Hi:

This is my first posting to this forum.
I've seen a few decent attempts to render the moon, some better than others,
so I thought I'd add my twopence worth and share my solution to the problem
of photo-realistic lunar rendering.

It was the simplest solution I could arrive at after several attempts at using
bump maps, spherical iso-surfaces and height fields.

Example renderings:
http://phpsciencelabs.us/lunar-base/lunex-for-pov-ray/images/Southern-Lunar-Limb-Mountains-24000-mi-Zoom-5x.jpg
and
http://phpsciencelabs.us/lunar-base/lunex-for-pov-ray/lunex-examples-and-source-code/images/Tranquility-Base-w-Pointer.
jpg
and
http://phpsciencelabs.us/lunar-base/lunex-for-pov-ray/lunex-examples-and-source-code/images/M-Orientale-Byrgius-Grimald
i-O-Procellarum.jpg

Anyone who wishes to check it out can experiment with the code.
All information on the LUNEX program, entire source code and all
required texture maps are freely available at:

http://phpsciencelabs.us/lunar-base/lunex-for-pov-ray/

All the HD lunar renderings at the site below were produced by a modified
version of LUNEX.

http://phpsciencelabs.us/lunar-base/lunar-hemispheric-phase-explorers-hd/

I would welcome any constructive suggestions and opinions on the package
since it's my first major POV-Ray project and would like to see other peoples
POV-Ray lunar rendering solutions.


Jay
http://www.PHPScienceLabs.US

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