Although this is still a work in progress, I would like to share with you a preview of a new project I'm working on:

Flying Over Endeavour Crater - A Tribute to Opportunity and her Epic Journey

(The video is best viewed in HD resolution (720p), fullscreen and volume turned up for the background music.

Click here for a (still experimental) excerpt as anaglyph (view in HD if possible)

Here is some background info for the technically interested:

The whole DEM consists of about 3 billions of triangles, modelling Endeavour's west rim at full HiRISE resolution of 25cm/pixel. Unlike the standard method (of draping hi-res 2D imagery over a lower-res 3D DEM), the new technique provides real 3D geometry down to the highest resolution level (i.e. 0.25 m/pixel for HiRISE). This results in a more realistic visualization because each single pixel contributes genuine 3D information - as you can see for example in the low sun images where each pixel is, in principle, capable of casting its own tiny shadow.

Rendering this kind of DEMs has been a real challange, though. At 0.25 m post spacing, the models are about 16 times larger than the already huge standard HiRISE DEMs at 1 m/pixel. So together with the mosaics of several full-res CTX frames ( that I'm merging the DEMs with for context ) this results in DEMs of several billions of triangles. Unfortunately this seems to be too much to render with conventional 3D programs such as 3ds-max that are usually limited to some dozens of millions of polygons, but can't readily handle several billions. This is why I decided to write a specialized gigapixel-ready terrain visualization software with a raytracing kernel for realistic soft shadows and global illumination.

As this is a rather time consuming work, it is not finished yet (still missing color support and the movie processing chain is still too slow for producing longer flyovers ... )

Hardware is another limiting factor (currently I'm running out of RAM on 24 GB ... but the new gear (48 Gigs + 12 cores) is already on the christmas wishlist...

Nevertheless the first results look promising so I thougt I'd share some impressions with the UMSF community

Astonishing!

Spectacular!

"Epic" indeed!

Wow! That is truly awesome and inspiring!

I don't know if you're taking requests, but it would be really neat to see a model of Opportunity at some spot in her trek and do a "fly over".

Absolute fascinating and awesome, Nirgal!

Thanks for this views and still waiting for more of them!

in good plain portuguese...f***-**!!!

Ah, I thought that would be c******! Ustrax... - Anyway, I agree with the sentiment!

- Do you plan to make a version without vertical exaggeration, Nirgal?

Excellent job! Do you use a flat plane or a sphere (to represent Mars curvature) as the base?

Some of the best flyovers of Mars I've seen yet. Please keep this up.

Oh, wow! I am speechless.

Beautiful!!!
But i think the vertical scale is exeggerated -I see this on the sand dunes-end of the animation. It was made intentionally?

Thank you very much for the nice comments on my work. glad you like it !

As there were questions about the vertical scale of the model I would like to point out there is no intentional vertical exaggeration of the geometry as you can see in this image comparing a "ground truth" photograph taken by the rover as of Sol 2679 on the left hand with a simulated view of the 3D model from approximately the same position and viewing angle (the shadowed slope in the right image is due to a lower simulated sun angle)

Click to view attachment

It is true that in my renderings I always try to emphasize & accentuate the topography for reasons of viewing aesthetics, but this is largely due to my using very low sun illumination angles just by simulating late-evening conditions with long shadows (this is just the same as landscape photograpers here on earth would do in order to accentuate the shape of dunes and mountains) In addition to that I tend to use settings of my simulated camera and darkroom that result in contrast enhancement and lens-induced geometric distortions (again the same as landscape phoptographers would do here on earth as well :-)

That being said: although the large scale topography of the model is exactly registered to official MOLA and HRSC DEMs
there remains uncertainty in the small-scale variations of the surface model as with any single-image based 3D reconstruction method namely in the presence of albedo variations. Without albedo variations (i.e. fully dust- or ice- coverd areas) I found the mean reconstruction errors in my experiments to be less than ten precent compared to ground-truth DEMs but the error can be larger in presence of large albedo variations.
Fortunately, the single-image method complements nicely with stereo-based methods that are immune to albedo variations (but provide only a fraction of the resolution and have troubles in texture-less areas).

Although maximum scientific accuracy has never been the main goal of my work (that is intended for porposes of visualization and aesthetics only - in the sense of "Martian Landscape Photography" I do plan to further improve the overall accuracy of my models in the future by incorporating more stereo-derived base DEMs. I'm especially looking forward to the official Endeavour HiRISE DTM that I think will be published in the near future and that I expect to provide a very accurate base-DEM for that area

Simply amazing!

Stunning, just... stunning...

I'm guessing you don't spend a lot of time watching television in your spare time

Fantastic work

Absolutely amazing ! The HiRISE team will certainly be interested by the programming you did !
Let's hope you will succeed in solving the "color" issue !

I know just how hard that was to do.... it's breathtaking. Congrats!

Absolutely wondrous, Nirgal; thank you so much for sharing it with us!!!

Stupendous.

It's gorgeous work!

Thanks for your comprehensive explanations Nirgal!



I think that this particular facet of your post-processing should be toned down a little bit. I love the low-sun angle and the vertiginous lens work, but I think the very punchy contrasts are probably a bit overdone.

A small "artistic" suggestion: when you come down from up high with your camera you could maybe fly through a few of those wispy high clouds we have seen in MER images. Would be a good effect to complement your lower ground-hugging fog layers and atmosphere opacity.

Can't wait to see more of your amazing work!

Very nice. What software tools did you use to make it?

Good grief, that's astonishing and inspirational - great stuff!

Wow, this is stunning, very near the top of my list of impressive stuff I've seen here.

The DEM is extremely detailed and realistic and in addition, the shading algorithm seems to result in something that looks very realistic.

The lack of software and/or hardware that can handle *lots* of triangles is a familiar problem.

Beautiful....and breathtaking. Can't wait for the colour.

I'm inpressed and amazed!

Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!

Thank you!

Großartig!!

Truly awesome......words fail me. The sheer beauty....

Has to be one the best planetary animations I've ever seen. Fantastic work!

Thanks again for all the overwhelming feedback and comments that is greatly appreciated and very encouraging to continue with this work

In the following I will try to answer some technical questions that came up:



The main processing chain ( 3D model generation and rendering/raytracing ) is all self-written C/C++ software.
(though with a rather ugly and spartanic command-line user-interface but specially tuned to manage 3D models
consisting of a dozen billion polygons, which I found none of the existing programs could handle :-/

For the pre-processing and preparation of the raw data (map-projection) I use the great ISIS3 package (freely available from USGS).

Nothing special for post-processing: Photoshop for still images and the usual video encoders (ffmpeg) for turning the rendered image
sequences into movies.




just a flat base with a simple trick to simulate a curved horizon on-the-fly within the raytracer by
subtracting a curvature-correction-value (based on the distance to the observer) from the current height
above the flat base, while advancing the viewing ray away from the observer through the geometry's
bounding volume hierarchy.

Yes, this is a good point. Part of the problem (apart from my not always resisting the temptation of turning the knobs too much lies in the general difficulty of preparing images to look equally good on different output devices (google "gamma-correction" ) Incidently, I just now found out that the video does look quite different (too crisp and too contrasty indeed) on monitors other than the good old "warm & soft" analog CRT display that I normally use.
Another problem is video compression: After uploading to youtube, I found that the encoding/compression caused further contrast and gamma correction to the point that many subtle details in shadowed areas got lost.

As for the cloud layers: yes this is something quite high on my TODO-list. But here, too, one should be careful not to overdo it: I once saw an animation involving artifical Mars clouds that looked very unnatural (way too "earth-like"). It will be a challenge to simulate the very faint and subtle appearance of the clouds as I imagine them to look like on Mars in reality.

Simply fantastic.
Thank you!


Did you considered the possibility to use the native Youtube 3D features allowing viewers to choose their preferred option (Red/Cyan, Green/Magenta, Side by side, etc.)?

The videos displayed on a 42" HD TV are amazing .... 3D with active glasses should be better

Oh yes, I know about that! Youtube absolutely ruins your uploads, especially in high-res. I suggest you maybe look into vimeo...

Nirgal, you win the UMSF internets. Now just get Scooterlord's MER model into that, and hook up with StephenV2 to get an IMAX movie finished!

Now that's an All-Star cast! And perhaps Stu and Astro0 could produce the movie's promotional poemster!

StephenV2 is militantly opposed to using CGI in his IMAX movie. Thus, despite the beauty, accuracy, splendor and grandeur of Nirgal's amazing work.....StephenV2 would not, by his own rules be able to use it.

yes, making animations to be shown, e.g. in Planetariums is something I do consider as a future option.
However, as I already wrote, this is still a work in progress and I have to make the homeworks first.
Among other things there is one important issue that needs to be resolved before I can consider this finished: namely the support of color.
Although black&white landscapes do have their own aesthetics (think Ansel Adams ;-) color (like music) is absolutely essential to transporting emotions in a film.
(What would the Red Planet be without Red ?

So, although I am very satisfied with this first prototype video as a "proof of concept", there is still a lot of research and programming work to be done until the project
could be considered anything near "production ready".
Until then, I'm afraid I can't take any requests because I fully need to concentrate on the research & programming.
Hardware needs to be upgraded too (12 cores + 48 Gig RAM is a minimum configuration for rendering those multi-gigapixel DEMs in serious production quality)

If all goes well I think the first color versions could be ready sometime mid next year.
In any case, I will keep you updated here at UMSF

I understand that's his view point on the current Saturn movie, but I think for Mars there is just too much data outside of pure pictures such as DEMs that to not include them would be a big loss to any IMAX treatment.

Just wanted to add my kudos. Absolutely stunning work, Nirgal.