Hello all,
I'm a student working on a short animated piece for a final project, and as it takes place in deep space I needed a way to render starfields. I heard of Celestia from my Astronomy professor, and managed to have version 1.3.1 for OS X installed on a G4 at my college's computer lab. So far, the program appears to be more or less what I was looking for, and I've managed to acquire a few sample shots to toy with and I truly appreciate how Celestia allows me to easily create an accurate depiction of space that I can still fine-tune to what I need in the film. Unfortunately, however, I have been having a little trouble with the controls, specifically those regarding capturing images in the program.
All of the screenshots I have taken so far have been with OS X's Grab utility, all of them full-screen captures. The reason I had to resort to this is because I have not been able to find any export commands under the File or any other menu, where the online documentation claims it should be. Unfortunately, there is no built-in help available for the program, and I cannot find where the technician put the readme files. Likewise, the advertised keyboard shortcuts do not work for me: pressing "F10" results in OS X going into a bizarre "select-window" kind of mode, where the background darkens and windows are covered with a translucent blue tint and a label appropriate to their parent program. I have been able to find no native support for image capture whatsoever.
A few other options in the menus also appear to be greyed out, such as the "Save" option under the File menu, the Star catalog and a few other features that escape my memory at the moment. Is the OS X version of Celestia incomplete, as the lack of help files indicate? Or could it have to do with the lab's version of OS X (I believe it is Panthter)? I would greatly appreciate help with this problem. Thank you.
Trouble with screenshots and movie capture in OS X
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HankR
I'm sorry to have to tell you that the MacOS X version of Celestia does not yet include still image or movie capture. You should be able to make snapshots from the screen by pressing "command-shift-4", which allows you to press-drag to define a capture rectangle and creates a file called "Picture <n>" on your desktop. But for movie capture, unless you can find an external utility program to do it, or you have access to the Windows version of Celestia, I'm afraid you're out of luck.
- Hank
- Hank