Project "Celestia Origin", release dated August 30, 2018

[SpaceFanatic64]

Yesterday I private messaged Fenerit if he could send me the Helene and Telesto models. I haven't had any response yet, though.

[Art Blos]

Fenerit hasn't been online for almost two months. Not fact that he will answer.

[SpaceFanatic64]

Well I guess we'll see. You'll never know!

Added after 7 hours 21 minutes:
I tried looking through the Wayback Machine to see if the files were archived, but no luck.

[Art Blos]

Here's my OBJ file of Daphnis, under public domain

I think Daphnis should be longer (Dimensions 8.6 × 8.2 × 6.4 km).
There is no point in hoping for Fenerit. Try yourself to make Helene and Telesto. And a big request to make models (including Daphnis) as meticulously as possible. Than better the source, by that better the script handles it.

[LukeCEL]

Art Blos, I did a bit of digging and found this: shape models of eleven moons of Saturn, including Pan, Daphnis, Atlas, Telesto, Calypso, and Helene.

The shape models can be downloaded here at the PDS Asteroid/Dust Archive. The first download contains vertices and points for all the satellite. It's easy enough to convert those to OBJ. Just open it up, remove the first line, add "v" before each vertex, add "f" before each face, and change the extension to ".obj". The shape models have a little bit of "stitching" but that's fine. The second download contains rotation models, which I don't really understand.

The shape models also show something that I hadn't quite caught onto before: the flat inner moons—Pan, Daphnis, and Atlas—are not exactly flat and round, they're stretched. I think that's the effect of Saturn's gravity.

[Askaniy]

LukeCEL, this is really fantastic! Thanks for the link.

[SpaceFanatic64]

Wow, Luke. These models are going to be an excellent addition to Celestia Origin!

[Anthony_B_Russo10]

For the normal texture for Mercury, the highest resolution USGS map of Mercury that I have.

[Art Blos]

I did a bit of digging and found this

This is one of the best and long-awaited news! I will give the material to Greg.

For the normal texture for Mercury, the highest resolution USGS map of Mercury that I have.

Our textures of Mercury do not need to be updated yet. At least for now.

[SpaceFanatic64]

Luke, I'm curious as to how the models look. Can you send any preview pictures?

[LukeCEL]

Luke, I'm curious as to how the models look. Can you send any preview pictures?

They look like this:

Images on the left side are the models, images on the right side are photos, courtesy of NASA and public domain. From top to bottom: Calypso, Helene, Pan, and Telesto. I didn't bother doing Atlas and Daphnis but rest assured, they look pretty similar to the photos.

What's weird is that when I converted the .tab files to .obj, the files could clearly be viewed on Preview, but couldn't be opened by anything else, like Blender. I really hope that's a problem with my conversion, and not a problem with the data itself...

[SpaceFanatic64]

I feel like some of these models are going to need textures based on their images. Otherwise, they're just going to use the light asteroid texture.

[Art Blos]

Updated orbital data for Eris and Dysnomia. Now it are synchronized with each other.

[Art Blos]

Added new fictitious 8K-surface and 4K-bump of Haumea. Added exclusive ring texture. Rings remained round.

[SpaceFanatic64]

Wow, as if Haumea’s texture wasn’t already detailed enough!

[Gurren Lagann]

Next thing that happens is Makemake and MK2 getting 8K textures...

[SpaceFanatic64]

Maybe, we’ll just see.

[Art Blos]

Added new 4K-texture and 200K-polygonal model of Phoebe.

[Gurren Lagann]

Phoebe?! That's my favorite moon!

[SpaceFanatic64]

Awesome! Next you're going to tell me that you successfully implemented the models of the small moons of Saturn!