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A Tribute to Opportunity and her Epic Journey, Flying Over Endeavour Crater
Nirgal
post Aug 27 2011, 04:21 PM
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Although this is still a work in progress, I would like to share with you a preview of a new project I'm working on:

Flying Over Endeavour Crater - A Tribute to Opportunity and her Epic Journey

(The video is best viewed in HD resolution (720p), fullscreen and volume turned up for the background music.

Click here for a (still experimental) excerpt as anaglyph (view in HD if possible)

Here is some background info for the technically interested:

The whole DEM consists of about 3 billions of triangles, modelling Endeavour's west rim at full HiRISE resolution of 25cm/pixel. Unlike the standard method (of draping hi-res 2D imagery over a lower-res 3D DEM), the new technique provides real 3D geometry down to the highest resolution level (i.e. 0.25 m/pixel for HiRISE). This results in a more realistic visualization because each single pixel contributes genuine 3D information - as you can see for example in the low sun images where each pixel is, in principle, capable of casting its own tiny shadow.

Rendering this kind of DEMs has been a real challange, though. At 0.25 m post spacing, the models are about 16 times larger than the already huge standard HiRISE DEMs at 1 m/pixel. So together with the mosaics of several full-res CTX frames ( that I'm merging the DEMs with for context ) this results in DEMs of several billions of triangles. Unfortunately this seems to be too much to render with conventional 3D programs such as 3ds-max that are usually limited to some dozens of millions of polygons, but can't readily handle several billions. This is why I decided to write a specialized gigapixel-ready terrain visualization software with a raytracing kernel for realistic soft shadows and global illumination.

As this is a rather time consuming work, it is not finished yet (still missing color support and the movie processing chain is still too slow for producing longer flyovers ... )

Hardware is another limiting factor (currently I'm running out of RAM on 24 GB blink.gif ... but the new gear (48 Gigs + 12 cores) is already on the christmas wishlist...

Nevertheless the first results look promising so I thougt I'd share some impressions with the UMSF community
smile.gif


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antoniseb
post Aug 28 2011, 10:56 PM
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Very nice. What software tools did you use to make it?
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PFK
post Aug 28 2011, 11:12 PM
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Good grief, that's astonishing and inspirational - great stuff!
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Posts in this topic
- Nirgal   A Tribute to Opportunity and her Epic Journey   Aug 27 2011, 04:21 PM
- - mhoward   Astonishing!   Aug 27 2011, 04:39 PM
|- - ugordan   Spectacular!   Aug 27 2011, 04:49 PM
- - eoincampbell   "Epic" indeed!   Aug 27 2011, 05:13 PM
- - Lucas   Wow! That is truly awesome and inspiring! ...   Aug 27 2011, 05:13 PM
|- - MoreInput   Absolute fascinating and awesome, Nirgal! Tha...   Aug 27 2011, 09:35 PM
|- - ustrax   in good plain portuguese...f***-**!!!   Aug 27 2011, 10:34 PM
- - Oersted   Ah, I thought that would be c******! Ustrax......   Aug 27 2011, 10:50 PM
- - siravan   Excellent job! Do you use a flat plane or a sp...   Aug 27 2011, 11:18 PM
|- - walfy   Some of the best flyovers of Mars I've seen ye...   Aug 28 2011, 03:59 AM
- - CosmicRocker   Oh, wow! I am speechless.   Aug 28 2011, 04:01 AM
- - gregson   Beautiful!!! But i think the vertical ...   Aug 28 2011, 09:42 AM
- - Nirgal   Thank you very much for the nice comments on my wo...   Aug 28 2011, 11:34 AM
|- - tedstryk   Simply amazing!   Aug 28 2011, 01:12 PM
|- - Oersted   Thanks for your comprehensive explanations Nirgal...   Aug 28 2011, 10:46 PM
|- - Nirgal   QUOTE (Oersted @ Aug 29 2011, 12:46 AM) ....   Aug 29 2011, 09:39 PM
|- - Oersted   QUOTE (Nirgal @ Aug 29 2011, 10:39 PM) An...   Aug 30 2011, 11:17 PM
- - Stu   Stunning, just... stunning...   Aug 28 2011, 02:30 PM
- - JayB   I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time...   Aug 28 2011, 03:19 PM
- - neo56   Absolutely amazing ! The HiRISE team will cert...   Aug 28 2011, 03:39 PM
- - djellison   I know just how hard that was to do.... it's b...   Aug 28 2011, 04:45 PM
- - nprev   Absolutely wondrous, Nirgal; thank you so much for...   Aug 28 2011, 05:12 PM
|- - MahFL   Stupendous.   Aug 28 2011, 05:30 PM
- - machi   It's gorgeous work!   Aug 28 2011, 08:36 PM
- - antoniseb   Very nice. What software tools did you use to make...   Aug 28 2011, 10:56 PM
|- - PFK   Good grief, that's astonishing and inspiration...   Aug 28 2011, 11:12 PM
- - Bjorn Jonsson   Wow, this is stunning, very near the top of my lis...   Aug 29 2011, 12:24 AM
- - Zeke4ther   Beautiful....and breathtaking. Can't wait for ...   Aug 29 2011, 05:44 AM
- - Robert S   I'm inpressed and amazed! Beautiful! ...   Aug 29 2011, 08:31 AM
- - Leither   Großartig!! Truly awesome......words fail...   Aug 29 2011, 04:48 PM
- - Nirgal   Thanks again for all the overwhelming feedback and...   Aug 29 2011, 09:29 PM
- - Sym05   Simply fantastic. Thank you! QUOTE (Nirgal ...   Aug 30 2011, 02:36 PM
- - hendric   Nirgal, you win the UMSF internets. Now just get S...   Aug 31 2011, 02:23 PM
|- - DFinfrock   QUOTE (hendric @ Aug 31 2011, 03:23 PM) N...   Sep 1 2011, 01:15 AM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (hendric @ Aug 31 2011, 07:23 AM) h...   Sep 1 2011, 04:53 AM
|- - Nirgal   yes, making animations to be shown, e.g. in Planet...   Sep 1 2011, 08:50 AM
- - hendric   I understand that's his view point on the curr...   Sep 1 2011, 03:12 PM
- - AdamH   Just wanted to add my kudos. Absolutely stunning w...   Oct 4 2011, 08:50 PM


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