Inspired by my short lunar jaunt over as well as around the lava flows and craters of the Mare Imbrium last week, I thought it would be fun to produce a 3d map in Blender. Unlike the MOLA (Mars Orbilter Laser Altimeter) data that you can easily lay your hands on for producing renders in Blender and Terragen, no such lunar data is available for download as far as I am aware. This meant I was forced to improvise using a NASA photograph that I processed in Photoshop and then used to generate a height map in blender. It’s not 100% precise, but it’s a good enough facsimle so that the major landmarks can still be made out. Anyway, it was fun to produce and perhaps it might even be of some use.
Tags: Blender, Mare Imbrium, Moon
You did that in an afternoon? Amazing! I’ve always loved those CGI planetscapes. Truly professional work. Really cool.
Thanks! I’m going to try and do more of these kind of ‘moonscapes’ in the future. Blender is such a fantastic application. if your interested in creating 3D graphics I’d really recommend trying it out.
There is actually laser altimeter data available for the moon. You can check it out here
http://wwwpds.wustl.edu/missions/CLEMENTINE/gravtopo.html
Hi Jason. I’ve been looking to get my hands on this kind of data for a while now. Thanks for the link and your comment!
Ewan