Celestia Forums

I've taken a look at the minor moons in Celestia and have recognized that most of them need improvement, especially the minor moons of Saturn, which have been photographed in detail already. I am looking for methods to add detail to the minor moons to make them look more photo-realistic. Does anyone have any methods to do so?

To start off, here is my attempt at improving Saturn's moon Pan, using textures from Celestia Origin:

The only adequate solution is to create individual models for each moon, comparing it with photos. It's difficult, but possible.

I have plans to improve 3D models of minor moons for the Celestia Origin in 2018.

Askaniy wrote:I have plans to improve 3D models of minor moons for the Celestia Origin in 2018.

That will indeed be something to look forward to.

I did some improvement on minor moons. For example Pan:



roughsphere.cms being



Added after 7 minutes 28 seconds:
Of course details like the equatorial bulge on Pan and Atlas need a proper mesh. You would think after 13 years of Cassini imaging there would be meshes out for the minor moons of Saturn, but apparently nobody bothered to improve the ancient Voyager models.

CM1215 wrote:I am looking for methods to add detail to the minor moons to make them look more photo-realistic. Does anyone have any methods to do so?

I'm awful at modeling, but I have a few OBJ files that I made. I decided to keep them relatively low-resolution, but you can modify them if you want; I'm releasing these under public domain.

(Also, this has been done extensively in Celestia Origins, but you can use existing models and textures and mess around with the semimajor axes. For example, Kerberos has a dumbbell-like shape. So I used kleopatra.cmod for that.)

LukeCEL wrote:I'm awful at modeling, but I have a few OBJ files that I made. I decided to keep them relatively low-resolution, but you can modify them if you want; I'm releasing these under public domain.

Thank you! We have a script that can improve the model. So we'll take them to a new release.

LukeCEL, your models actually don't look too bad. Though I will probably end up waiting for Art Blos' improved version...I'm guessing they'll come out in the December 30th release.

Hey! This give me the envy of returning to Celestia modeling!

I played a bit with the pan model, quickly adding polygons and smoothing the model. I applied some texture with normal mapping from someone here (I'm not sure who made these very nice textures. Probably John).

Here's the model for you to play with (it has a few tiny defects on the poles and some other rendering glitches, though) :


The CMOD file is a pure text file, so it's very easy to change the two textures used by the model. Use your own. Many are already available on the forum.

Three previews :

Have you seen photos of Pan?
(Like this)

I simply applied some arbitrary (but very cool looking) textures on the model, as a test. The model itself doesn't have the proper shape anyway.

You can easily change the textures used in the CMOD text file. We'll have to wait for someone to give away the proper textures for Pan, I guess.

Cham wrote:Hey! This give me the envy of returning to Celestia modeling!

Well why don't you? It would be awesome to have you!

The model looks cool, but the texture you are using makes it look...fictitious.

Here is a view of the model used in Celestia with a more realistic texture:

FYI for those of you who are using this model, the orientation parameter [90 1 0 0] must be added to the SSC.

CM1215, that rendering looks really good!

Anyways, the model of Pan was made back when this was the most detailed picture of it. The new photos make Pan look different, almost popcorn-like. I guess that should be updated.

Also, what about Helene? There are high-resolution photos of that moon (see Wikipedia), but I can't seem to fit these together.

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Askaniy and CM1215, this model might be better.

It's a pity the foreigners do not know what Pelmeni is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelmeni

What about Amalthea?

The Celestia Motherlode has a more detailed model, which you can download here.

Pan be my favorite moon of any gas giant