[X] My Assistant

[Nirgal]

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 ... 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

[hendric]

Nirgal, you win the UMSF internets. Now just get Scooterlord's MER model into that, and hook up with StephenV2 to get an IMAX movie finished!

[djellison]

hook up with StephenV2 to get an IMAX movie finished!

StephenV2 is militantly opposed to using CGI in his IMAX movie. Thus, despite the beauty, accuracy, splendor and grandeur of Nirgal's amazing work.....StephenV2 would not, by his own rules be able to use it.