Using Celestia for a military scifi novel

[the-isz]

In 2011 I began work on a military scifi novel. As part of the research, I needed to figure out how the planets/asteroids would be positioned on a very specific date. Hunting around, I found Celestia. Holy cow that proved to be an amazing resource. I used it at great length to do mapping, flight time calculations, positioning, etc.

The book is finally complete and will be released this fall (2012). For it, I wanted to create a little video trailer. It suddenly dawned on me that Celestia would be perfect for capturing some key visuals. Using one of the scripts provided on motherlode, I was able to create a flyby video (had to reverse it to make it fit the storyboard) and it worked BEAUTIFULLY.

Video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CjwKINGizo

Celestia rocks. Couldn't work without it.

[Cham]

The video is very well done. Thanks for the link...

[the-isz]

Thanks!

I used to do video editing in the 90's. Back then an editing system would run about $30K.

I did this whole thing (including buying editing software, a couple stock photos and music) for less than $80.00.

Oh, how times have changed.

[PlutonianEmpire]

You're not the only one using Celestia for sci-fi literature.

I've done it for at least two short-stories I've written myself, one of which I plan to upload to my site for viewing.

It's more science fantasy really, and I know the vast majority of people smarter than laymen hate that genre.

[the-isz]

You're not the only one using Celestia for sci-fi literature.

I've done it for at least two short-stories I've written myself, one of which I plan to upload to my site for viewing.

It's more science fantasy really, and I know the vast majority of people smarter than laymen hate that genre.

Nice. Shoot me a link when you have them up.

[PlutonianEmpire]

You're not the only one using Celestia for sci-fi literature.

I've done it for at least two short-stories I've written myself, one of which I plan to upload to my site for viewing.

It's more science fantasy really, and I know the vast majority of people smarter than laymen hate that genre.

Nice. Shoot me a link when you have them up.

Sure, I'll send it by PM when I do.

[the-isz]

Thought I'd give an update from my last post. The first book is doing amazingly well (even hit #1 in the UK for military sci-fi this spring). Couldn't be happier.
Now, I'm wrapping up the second book in the series. Here's a book trailer for it.... and again, I used Celestia for the key shots. Would have been impossible to do the trailer (as I wanted) otherwise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P25N9Uo2L3Q