone considered building a 3D model of Mimas to replace the existing sphere with an object that can better model the giant herschel crater.

Ron,

See the topic at http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27616#27616
for more info and a picture of Mimas as I have it on my version of Celestia.

Take care, Bob