Animated Marsglobes

[Mahnmut]

Hello Together,
I dug out my neverending Green Mars Project again, some day I am planning to have places on the surface also, like Cocateho in his "Cold jungle"-thread. But for now I stay out of the atmosphere (which there is, I just let it away in order to decrease rendertime)
please click thumbnails for animation!
[attach=1]

[attach=2]

What do you think about the surface reflectivity properties? I find it very hard to find reference images of the earth, most you get from google are CGI these days. and though I am quite content with my land, I don´t seem to get the ocean surface right. although it looks much better with atmo.

[attach=3]

[attach=4]

Before I get much further, I have got at least two technical problems to solve:
maybe easy:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=15031.0

Somewhat harder:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=14724.0

C&C are welcome as always!
Best Regards,
J

[bigben]

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/oceans/oceanviews/oceanviews_index.shtml
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/

[Mahnmut]

Hm, 50 views and one reply?
Thanks Bigben for the reference.
But you guys know that you can click on the thumbnails, don´t you?
Maybe my little globes simply aren´t that impressing, but even then I would like to hear why.
Best regards,
J

[Dune]

Yeah, Jan, it's a bit quieter at the forum than a year ago; not a lot of response sometimes. More posters suffer from lack of enthusiasm after their hard work. I don't know why.

[jo]

Hi Jan, I think those are looking pretty cool.

[TheBadger]

I like them too. Wish as Im sure you do that they were much bigger.

Cool project.

[Jo Kariboo]

Nice experimentation!

[Mahnmut]

Thanks for your kind comments!

Dune, you are surely right and I shouldn´t complain, there are a lot of images out there I liked very much without taking the time to comment.
Thanks Jo.
Badger, at least for the ones without atmo I got the renders for 600x800, I just reduced them because of the filesize.
The ones with atmo I rendered small because they take much longer.
And Jo Kariboo, yes, I am still experimenting with my green Mars. at the moment I am trying out first closeup-shots of which "martian surprise is a very early example. Maybe someday I´ll reach the richness of your great images in my Martian landscape, but that´s still far away.

Thanks to all,
best regards,
J