Illustrated Guide to the Marches

[Andrew Boulton]

I've got so many projects on the go I suppose one more won't make much difference...

I thought I'd have a go at rendering one of every size planet.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

 

[Andrew Boulton]

 

[Andrew Boulton]

 

[Malenfant]

ooo, great stuff! What renderer you using again?

 

[mike wightman]

Great work once again Andrew

How long does it take for you to do each one?

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Rendered using Cinema 4D - http://www.maxon.net/index_e.html

I've cheated a lot by using LunarCell to do the textures.

http://www.flamingpear.com/lunarcell.html

I started this last night. Maybe an hour then and a couple more today to get to this point. The third one took longest because of the atmosphere.

 

[kafka47]

WOW! Now, if this were to be used in a gaming product for Traveller we would definitely begin to set a new standard. Andrew, please tell me that you have been approached and offers made for a dead tree product using these images.

With all the advances in Computer imaging, I wonder if photo-realism is the way to go for Traveller?

 

[Andrew Boulton]

If someone wants to whisper in Hunter's ear, I'm open to offers...

 

[kafka47]

Heck, Andrew, I wouldn't whisper, I would want to SHOUT this out. What gaming needs to break out of a certain mould and maybe your photo realism holds the key. Traveller has always prided itself to be on the cutting edge...costs for printing lowering all the time...can't see why I beautiful product such as what you are working on could not putting in the stakes for an exciting future.

 

[Malenfant]

Hell yeah. CGI graphics works wonders for scifi I think. Especially for ships and planets - just look at what Jesse DeGraff and Scarecrow do with the expensive packages, and what Andrew and myself have done with the cheaper ones.

I really must investigate Lunarcell...

 

[jonathonbarton]

Anyone looked at Celestia recently?

I'm trying to figure out how to start a universe from scratch, with no "real" stars...but it's got some pretty cool features that you can play around with...

 

[Malenfant]

Yeah. Celestia is very adaptable, but it's difficult to start a universe from scratch in it. You can remove the stars.dat file I think, but you end up with nothing at all there so your universe will be very empty.

You need to get the 1.4.0pre6 prerelease to get the latest stuff (including support for multiple light sources and orbital barycentres), but the SSC/STC idea is really cool indeed.

Unfortunately while there are some people on the Celestia forums who are helpful, there are also some developers who are not - they have that snobby linux thing going there. And the user side of the forum is being swamped by people who don't actually give a damn about realism at all. Celestia is supposed to be an educational tool to promote realistic visualisation of the universe - not a means to throw that out of the window.

But the program itself is excellent. Unfortunately its creator is on hiatus at the moment and is impossible to get hold of, leaving it to the developers to do something. And currently, there's nobody doing Windows development at all.

Here's the link to the Windows 1.4.0pre6 installer.

 

[parmasson]

Hot damn! Even if it was all done on one plane to correspond with the 2D maps most of us use I would pay money for a program that would let me do anything close to that. Being able to "tour" the OTU or our own systems would be double extra special cool. Hell, imagine if there were even little space stations and ships zipping back and forth just for fun! *Sigh,* as benevolent as the good people at QLI are I am sure the license and manpower would be prohibitively expensive.

 

[kafka47]

Hey, before this idea runs out of control...I would love to see a visual product on the computer but I was thinking rather the insertion of these graphics into new sector books. Problem would be they might start resembling one another so, it could be something like the 77 Natural Wonders of Chartered Space with a nice write-up with adventure hooks to match the picture.

 

[Jadawin]

NBOS's AstroSynthesis is what you're after. 3D mapper, but.....

 

[Malenfant]

Er, by the way Andrew, please continue to churn out the planet pics while we're all gabbling at eachother

Meanwhile, I should probably show off the pic I did for my Traveller page:

It's the Brown Dwarf at Antares, with a Scout ship in the foreground leaving for the jump point. The BD is illuminated by Antares itself, which is 2000 AU off to the left...

 

[flykiller]

 

[Malenfant]

flykiller - enclose your image links in a [ IMG ] [ /IMG ] tag (remove the spaces in the square brackets) to make them visible here. (and don't use the <> brackets).

I like the format there, with the picture and the J6 diagram and system details. Is that something you came up with yourself?

 

[flykiller]

thanks.

yes, it is. I wanted something that would show basic system location and contents at a glance, and give a recognizable image of the world - "put a face on it" - while fitting onto a 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper. I imagine them as being the left-hand page of an open notebook, while the right-hand page has a basic text description of the main world.

looking at them all in a row on this blank white space it occurs to me that the system listing needs to be brought down level with the top of the planet image. I also need to change the system listing to a type font so it all lines up. I'll work it out.

BS means biosphere. RA means resource accessibility. H means habitable, h means marginally habitable.