Modelers Looking for Project

[Dryson]

I am a member of the Mars Drive Forums that is involved with various projects relating to Mars. We discuss many ideas about vehicles and habitats but rarely have any graphics to present to the community.

If anyone is interested in being a developer for the various projects that come along and are looking to spread your graphic artistry and talent to other realms Mars Drive would be glad to have you.

We need artists like yourself to give a new feeling at Mars Drive.

We need artists that can develop vehicle, spacecraft and habitat models.

Mars Drive

[ironbelly]

This should be posted in the Help wanted section, not the general discussion

[tegleg]

awesome
do you have any heightmaps of mars?
cant find any anywhere.

[kaleden]

There are several places online that have digital elevation maps of Mars in one form or another.

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mis...mgs/megdr.html
This page has higher coverage, but less resolution.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/dtm/
This page has higher resolution, but less coverage.

<3 free GIS data (well, free in that it comes bundled with my taxes)

[tegleg]

thanks kaleden
i dont have anything to open the ones in the first link.
the second link is just photos, the shadows make it useless.

i need a bmp or jpg os something that i can open in photoshop or similar, without shadows in black and white preferably. just the height data.
then i could virtually raz around on mars

[kaleden]

Did you look at the DTM (.IMG) files in the second link? The shading you see in the thumbnails is just for show. Sadly, you'll be hard pressed to find BPM or JPGs of these files as they don't offer the compression needed to host these data. I thought Photoshop could open these files using a 3rd party IMG importer, but my memory may be faulty.

You may need a GIS program to view the files and convert them to a grayscale image. QGIS and GRASS are both free, open-source projects that should do the trick. QGIS is easier to get into, but is somewhat lacking if you don't connect it with GRASS. Other paid options include Global Mapper and ArcGIS. Global Mapper (~$400) is a phenominal program - it's the swiss army knife of GIS programs - it can open and convert nearly any format and projection, and is super fast (though, I'm still rocking version 9). ArcGIS can be quite expensive, but is widely used - you may be able to get your hands on it at a local university.

[tegleg]

wtf? lol
any chance of a bit of help here?

i downloaded qgis but it wont open any of those files.
found and downloaded NASAView Image Display Software, it wont open any of those files.
browsed the psd and downloaded a random dataset, it opens a text in nasaview.

what do i have to do to get a heightmap of mars?

edit:
also tried many .img image converters and all of them said incorrect file type or similar

[kaleden]

Sure, I'd be glad to help.

1. Go to http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mis...mgs/megdr.html and download both the .IMG and .lbl files for a specific dataset (for example, a topography map type).
2. Launch QGIS
3. Select Layer > Add Raster Layer...
4. Load the *.lbl file
5. ???
6. Profit

I haven't verified whether QGIS can open files from the second link as those files are rather large to download, but their website provides info in the DTM file format here: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/dtm/about.php

[kaleden]

I decided to go ahead and verify the files on the hires link. Downloading only the DTM (.IMG) file, I successfully loaded it in QGIS and produced a height map with a little tweaking (ie, adjusted gradient stretching, verified null value, and recomputed actual heights). Incidentally, Global mapper didn't do as well with these files; possibly because I'm using such an old version.

[tegleg]

well done any chance of a share?
ive had no luck in loading anything into anything, though i havnt tried the hires ones.

i get errors and warnings all over the place just trying to start qgis. (iconv.dll not found, even though there are 2 in the instalation folder)
managed to start it through msys by typing qgis.exe, then it told me there are no plugins or something.
then it says ***.lbl is not a supported raster data source when i try to load that into a new raster layer.
its like nasa is saying here have these files for free, good luck doing anything with them hehehe (evil laugh)
no wonder there are no heightmap or image files anywhere, its next to impossible to produce them.

[kaleden]

Ouch, sounds like you're having some major installation issues. Did you use the standalone installer for Windows? I tested it on my Win7 x64 machine and didn't have any issues during installation.

Sure, I could provide a couple images if you'd like. Note that I wont provide any at full resolution because that's just crazy talk. Is there a specific data set you'd like?

[tegleg]

i tried the stand alone and then the other one, win7 x64.
even tried one of the huge files and it dont work.

thanks for the offer of images.
i dont mind what as long as its fairly interesting, a few hills or craters and the like. and tell me what region they are so i can look what the texture is like.
no i dont need full resolution, udk wouldnt handle anything that size anyway, whatever format you want as long as i can open them in a regular image editor.
looking forward to trying it, if i get it working ill upload some udk maps, get a few mars based games on the go