Blog

My Moon animations wanted to be improved further, so I added two missing things: The libration - the wobble of the Moon - and the earthshine - the sunlight reflected from Earth. The former is already working quite well, the latter could be further strengthened.

A short and unfinished video that was made during the search for a Povray rocket launch site. I have no idea if the macro collection behind it will ever be finished, but I still wanted to present the first test flight in advance as a teaser.

I created a lite version of the current HYG star catalogue with 120,000 entries. It contains fewer columns, reduced accuracies and is half the size of the original. The result can be downloaded as a SQL import and in the form of Povray arrays.

I have written a modest tutorial on how to build realistic-looking planets with Povray using two images and 60 lines of code. If high-resolution image material is used, the results look better than photographs taken by amateur astronomers with the most expensive equipment in the world.

Finally I have a decent Povray package ready for release. It contains a macro that uses high-resolution images to create an almost photorealistic image of the Milky Way. Only a few lines of code, but it really makes a difference.

Two new pages for my somewhat empty Povray section, which deal with the topics of tutorials and freely accessible script-collections. Both listings are still small, but if I find new websites, I will add them. Let's see where that ends.

I have already published some renderings of our Earth-Moon, last month I tried the same with planet Mars. NASA has also put high-resolution maps of Mars on the Internet, with the help of which I created a movie and close-ups of interesting areas.

After creating two HD movies of the dark side last month, it was now the turn of maps, global views and images of craters. It has some really beautiful areas on the far side of the moon, which I wasn't aware of before.

Small comparison between an analog image of the Lunar crater Plato from the 90s, and a recent rendering of the same area. The difference is quite ... fiercely.

It is not really dark at all. On the contrary, due to countless craters and the lack of mare it is even brighter than the side faced to Earth. Two rerendered videos - one in 2D and the other in 3D - should confirm this.

Two more videos of the Moon are ready. Both show the crater Copernicus in different magnifications.

In the last few days I've been playing around with Povray again, realistic pictures and videos of the moon have come out. Global views, enlargements around Plato crater, and of course stereo versions.

With this new macro-package you can create long and complex animation, without using clock and clock_on and something else.

I created a small, tiny spacecraft that helps me to test other macros on a fine and fast way.

Hosts some macros to create easy and fast to render skys, planets, sun and horizons.

The first of my bigger packages is now ready to use. The macros inside can help you in many situations.