Hi(gh)!

After five years, I thought it was time for a new version of my "Flight 
around Phobos" animation on YouTube... so this time and with a faster 
computer, I decided to do the thing in 1024 by 768 pixels, also with a 
higher-resolved (and somewhat brighter) texture for Phobos, furthermore 
giving Mars some simple media atmosphere (I had a certain Viking photo 
of Mars' limb above Argyre Planitia in mind, where the atmosphere in 
fact looks like reddish-brown... on more recent images, the atmosphere 
is bluish towards the limb) and using a dim brownish light placed 
between Mars and Phobos for the illumination by Marsshine on Phobos' 
night side.

Originally, I wanted to use radiosity for this - but as radiosity is 
calculated for each frame individually, it resulted in a flickering 
appearance of the portions of Phobos which are illuminated this way. 
Also, with radiosity the Sun sphere in is media glow appeared grey 
instead of white.

Rendering the 1440 frames was somewhat cumbersome, as I could not use 
the same overall scaling factor (through which all vectors and distances 
are divided) throughout the whole animation, sooner or later parts of 
Phobos began to be clipped away, so I had to change between many 
different values, from 5000 to somewhat over 15000.

Here you can view the animation (preferably at 720p HD in full-screen 
mode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atUTtI5xGPk

While writing this post, also a new version of the Deimos video is 
rendered - I probably will upload it this evening (CET).

See you in Khybespace!

Yadgar

Now playing: Why Look for the Key (Howard Jones)

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