Celestia Forums

Hello, I have always been interested in astronomy, and I have seen Celestia for some time now, but I never got it running until recently. All I have to say is WOW! great program. Keep up the great work on it.

I have gotten into 3D Modeling and Computer Animation, I'm probably going to do my Undergraduate in College in it. I read that Celestia needs some 3D models for vairous spacecraft and associated bodies, I would be glad to help. Is there an updated list of what needs to be done for Celestia, so I can make some 3D models for it?

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1472 heres a list with pics to aid the designer

Ive been looking for a nice space shuttle to orbit the earth

and if you make pretty much any spcace probe
it will go down well.

Pioneer
Genesis
Stardust
Ulysses

I use Maya 4.5, is there any special format Celestia uses? From what I've read it seems to be 3DS. Also, how are textures handled in Celestia?

There are some nebulae pictures in this topic:
http://ennui.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1727

Version 1.2.6 will support "deep sky objects" which can be used to show nebulae, but they need to be modeled. If you are willing to do some simple sphere or flat object texturing to give views of nebulae as seen from earth a 3d form, then that'll be very helpful.

Maya can only export to .obj or .mb files I believe. Is there support built in, or can be built in for these files?

I'd be glad to model stuff, but I don't think I can export to .3ds unless I convert them, and then they loose the texturing.

Same here; I'd be quite interested in doing some modelling, but I use Lightwave and have no idea how I'd convert files to .3ds successfully.