Animation Test : Terminator Line

Here is an animation I put together this morning. I think it turned out pretty well for my skill level.

Download (right click to "save as")
Quicktime 30sec 5mb


Would enjoy you guys' feedback. I know the planet isn't glowing and all, but I am still just a novice with this 3d Animation.

 

That's pretty good. The only thing I'd say to work on is a planetary glow, but since you said you can't do that yet, then it's a good job!

Aaron

 

I'd like to see a little more brightness from the sun. I hate to say the word but flare. Just a little glare to make it seem more realistic. Clouds on the planet will make it much more relistic as well. The city lights shouldn't illuminiate the night side so much. I could imagine it a little darker but light enough so you coud tell that it was the planet and not just stars.

The big yellow flare doesn't look good IMHO. I do see a small blue flare that goes across Saudi. I'd like to see more streaking flares that go out from the sun in a circle, or a just a big spotlight in the eyes effect.

I'll tell you right now that I'm still learning the basics as well and you've done a great job so far. I see room for improvement and I'm sure you'll learn some new tricks tweaking this. Good job.

 

where are the clouds? looks pretty good so far

 

The camera move great, and the sound effects are really cool. Two things I noticed:

1. I'm pretty sure your bump map is backwards. It appears that the oceans are the higher part of the bump, and the land is depressed into it. Invert your bump map, and turn it down a bit. From space you would not be able to make out the contours, except perhaps in the mountains.
2. Your planet is solid. It needs hazing up in some way. Perhaps desaturate the color map a little, or add another spherical layer with some white transparency and clouds.

Nice work so far!

-tm

 

Grab some clouds, kill the yellow lens flare, figure out why city lights can be seen from space and tell me what this has to do with a 'Terminator Line' and you will be set

 

Eh, city lights can be seen from space...

-tm

 

You are kidding me!

I have NEVER seen pictures of the earth with that kind of light eminating from its surfacce.

 

I imagine you haven't... Have you ever tried to take a quick snapshot of the night sky? You won't see any stars in your photo... Ever notice there aren't any stars in the Moon landing films?

You need long exposure to photograph Earth's dark side from space (and see anything, that is). Since the shuttle orbits the Earth every 90 minutes or so, they aren't in one spot long enough to photograph dim lights on an otherwise dark planet. The astronauts see them, however.

-tm

 

i like it. But one thing.. the lens flare leaves to fastIMO

 

ok, it's driving me crazy, Where does "Terminator Line" come into play?

 

You can, indeed, see the earths light from space. My physics teacher has a poster in his room of the world at night. It's really cool. Check this out:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg

 

That has to be doctored.

 

Or it could be from a geosyncronous (big word that I have difficulty spelling) satellite taking many stills and averaging them all together.

 

I actually wasn't going for a completely realistic animation. I realize that the city lights are not visible from space like that and that the flare could use some work as well as more screen time.

I don't even know what a bump map is, all I did was texture a sphere with an image of the earth and I chose to use the one without clouds because it looked cooler. But I could mask the cloud image that NASA has in some areas to create more realism. That is actually how I did the whole surface changing from night to day, I took one whole image with the city lights and masked it onto the whole image of earth in daytime without clouds.

The "terminator line" is the line at which night ends and day begins.

Thanks for your comments. I think that I will now try to create a few things to make this animation more realistic.

 

you need a layer of clouds... just make a sphere with a transparency and bump map, and make it a smidgen bigger (for example: if the diameter of your planet is 100 units, the cloud layer diameter should be something like 100.5 units.)

 

I don't even know what a bump map is a bump map is a texture which makes an object look like is bumpy! like for a brickwall it makes the bricks stick out

 

That picture of earth is amazing, but why is California so dark?

Pete

 

Well, perhaps I will learn how to use the bump map thing in blender.

And I don't know why California is dark...just the way it came in the NASA texture. You should check out the url to that Blue Marble group. They have some really cool earth textures in high resolutions. They actually came to my college last year and did a HD Projector presentation with all of the animations they've done using their data of the earth that has been entirely scanned by satellites or the shuttle, can't remember which. Anyway, they can make animations (topographical if they want) of anywhere in earth. It was amazing in High Definition. Everyone should have a HD Projector in their home.

 

you'll need to find a releif shaded map of the states, preferable with white as high and black as low (gray as no change).

 

I like it. Your stars move too fast though and the are too abundant.

 

On the lights from space issue:
This page gives you even more detail and interactivity.

Have fun!

 

Hehe, I don't want to go overboard, but thanks for the tip.