NASA offers 3D images of the entire Moon, made for those who specialize in computer graphics as well as artists.
If you're a graphic designer looking to make a movie or game set on the Moon, it's not hard to find images of the moon. But NASA has just released a useful, beautiful and new set of 3D photos and data, only for graphic designers, which includes not only flat images, but also depth, making it simple to create a detailed 3D map of the Moon.
The CGI Moon Kit comes from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where Ernie Wright found that the Moon data he had collected (for other purposes) would be quite popular with 3D artists.
The data came from two organs located on top NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a space satellite orbiting the moon for over a decade, taking pictures and taking measurements all the time.
On the satellite there is a high quality camera, which has been used to build a surprisingly high-quality map of the lunar surface. The camera can only capture a small piece at a time, but it does so continuously, and as the satellite's orbit shifts, it has captured almost the entire visible region of the Moon. Although some dark areas cannot be imaged, even after passing the satellite thousands of times.
But the photos are only part of the map. To create the XNUMXD model of the Moon's surface, NASA also has a laser measurements height. This sends a pulsed laser beam towards the surface and monitors both how long it takes to return and how strong it returns. So it collects how far away the surface is (and therefore the altitude) with an accuracy of half a meter, as well as what kind of surface it is, like for example a hard rocky or soft powder etc.
This data is aggregated and a topographic map is created where the color differs instead of even lines. There are two variants of this map, but the basic use is the same. You print the map on a surface and then wrap it around a globe and you have a virtual topographic world of the Moon.
Watch the video below:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004700/a004720/moon_mapping_360p30.mp4
NASA's CGI Moon Kit is free to download and all data are available with a few options that probably only 3D artists will understand. You can learn more about it and get it by clicking here .
