More free help from NASA for 3D image makers. by fireangel
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
Yes, it's our home! The maps I used for this image were, wait for it, 21,600x10,800 pixels. A bump map, a land/sea mask, a base colour map and the cloud map, all at that size. They are from the NASA Visible Earth collection and all but the clouds are available at up to 86,400x43,200 pixels — yes, really, over eighty six thousand pixels wide. I wish my computer had enough memory, the zoom animations could be amazing... My main reason for posting this simple experiment was to alert others to the huge amount of free 3D resources that NASA gives away, including many models of their spacecraft.
Download the Earth textures you want from NASA: https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/collection/1484/blue-marble?page=1
I also used the NASA deep star maps, available here at up to 64k wide (I used the 32k map for this image): https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4851
If they are too big for your machine I suggest you archive them using whatever backup medium you use and experiment with sizing them down. I will try 32k sometime, but even 21k looks pretty good, no?
Rendered at UHD resolution on my Mac Pro. Best viewed full size on the biggest screen you have.

Comments (1)
This looks great! Yeah, NASA is the best! I know when I get on their site, I'm done for hours.... There is just a galaxy's worth of amazing stuff there - and I'm sure there are parts of the site I've not visited yet... I was just on the other day downloading images from Mars...
Between NASA and some of the private companies in the aerospace realm, we should be at the level of Star Trek in a few decades - assuming we don't destroy ourselves first... Speaking of Star Trek.... Looks like Bill Shatner is really going to space soon in the Blue Origin ship...
Oh it's a huge task looking for all the stuff they give away. They also use Blender for some of their own modelling and 3D work, so some models are in the right format for me to use without even having to use "import", I can just directly open the files.
And I love the idea of Shatner finally making it into space for real! Thanks for mentioning that, I hadn't heard that snippet.