Topic awaiting preservation: Trying to make a better world.

I've been playing with the planet over the weekend, so I thought I'd show you what I've done so far. It is far from finished but I'm at a stage where another point of view or seven would help.
This is the first attempt:

Basically I got the flattened map [2048x1024] from NASA (we're such good friends) and then made a circle selection and copied it on another layer, nudged the map to the right and then copied another selection a bit further on and pasted it to another new layer. repeated this etc etc till I had covered a full rotation.

I am so bad at explaining these things
On this one I added a little atmosphere layer and spherized the other layers a bit more.


I tend not to plan these things out in advance, rather I learn from trial and error. This is not always the best way, but it tends to work for me most of the time.
On this next attempt I wanted to add more frames to get a smoother rotation and also a bit of shadow.
I increased the amount af spherize as well but I must have miscalculated how many nudges to do for each layer/frame so there is a slight stutter in the rotation. I also decided to rotate in the opposite direction, which way does it turn again?



Has anyone created anything similar, if so what technique did you use?
Any suggestions for a better world ravenously consumed.
:::tao:::
[ed] all this spinning is a bit much on the old eyes, sorry 'bout that. [/ed]

(Edited by Tao on 08-01-2004 23:47)

Would be kind kewl if you stopped the globe on your country and zoomed in a little on your general home town area with perhaps a little red indicator flashing.............if your upto it, a little satellite hovering about would be interesting too !.

But as it stands i like the 3rd one best would be great if you could slow the whole spinning down to a mere crawl

Great job though

Great work Tao! Mebbe a clouds layer? And exactly which way does the world rotate?

Don't know if its my computer, but it looks like you have an extra frame in the last animation.

---
"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
><>

Good start Tao. Double the frames to slow it down. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Your rotation should reflect that. Try some clouds to make the globe even more realistic.

I did a rotating flame once using the basically the same technique as you did. The biggest difference is I did not nudge each layer. In the Image Ready animation, I created two frames and nudged the second frame as far as I needed it to go. I then tweened the two frames and deleted the last frame. Saves you from having to keep count. Tweening fills in all the nudges you need for each frame.


Life's too short to put up with bad art.

Good job Tao ! It's definitely looking good

Just a few comments :

The Earth turns from West To East (so that the sun indeed rises in the East), the good rotation is the one of the two first globes. Therefore, the shadows should be placed on the left side of the globe, whereas the lighting that comes from the sun should be on the right side.

And if you're looking for realism, the 'dark' part should be even more darker, to symbolize the night on that side of the planet. It would be another idea ; to show a part of the Earth (or even completely) at night, with the light of the cities outlining the continents.

Ah yes, you also have to remember one thing ; when looked from the above, our good old Earth can be quite deceiving since it is mostly covered with clouds. As Ruku suggested, having a light cloud layer would add to the realism of the sig... Yet I hardly see how you could achieve this effect without hiding most of the ground or having a too repetitive animation.

The sig is in good way though, keep the good work !

Edit : I just remembered Mahjqa did something similar... Take a look at the sigs 24 and 26. It might help...

----
If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.



(Edited by Moon Shadow on 08-02-2004 14:08)

Just a quickie to say thanks for the advice, suggestions, information and overall good vibes and warm feelings
What a plonker I am forgetting which way the earth turns in relation to the sun! (Feet on the ground, head in the sky, mind somewhere else altogether).
I'm going to try out a few of the suggestions especially the tweening one, that should save a lot of time, thanks Moth.
Monsieur Moon, I'd forgotten Mahjqa had done a planet, now that I've seen his masterpieces I realise how much work has to go into these things to get them looking so good.
axleclarkeuk, I like that idea of yours (zooming in), but I think I'll leave that for another sig.
Ruku, that "stutter" in the rotation is due to the last frame not being spaced the same distance as the others due to my lack of planning.
Hopefully I'll return with a better version in my next post.

:::tao::: ::cell::

I like the idea of a axleclarkeuk. Very nice job so far and I think that a cloud layer would be disturbin because it would be hard to animate and it would make it repetive while the turning movement is natural. A moving light source would be cool. (sun)

Just switch the sides of light and shadow... BLAH i cant explain anything.

quote:

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The Earth turns from West To East (so that the sun indeed rises in the East), the good rotation is the one of the two first globes. Therefore, the shadows should be placed on the left side of the globe, whereas the lighting that comes from the sun should be on the right side.

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While you're correct about the rotation, the issue of lighting is way off. It doesn't matter which side the light is coming from, as it could be either side, or from the front or back (and either slightly above or slight below) depending on which side of the planet you are observing from (and what time of year it is).

http://www34.brinkster.com/teamearth/Index2.html

I didn't make any of these, but here are some examples for you to look at.

(Edited by Gilbert Nolander on 08-02-2004 19:19)

Your right of course DL-44, there again if the POV was from the sun then the Earth would always be fully illuminated with no shadows, but we would spend so much time hopping around trying not to burn our toes that we would not care
Thanks for the link GN, I like visiting your site. You have quite a collection of planets there, perhaps if I get my world looking good enough (heh) you could add it to the collection
It's a hard job keeping the filesize down, there are 25 frames here, still I think I need to add more frames perhaps even twice as many, erm,,, perhaps not. Also I need to experiment with the spherize amounts, I've used 65% on this one. Oh yeah Moth, I can't tween the animation here because I need to spherize each frame/layer.


[ed]darn capitalization file names [/ed]

(Edited by Tao on 08-02-2004 22:49)

I think the shade is way too contrasted and makes it lose the spheric illusion.

__________________________________
Something else

Sexy Demoness cel

Tao: Brilliant animation. IMHO it'd look better with a bit more spherize. And since the beginning I miss a cloud cover. Oh! And while staring at the earth rotating above the textarea, I just remembered the NASA released a map of the earth by night. You could use it for the shaded area of the earth

"I can't tween the animation here because I need to spherize each frame/layer." I thought I wouldn't have used the Spherize, but a Displace Map like I did for my animated flag ( Animated flag ). That way, it's pretty easy and quick to adjust the bulge effect on the animation.

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Tao, sorry I wasn't clearer on the tweening. Try this. Tween the frames then save as an animated gif. Close it. Then open the gif in image ready first then go over to photoshop. Each frame will be a separate layer. Use a circular selection then apply the Sperize filter to each layer. Go back to image ready and verify that your layers are active in the correct order then save as an animated gif again.

Poi, interesting idea about the displace map. Why don't you work up a globe using the technique so we can all determine which filter works best for this effect? I would do it but I have to visit a surgeon reeeeaaalll early in the morning. I hate getting up at 6 am.


Life's too short to put up with bad art.

Thanks guys there are some excellent suggestions there, all of which I am going to try. I just hope I am up to the task
Alevice I am going to change the shaded area, see next bit.

poi, yes I have just dl'd the "nightime" map so I will put that on a linked layer over the "daytime" map and see if I can include that in the shaded areas. Also that link you gave me to the animated flag thread, reminded me that I have lost all the images I had in there. luckily I have them stored so will have to see about putting them back and finishing the thread. I still have't got your technique down yet, despite your efforts in producing a great walkthrough tut'. I'll give it another whirl on the planet perhaps. I aslo agree with increasing the spherize amount.

InI, I'll try the bump map/lighting effect as well, I hadn't really considered that, nice one.

Moth, I see now what you mean, silly me. I will definitely try that method too, I am such a plodding traveller on the great learning curve.
I've got a lot of other stuff to do today, so I may not be able to get another "attempt" up till tomorrow, but I prefer to carry on working on something while the ideas are fresh in my mind "striking while the iron is hot"
Thanks again for all your help, you guys (and gals of course) really rock my world

[quick note] I'll try to make a (better?) world tonight [/quick note]

I would say that the whole looks pretty impressive - but it is still spinning way to fast - maybe if you slow it down another 50% that should do the trick?

Just a thought from a newbie

I wish I had not had this stupid idea to start a thread on a project that I had hardly started. In future I'm going to wait untill I have more or less finished it before I post.
After 4 hours repeatedly blah blah, layer apon layer, yada yada, PhotoShop freezing crash bang. ........................ * ................. Scuse me
You have to be really organised to successfully manage fifty odd layers using displacement maps and lighting effects, then switching between PS and IR . I guess I'm just not that kind of animal.
This is the best I could come up with to-day. It has about fifty frames, weighs in at about 140kb, that' the lightest I could get it after resizing and reducing colour whatsit.
and I'm not at all happy with it..
I think I should just post it up and stop whimpering on like an old git

Heh, this is version 8c, I think I should leave it for a day, before I annoy allthebodies here with my "woe is me" posts.
I think I'm suffering from animation madness
medic

Ignoring the non transparent orange shade (), it looks awesome.

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

There, there. Here are some nice black pills to make you feel all better. It'll all wait until tomorrow.


Life's too short to put up with bad art.

It's marvelous what a good nights sleep (and a couple of black pills) can do for one's demeanour.
Yeah, I think I overcooked ^that^ planet while I was a bit tired and emotional.
Ah well, never mind. Let's see what to-day brings.

Well I've gone and done it now, my web address has changed and I can't edit all the other posts I've made, whoops! So all my worlds have vanished heh.
here's the last one I did

It's a bit late for me to much about it now sorry about that folks, I'll try to rectify the situation as best I can tomorrow....

Here goes what I got so far.



Sorry for the lack of frames There's only 16 frames. I plan to :

• double the number of frames,
• increase the area of the earth unlit
• rotate the map and increase the "spherize" factor of the DisplaceMap to get rid of that "dull scroll effect".

poi, excellent stuff, the cloulds really do add another dimension.
I'm away from the computer for a few days, so I will not be able to work on any more updates for a while. I can't wait to see what your planet looks like with some more frames poi nice one.


(Edited by Tao on 08-05-2004 12:10)

Tao: Thank you. I just made a 32frames version, with the rotation, and a halo.



[edit] test with the dark background : [/edit]



(Edited by poi on 08-06-2004 01:46)

Dead smart. I suppose it can be put down to 'artistic license' that we are still able to see the planet at all while between us and the sun.

Is it possible to create clouds that rotate at a different speed to the planet? It does not necessarily mean more frames...

You could but the file size probably would become too large.


Life's too short to put up with bad art.

quote:

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White Hawk said:
Is it possible to create clouds that rotate at a different speed to the planet?

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That was/is in 2nd position in my TODO list. The 1st item was to regenerate ( with PHP and GD ) the DisplaceMap to include the leaning of the earth. In the version above, the rotation is done by simply rotating the final image thus the jerky animation. Oh, and the 3rd item in the list was to increase the area in the shadow to really see the lights of the cities. Notice that the night version of the map is already present but it's almost invisible.

[edit] image updated : Todo#1 done. Todo#2 done but not optimal ( in fact the subtle increase of speed of the clouds is due do the wider range in their Dmap ). And now, the shadow of the clouds is a bit more visible.



and a picture showing various steps
[/edit]



(Edited by poi on 08-07-2004 05:49)

this post makes me dizzy oy!

Great work poi. I've been away for awhile so I have not had much use of the 'puter. Now that I am back I will carry on and post the results up in a few days time.
Thanks for taking the time out to show us the steps you have taken so far. I am going to try to refine my technique before trying yours as I'm more comfortable with it.

:::tao::: ::cell::

This is the latest version I've come up with. I decided to eliminate the problems I had making it look like the Earth in space and go for an atlas/globe thingymabob.
This one has 60 frames and is over 200kb.


[ed]I can't seem to get the animation any smoother than this, which is slightly irksome but at least this version looks a little better. I may try a couple of variations on the theme, but now I'm going to try to make a sig for the August "big Sig"[/ed]

(Edited by Tao on 08-28-2004 23:30)

I like it.

quibble. It seems to have a thin fringe on the outer edge of the globe particularly in the southern hemisphere.


Life's too short to put up with bad art.

Ah, I did not see that, well spotted Moth I'm not too sure what that is, I guess I could try covering that bit by extending the shadow mask.
Now that I come to look at it again, perhaps another path I could take the whole design down would be to have a narrower light source, like a desk lamp for instance, and increase the showdows and highlights on the planet. The way objects in a room look when lit by only one directional lamp..........and we like the Lighting Effects Filter
Something like this perhaps? (only without the light source)


Tao
[ed]adding example[/ed]

(Edited by Tao on 08-29-2004 02:49)

quote:

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Thanks for the link GN, I like visiting your site.

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Been sort of busy, but thanks Tao...


< Ozone Quotes >

Now something is going on weird with the shading. It is like the inner edge of the terminator is darker than the outer edge. It should be the other way. The shading is also not crescent shaped but almost a lopsided L. Now all this criticism may make it seem that I don't like what you've done but that is not the case. You've done some fine work here, Tao, and my nitpicking is based on a strong desire to see this globe perfected.




Life's too short to put up with bad art.