Realistic Earth Models for Carrara (Free to Download)

FractalDimensia

After spending an unknown number of hours working on a decent (and accurate) Earth model for Carrara on and off the past year, I finally had an opportunity to get enough tweaking in to make presentable renders. So I've decided to make the model available FREE to others who might find them useful. There are actually THREE models of the Earth - each at varying levels of detail to match your needs. See the attached images (at various levels of detail), created using the provided scenes. All I ask is that you make appropriate reference to me (FD) if you use them.

What's included:
- Earth/Sun scenes for 3 different levels of Earth detail. (The attached renders were created using the included scenes.)
- Earth models for 3 different levels of Earth detail (to IMPORT into an existing scene).
- A User Guide describing how to use the models.
- All necessary JPEG images needed to render the models.

You can download the (massive) ZIP file here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8V9-txK8F4MeTdsdER2UXhUR2c/edit?usp=sharing

PLEASE NOTE: The file is 191M in size because of the large image files included, so downloads may take 2-15 minutes, depending on your internet speed.

All comments and suggestions for improvement are welcomed! I continue to work on making improvements, and still have a few issues to resolve. I will post information on this thread about what I discover.

***-> Special thanks to Holly Wetcircuit for providing the technique to successfully mix daylight and night light images of the Earth in the model.

I hope you find these models useful.
FD

Philemo_Carrara

Very nice indeed.
A most useful and well done gift to the carrara community.

Thank you very much

scottidog2

Fantastic. THANK YOU.

staley2001_960fdbcf52

Wow these are beautiful!

SileneUK

This is amazing!!! Thank you so much....these are going to be great for creating ice sheet advances/retreats illustrations for my course. I will be giving you FULL CREDIT for them. You have made my life so much easier. Your generosity in giving this away astounds me. I would have paid!

xx :) Cheers, SileneUK

nDelphi

Thank you very much! These look fantastic.

FractalDimensia

Thanks Phil, Scottidog, Narnia, LaurenWbr, and nDelphi for the feedback. I hope you find the models useful. Looking forward to seeing some of your work!

laurenwbr said:

This is amazing!!! Thank you so much....these are going to be great for creating ice sheet advances/retreats illustrations for my course. I will be giving you FULL CREDIT for them. You have made my life so much easier. Your generosity in giving this away astounds me. I would have paid!

xx :) Cheers, SileneUK

Silene,
Glad to hear you will make good use of the models!

I too have been messing around with ways to create "Ice Age" like models of the Earth, so I am interested in how you plan to do this. Maybe you can post something on this thread as "payment" for the models. ;) I (for one) would like to know more about this!

FD

Dartanbeck

Wow. Even the light pollution map! That's so very cool! I happen to live in one of the few places left where stars are not as endangered as they are in Bigger Cities. We have a populated island that is very dark at night, making it difficult for us to find the constellations, since so many of the more faint stars that we normally cannot see are now visible and somewhat bright!
The lens flare image. The bright lights all over the Earth is beautiful from above - but it is making the stars more and more extinct from Earth.

So, anyways...
These are very cool! I'll definitely use them, just so that I can plaster your name all of it! ;)

FractalDimensia

Dartanbeck said:

Wow. Even the light pollution map! That's so very cool! I happen to live in one of the few places left where stars are not as endangered as they are in Bigger Cities. We have a populated island that is very dark at night, making it difficult for us to find the constellations, since so many of the more faint stars that we normally cannot see are now visible and somewhat bright!
The lens flare image. The bright lights all over the Earth is beautiful from above - but it is making the stars more and more extinct from Earth.

So, anyways...
These are very cool! I'll definitely use them, just so that I can plaster your name all of it! ;)

HA! Dart, thanks. I still remember being able to see the Milky Way growing up. It took a recent vacation to the wilds of Maine to see it again. Truly, since "things" are only potentials, not physical, without someone there to observe them (and make them real), then I guess stars are endangered. ;)

Render: "Good Morning, America!"

Gareth

Many years i tried to get this effect in Carrara, but failed every time.. it's going to be interesting to see how you did it.

Thank you :)

FractalDimensia

Thanks, Gareth.

BTW, I just discovered that my MS Word to PDF converter for the User Guide does not do a very good job converting graphic images. My hope was that the example images at the end would help show the differences between detail levels. But you won't be able to tell anything by looking at these pics!

=/
FD

SileneUK

FractalDimensia said:

Thanks, Gareth.

BTW, I just discovered that my MS Word to PDF converter for the User Guide does not do a very good job converting graphic images. My hope was that the example images at the end would help show the differences between detail levels. But you won't be able to tell anything by looking at these pics!

=/
FD

Ah...now that is something I can happily help you with. I have Acrobat Pro. I can put images in the pdf directly. PM me if you wish and I will give you an email to send your images to. I already downloaded the pdf, so it will be simple to swap them out. Then I can email the pdf back to you all tidy.

:) Silene

Gillisgraphics

Beautifully done. Thank you!

0oseven

Wonderful ! Thanks for sharing.:-)

FractalDimensia

Already working on an update to the models. So far, I'm working to improve the cloud layer, as well as creating randomized clouds and random nightlights. The image below is a sample of a Earth (done using the low res model) with "futuristic" nightlights. I should have updates available in a month or less.

FD

Headwax

thank you FD, looks wonderous!

Antara

WOW! That's some seriously amazing work! :gulp:

Thank you so much for sharing it with us!

paulg625

Dartanbeck said:

Wow. Even the light pollution map! That's so very cool! I happen to live in one of the few places left where stars are not as endangered as they are in Bigger Cities. We have a populated island that is very dark at night, making it difficult for us to find the constellations, since so many of the more faint stars that we normally cannot see are now visible and somewhat bright!
The lens flare image. The bright lights all over the Earth is beautiful from above - but it is making the stars more and more extinct from Earth.

So, anyways...
These are very cool! I'll definitely use them, just so that I can plaster your name all of it! ;)

LOL I know where you are comming from I have moved far into the country and I also have trouble at time identifying constellations because of all the extra stars. I have only had an Island experience once. We spent the evening looking not just for and at stars but counting Satellites we saw ten the best night.

paulg625

Wow Really great work, and thanks for the download. What did you use for the ground maps ?

FractalDimensia

paulg625 said:

Wow Really great work, and thanks for the download. What did you use for the ground maps ?

Thanks, Paul.

All maps were pulled from the NASA website, where they are available for free. I grabbed the highest resolution maps possible, and did some editing to improve how Carrara renders the maps to make them as realistic as possible.

FD

paulg625

FractalDimensia said:

paulg625 said:

Wow Really great work, and thanks for the download. What did you use for the ground maps ?

Thanks, Paul.

All maps were pulled from the NASA website, where they are available for free. I grabbed the highest resolution maps possible, and did some editing to improve how Carrara renders the maps to make them as realistic as possible.

FD

OK cool you are trefering to the Blue Marble project ? Looking at what you had and the quality I was wondeing if that is what you used. And I'll say it again great job! Oh and they are doing another set ( you may actually have used these) called Blue marble 2 . I couldn't look at them because the site was shut down due to the goverment being shut down. LOL

dysamoria

Thanks for this. It's a nice gift to the 3D community :-) i was going to create a quick rendering with a space station model (found in my archiving of old RDS models), but i think that is a project all on its own, since it really calls for compositing to get the objects placed right and the rendering times down. So i thought i would just pop in and say thank you :-)

FractalDimensia

dysamoria said:

Thanks for this. It's a nice gift to the 3D community :-) i was going to create a quick rendering with a space station model (found in my archiving of old RDS models), but i think that is a project all on its own, since it really calls for compositing to get the objects placed right and the rendering times down. So i thought i would just pop in and say thank you :-)

You're welcome, Dysamoria. =) Good luck with your project!

Let me also suggest you check out Holly's 10 suggestions for rendering photorealistic Earth images to make the renders even better.

You can get the link to her article here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/32401/

FD

wetcircuit

Thank you for the plug! I've added a link to this thread (rather than directly to your google locker) at the end of the article...

FractalDimensia

holly wetcircuit said:

Thank you for the plug! I've added a link to this thread (rather than directly to your google locker) at the end of the article...

Thanks, Holly. :)