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Experimenting with LRO altimetry


cloudnine

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These are great animations, thankyou! 

If you're in the mood for another one, doing a lunar X animation would be pretty nice :)

Not on the same level but I had a go with blender to do some image rectification on lunar craters (mapping the image onto a sphere and then re-positioning the camera) - it worked well but I just haven't gotten around to doing more with that.

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Hi Bartosz,

Looking good. Especially like the first one and the impossible illumination!

Nice to see the albedo info overlaid. How did you create this? Was it using Blender or something else entirely? Very interested to know :-)

Martin

Thanks. I wrote my own OpenGL renderer.

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Thanks for all the kind comments. You are allowed to say this is getting boring... I won't be insulted  :icon_biggrin: I love doing them, partly because they'll form part of a short series of talks I'm giving locally, and partly because I'm learning so much more about lunar landscapes. I'm starting to justify to myself that the lack of real lunar albedo encourages me to go out and observe, however that's just an excuse to cover over my ineptitude with Blender.

I'm currently in communication with a guy that has written a couple of books I bought last year who says that LTVT (Lunar Terminator Visualization Tool) is a really good tool for visualising what one can see for a particular date/time/location. I will investigate shortly as it is one thing to watch the shadows dance across the surface on a simulation, but another thing to identify exactly the date and time when one can see it in reality. 

Joseki: Lunar X is on the list!  :happy11:

Martin

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Thanks. I wrote my own OpenGL renderer.

That's really cool that you wrote it yourself. Are you able to use the highest resolution LRO GDR datasets? I'm having trouble with 512 pixels/degree resolution in Blender so am having to resort to 128 px/deg for the moment. Just in case you don't know where the datasets are, they are here:

http://imbrium.mit.edu/BROWSE/LOLA_GDR/CYLINDRICAL.html

If you do decide to download then the server seems to fail if you try and download more than one thing at a time.

Martin

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I'd never heard of Lunar X til Joseki mentioned it. It's a great trick of the light and one that I hope to observe in reality providing the clouds stay away at the right time!

It reveals itself about 11 seconds into the vid, with Rupes Recta making an appearance 17 seconds onwards.

Martin

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That's really cool that you wrote it yourself. Are you able to use the highest resolution LRO GDR datasets?

Thanks. Sorry for late reply. I'm using 11520x5760 texures for both albedo and elevation data, which is only 32 degrees per pixel. Because of that, I can't really create closeup renderings, just full disk images with a maximum resolution of 25-30 megapixels. I have all the highest quality LRO datasets on my disk, but I'll need to rewrite my renderer so that it doesn't preload the entire surface of the Moon, just the currently required portions.

Bartosz

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Thanks. Sorry for late reply. I'm using 11520x5760 texures for both albedo and elevation data, which is only 32 degrees per pixel. Because of that, I can't really create closeup renderings, just full disk images with a maximum resolution of 25-30 megapixels. I have all the highest quality LRO datasets on my disk, but I'll need to rewrite my renderer so that it doesn't preload the entire surface of the Moon, just the currently required portions.

Bartosz

No need to apologise :-) for not replying immediately. We all have lives to live.

The highest resolution data can be a bit disjointed, i.e. showing the difference in texture between different LRO swaths, so there is only limited benefit in going in all the way (at least that's my take on it as a novice). I also have problems with memory usage using Blender, which has trouble using more than about 6 million vertices. Saying that, it can take up to 1m20s to render a single frame making a movie about 16+ hours to make.

Clear skies!

Martin

P.S. Had a little fun with Messier and Messier A anaglyph this evening, lifted from APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091211.html

Note the image is not my handiwork, only the animation!

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OK. I've been experimenting with 3D anaglyph sunrise animations. I'm not entirely convinced that it passes quality control as, when you have red/cyan highlights floating over the blackness of shadows it becomes a slight distraction when 'looking through the screen' to see the crater within. 

What do you think? (Obviously use red/cyan glasses!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrrRHdz1HD4

Martin

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OK. I've removed the previous 3D video of Clavius sunrise and sorted out the red/cyan separation issue by tweaking depth and interoccular distance. I'm much happier with the following video.

Martin

P.S. Sorry for deleting the previous one. Thought I could also delete the post but it is now set in stone.

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I've put 3D to one side for the moment as it doesn't really give the effect I want. In the meantime, here is an animation showing the appearance of Curtiss Cross... blink and you'll miss it!

I've also attached a still from the video at 13 seconds showing the cross.

post-17050-0-78834200-1453033282_thumb.p

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OK folks, final offering for the time being as I may be developing this to be a more useful tool....

Here is the sunrise over the inky pool of Copernicus, in 3D (red/cyan), while moving around the crater...

 

 

Enjoy!

Martin

 

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