[X] My Assistant

[FordPrefect]

Hello to all!

Long time forum lurker, first time poster. Being enthusiastic about spaceflight and space in general since my childhood, though having a long break in my twenties, now I am again deep in this fascinating subject. Three years ago I discovered Orbiter - a free spaceflight simulator by Dr. Martin Schweiger and after that I was hooked again.
And I am so thankful for all the gorgeous free information we can find on the internet regarding this hobby, and this forum looks to me a nice place with plenty of very knowledgable space exploration experts - its just excellent to come in here and gaze at you folks' work and analysis!

Sorry if this post is somehow off-topic, but I don't know where else this post would fit better. So Moderators, if you feel this has to be moved to another subforum feel free to do so.

Now my inquiry: Has anyone or NASA, Ciclops or anyone else ever tried to compile a Saturn map including the current ring shadows all in hi-resolution? I ask for this because I was thinking about creating a texture map, that would make look Saturn much more realistic in the Orbiter simulation. There are already hi-res ring textures available, so the only thing missing for Saturn would be such a texture. Perhaps there is a method to create this articificially with photoshop, but I guess projection of the shadows on a flat map seems quite challenging - at least to me. I would simply love to have a full planet texture including the current shadows on Saturns northern hemisphere along with the fascinating blue hue...

Any help or feedback is appreciated. Thanks to all!

Cheers

[djellison]

Well - with 3ds Max (the package I use at work ) one could mock up all this and then ask 3ds max to 'bake' the textures using lighting, and thus generate a Saturn map that included the ring shadows....but I wouldn't know where to start in getting realistic shadow projection.

Doug