At risk of being dull and repetitive, here's another lego render. The curvature
of the horizon is the ultra_wide_angle camera, not true curvature!

Bill

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> At risk of being dull and repetitive, here's another lego render. The curvature
> of the horizon is the ultra_wide_angle camera, not true curvature!

Not at all.  I love the atmosphere, and I think I may have had one of those
sets...

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/mars_mer_feature_20060807.html

 - Ricky

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> At risk of being dull and repetitive, here's another lego render. The curvature
> of the horizon is the ultra_wide_angle camera, not true curvature!

The red color looks way too strong; Martian soil is typically more brownish.
(The planet is made of dirt, after all.)

The redness that you see when you look at Mars in the sky is an effect created
by your vision due to the contrast between the sunlit Mars and the black sky.
The redness you see in surface images is due to Hollywood or NASA giving the
public what they want.  The Viking images (1976) are just plain prostitution.
The Pathfinder images (1997) are zealously sobered up.  The Spirit and
Opportunity shots (2004) may or may not be realistic-looking depending on
whether the image was prepped for or by CNN.  (I swear, the images I saw on TV
were different from the ones I saw on nasa.gov.)

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"Cousin Ricky" <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> The redness that you see when you look at Mars in the sky is an effect created
> by your vision due to the contrast between the sunlit Mars and the black sky.
> The redness you see in surface images is due to Hollywood or NASA giving the
> public what they want.  The Viking images (1976) are just plain prostitution.

Which of the zillion version of them? :)

Ironically, the first release of the Viking image wasn't custom-tailored to some
specific soil color at all - instead, someone responsible for color calibration
had thought that a greenish-brown sky looked odd...

These pages look like the guy knows what he's writing about:

http://www.donaldedavis.com/2002_addons/SSYCOLRS.html
http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html


Color calibration of martian imagery is a difficult thing. Yes, the probes did
carry color calibration charts with them - but they don't really help, because
(as we POVers should know) their appearance not only depends on camera
calibration, but also on illumination.

Strictly speaking, all the color charts can help you do is calibrate your shots
so that the sky looks perfectly gray. In reality, it will have a different
color - but which?


Even then, martian soil and martian soil don't look the same. It strongly
depends on a probe's landing site. The same goes for the sky: It depends on the
amount of dust in the atmosphere, which varies over time.

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"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Cousin Ricky" <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > The redness that you see when you look at Mars in the sky is an effect created
> > by your vision due to the contrast between the sunlit Mars and the black sky.
> > The redness you see in surface images is due to Hollywood or NASA giving the
> > public what they want.  The Viking images (1976) are just plain prostitution.
>
> Which of the zillion version of them? :)
>
> Ironically, the first release of the Viking image wasn't custom-tailored to some
> specific soil color at all - instead, someone responsible for color calibration
> had thought that a greenish-brown sky looked odd...
>
> These pages look like the guy knows what he's writing about:
>
> http://www.donaldedavis.com/2002_addons/SSYCOLRS.html
> http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html

So then the difference between the rust-colored Spirit images from nasa.gov and
the glowing-lava-colored Spirit images from CNN (which presumably came from the
same space probe) wasn't my imagination.  It hadn't occurred to me (though it
should have) that people other than NASA would screw with the color balance.

Over 33 years, I recall seen only one version of the Viking images--one that's
far, far more garish than any of the images on Don Davis's Web site.

The things you learn while trying to make pretty pictures!

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"Cousin Ricky" <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
[snip]
> > These pages look like the guy knows what he's writing about:
> >
> > http://www.donaldedavis.com/2002_addons/SSYCOLRS.html
> > http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/MARSCLRS.html
>
> So then the difference between the rust-colored Spirit images from nasa.gov and
> the glowing-lava-colored Spirit images from CNN (which presumably came from the
> same space probe) wasn't my imagination.  It hadn't occurred to me (though it
> should have) that people other than NASA would screw with the color balance.
>
> Over 33 years, I recall seen only one version of the Viking images--one that's
> far, far more garish than any of the images on Don Davis's Web site.
>
> The things you learn while trying to make pretty pictures!

Indeed. I would have imagined something like the images on the second of those
two links, based on what little I have read on the subject - mainly
well-researched fiction, it has to be said. And I don't watch (or even
receive!) CNN, so I couldn't comment on the 'creative' nature of their
broadcast images.

It's easy to see how colours are recorded and perceived differently - try taking
pictures with any digital camera of an indoor scene, no flash, with the
different colour temperature settings. They all match up with what your mind
sees to some degree, but the difference in the colours is startling.

I should add that I am well aware of the unrealistic nature of my lego render -
my intention was a bright, garish hollywood background to fit with the
primary-colour nature of the lego sets!

:)

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