(OT) Re: CGI FT starships

At 03:05 PM 8/16/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Sorry to reply to my own post, but I had an idea that may be of benefit
to
>those wanting to join in with this..
>
>Turns out there is a decent library of stellar images which don't
appear to
>be under copyright available at
>
>http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/

I would love to see a FT model site!  I would donate my little Arapaho
model.	

For those, like me, who can't wait and have access to rendering software
here are some resources I have found handy as a cgi duffer/hack ;) 
(even
if you don't you can get POV-Ray at http://www.povray.org/  It's a free
open source render engine.  They have links to 3rd party modeling
programs
that talk to eachother too).

I got the star background I used in my images at
http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/ it was the 2.9 meg Tycho8.tif (They state
that
anything NOT specificaly marked "JPL/Caltech" requires no permission to
use).  I thought it was nice because it wasn't just a bunch of white
dots.
Thre is a bunch of spherical maps of planets and moons in the solar
system
as well which are NICE.

For DIY planitary maps I cant recommend Wilbur enough. Go to
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/software.html and get it.  It
provides output that can be used as heightfields or for grid-mapping
your
favorite colony world.	Did I mention you should go get it?

And there are a metric long ton displacement butt-load of starship model
sites out there.  Unfortunatly (in my opinion) the ship model selection
tends to closely follow the current popular TV SF programs.  But if you
are
interested in doing your own you should try to find some that include
bump
and texture maps in the download and look at how they were made then
back
engineer your own.  

And if anyone is worried about model compatibility there is always
Crossroads a Windows freeware application that can translate between
several 3D file formats.

Sorry if I rambled on there. I hope that it wasn't too OT.

Lurking,

Ndege Diamond

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Every dogma has its day
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Nezach(at)earthlink(dot)net