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Post by nomuse on Dec 17, 2011 21:30:36 GMT -4
And then there's dynamic range.
You want to, after all, have the camera's best capture -- and all the depth of field and speed to capture motion -- where the lighting is all the bounce off a 20% bounce sheet (the ground). You want, to make it look right, for the highlights where raw sunlight touches white suit to be nicely over-exposed.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 17, 2011 14:23:50 GMT -4
My touchstone moment at the moment is from "Apollo 13" (1995). Tom Hanks dreaming he is on the Moon, and picks up a handful of lunar soil. And the moment he pours a little from his hand the illusion shattered in a cloud of, well, dust. I had exactly the same reaction from that scene. But it wasn't just the dust. The lighting wasn't right either. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen the lighting in a fictional lunar scene match actual Apollo images. Even Magnificent Desolation had that problem, especially in the fictional "rover wipeout" sequence near the end. The lighting is too soft; it just doesn't look like sunlight. I'm not sure why, as you'd think it would be simple to use one very bright spotlight and to cover the studio walls and ceiling with black fabric to block scattering. Could it be that it's just not possible to uniformly illuminate a large set with just one spotlight set back at a sufficient distance? Actually, I had it wrong. I'm not sure what was used in Apollo 13 but I was also a bit confused by how well I could see into the helmet (understandable, but still...) It was "From the Earth to the Moon" where they created a single source by shooting four of the biggest HMI's they could buy -- 4KW monsters, if I remember -- at a single mirror. It was apparently very hot on that stage. I admit to mild confusion, since the principles are the same whether you have a thousand-lumen source or a 2-lumen source. But I don't imagine there is that much leeway in standard lenses, and illumination is directly (and inversely) related to depth of field, so it probably was necessary to pump that much light at the scene. That, and if you did light with a candle you'd have to control all the monitors and clip lights and every other bit of leakage around the sound stage, so it also helps to have a Really Big Light.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 22:55:42 GMT -4
That last post did it for me. I know I have no vote here but I'd like to see a ban. It isn't ever going to contribute anything and it is starting to make even our calmer members forget themselves.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 22:52:47 GMT -4
"nomuse" you continue misinterpreting my text. I told that in my model you take the background from 3D, you tilt it 90 degrees and after that add all the foreground - it is not necessary to tilt that part because it is taken from ground level. And the background is not taken from ground level, thus any significant elevation experiences texture stretch. This is basic stuff. Of course I can produce the whole landscape 360 deg from background - why not. You can take a pic from LM, fix it to the map coordinate with 3 points and generate a final still pic - then you go e.g. to another side of LM and take another pic and fix it again to the map and your traces are there from the previous pic, and so on. One pic of the model or mock-up LM for almost every photograph, actually. The angle it is viewed at is visibly different from picture to picture. This is not un-doable, of course. You need to match up the rotations applied to the camera filming the model or mock-up LM with the movement and orientation in the simulated 3d space. They have some pretty good motion match software for that sort of thing these days. Tougher in the 70's -- Dykstraflex is the state of the art. So you'd have to develop a system to coordinate the numerically-controlled camera with the parameters in the 3d software. And you've still got compositing to worry about, which was very hard to achieve cleanly. Multiple layers, too, as between sets of photographs there are visible shifts within foreground elements. So we are talking something like the old stat camera days at Disney, with multiple elements on plates you can shift and swap to create that illusion of depth. And, well, NASA wouldn't do it that way. Nobody would. Trumbull and Adler and, heck, Inishiro Honda were all model makers. They would have made scale mock-ups of the lunar surface, with teams of artists working FROM (not simply mechanically adapting) the best photo reference available. I mean...the first CGI spaceship to really take the screen was The Last Starfighter (and it didn't look that great, either). Doing this sort of thing in the 70's is jumping the gun on decades of technological development. And the background is always correct as it comes from the 3D. AS11-12 have not been done like this as the landscape is so simple (no mountains). This was how the architects did the landscape models - and still do. How did you get the mesh models to my description - in a case that the building is not yet constructed you should do that, but if you have real LM and astronauts, you just take their photos. I have gone through certain places (as AS-15 pics) and there is something wrong e.g. in Front (southern part of mission). But as I said, I am rather sure that also ground level pictures have been obtained at least from Hadley Rill. There was a US plan to send a high quality scanner satellite to moon after LO - maybe it took those pics. In early pages here was a guy who also did 3D models and compared them with ground pictures ... what happened to him? That was I joined this forum, but he is out now. Well, I got the models from you suggesting you could throw together convincing images in an afternoon. Unless you happen to have an LM in your backyard! Also, if you keep it in 3d you have control over all the elements and you have no compositing stage. Which is not a small deal when talking about matching up lighting on a model or mock-up with lighting that is baked-in to the textures you've derived from photographs taken by a satellite.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 22:31:16 GMT -4
What A Silly Person You Are...!!! Lose the formatting and emoticons if you want me to respond to you. Or answer one of my questions. That might indicate a tiny, tiny smidgen of civility.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 22:18:28 GMT -4
On The Contrary, I Am Enjoying The Delusions Of Intellectual Superiority On Here, No Peer Review eh...!!! Don't You Find That A Little Bit...Um...Uncomfortable... Do you have anything to actually say about Apollo? Or are you here to make social commentary? He's here to pose. And show off his unequaled mastery of HTML tags.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 22:16:12 GMT -4
Again What's With This Imperialist Analogy... Forest, over there ------> Don't get confused by the first tree.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 19:05:36 GMT -4
[Because The American Laziness In It's Usage Of The English Language Is Appalling... You mean "its." To be perfectly blunt, I didn't read the stuff you put in turquoise. I assume that you want to have a reasonable, intellectual conversation. In order to do that, you will be expected to obey certain rules. You will be expected to present your evidence in a clear, rational fashion. This will include doing the math where math is required and citing your sources when you use them. For preference, you will format like an adult, not a twelve-year-old girl. This means you don't need to use colours, bold, or too many capitals. Which is what you are currently doing. We will show you respect when you show that you deserve it. You know what? I am an American. And I'm not the one being lazy with language. If you're being this lazy with language, why should we trust your science? It's all about intellectual rigour. Here, here! You said it much better than I could. Evidence my attempt earlier today! (Yes, I know. I couldn't resist. There's a wonderful panel in the old "Power Pack" where all the kids raise their right hand and say, variously, "aye," "I," and even -- in Franklin's case, "eye.")
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 19:01:54 GMT -4
I Used The Assumption That: The Timing On You Tube Videos Is Actually In Seconds, Spend less time formatting, more time thinking. What was timed in hundredths of a second? The interval between the closing consonant of one speaker and the first consonant of another? From what part were these timed? What was the method used to determine these edges, and can you quantify the error in that method? How did you achieve 1/100 a second timing on a YouTube video? What steps other than watching the video as presented on the site did you employ? Your entire methodology is unclear. You have given insufficient information for anyone to understand your process or to replicate it. (As I said on another board: I am in no way approving of the method inferred or implying that it, or any caveat I apply to it, makes it in any way useable.)
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 18:25:26 GMT -4
I Noticed No One Picked Up On My Newtonian Equations For Calculating The Time It Would Take For A Radio Signal To Reach The Moon... Show you can achieve the same rigor with the important part of the calculation; how you arrived at the signal delay. How have you controlled for possible edits in the secondary source you are using? How have you controlled for the well-known effects of overlapping conversation and conversational pauses? Have you accounted for changes in the signal path over the length of the transmission? Have you included human reaction time? These are among the questions you have to show you have made an attempt to answer, or demonstrated they are statistically unimportant, before your single calculation is meaningful. And Like The Flag Blowing In The Gentle Breeze On The Moon... It doesn't. It also couldn't; the fine dust fully visible in the record would be stirred by any wind capable of lifting even a light silk flag. Some Of The People On Here Should Be Treated As A Post Milgram Experiment... I've read Stanley Milgram. I even have a copy of the later book (Obedience to Authority, 1974). You are posturing. I'm surprised you didn't quote from Proust while you were at it.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 18:05:47 GMT -4
BF;DR Try this analogy; shiny boots. Shiny boots don't make a better soldier, but they are a good indicator. The obverse is even more true; if a soldier either won't follow orders or can't execute them well enough to shine his own boots, then you really, really don't want to trust him with a loaded rifle. Careful use of language arises from careful thought. If you can't formulate a complete sentence, you probably haven't had a complete thought. If you can't take the time to find the spelling of a technical term, you probably haven't taken the time to learn anything about that that technical term describes and entails. Extraneous formatting and superfluous emoticons are a similar sign. If you have to hide the actual thoughts (as expressed by the words) with fancy formats and inline images, you are exactly like the soldier at guard duty inspection who oh-so-carefully stands behind the other men to hide the fact that not only are his boots not shined, but he managed to fall out wearing unlaced sneakers.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 17:38:05 GMT -4
Let me count the ways: 1. "I'm just speaking for a friend." Sure, it seems to be true in this case. Other people have had no problem in the past simply going "Hey, there's a live one over at David Ickes today." It is pointless work; unless the person making the claims is actually watching the debate, they won't learn anything. The people the person has been making the claims TO won't learn anything in any case, because THEY aren't here. So who benefits? The sole benefit I can see is if the claim was so powerful it really needed to be heard; that it had the potential to overturn our current understanding. i certainly don't see that as the case here. 2. Bad formatting. Okay, again, not jd's fault. But since the original claimant is not here, and his work is being synopsized in any case, why not do a better job of it? 3. Bad timing. There's been a small run on really, really annoying Apollo Deniers recently. Oddly, however, they have mostly been somewhat educated, and willing and able to at least try to state their claims in detail. This "shy one" is a blast from the past -- bad arguments arising from poor understanding presented in annoying fashion. There is no meat there -- which Doctor Socks and other recent participants at least offer. He sure is no friend of mine. Its a simple case of me saying to someone why not post your stuff over here and as the person didnt want to i asked if it would be ok if i did. I had this idea that some people here were better equipted to show where he was going wrong than i was. As it turns out ive benn made to look like the devil for nothing. I had not bothered now. Sorry about that. Mister Rainbow showing up in the middle of all that didn't help -- for a bit there the whole forum was turning into large grotty images surrounded by giant purple text. You can imagine some people got annoyed! Call it a worthy experiment. And the result? The format isn't set up for argument by proxy. Even pointing and laughing is better done in the Chosen Few, not on the main floor.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 17:27:38 GMT -4
I didn't realize it was possible to be more annoying than ALL CAPS.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 17:23:57 GMT -4
Let me count the ways:
1. "I'm just speaking for a friend." Sure, it seems to be true in this case. Other people have had no problem in the past simply going "Hey, there's a live one over at David Ickes today." It is pointless work; unless the person making the claims is actually watching the debate, they won't learn anything. The people the person has been making the claims TO won't learn anything in any case, because THEY aren't here. So who benefits? The sole benefit I can see is if the claim was so powerful it really needed to be heard; that it had the potential to overturn our current understanding. i certainly don't see that as the case here.
2. Bad formatting. Okay, again, not jd's fault. But since the original claimant is not here, and his work is being synopsized in any case, why not do a better job of it?
3. Bad timing. There's been a small run on really, really annoying Apollo Deniers recently. Oddly, however, they have mostly been somewhat educated, and willing and able to at least try to state their claims in detail. This "shy one" is a blast from the past -- bad arguments arising from poor understanding presented in annoying fashion. There is no meat there -- which Doctor Socks and other recent participants at least offer.
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Post by nomuse on Dec 16, 2011 17:01:41 GMT -4
The idea of Google Earth is very old - from 1970s. Then mostly architects designing buildings used this method. They had to digitize topographic map - take an aerial photograph, tilt it 90 degrees and then take pictures from ground to show trees and buildings and fix it to the xyz-coordinates of the topomap. Ridiculous. You can't rotate the subject in a photograph by 90 degrees! What is done, is that height information taken from various sources is combined with texture information. In the more primitive versions, there is no appropriate texture on the faces. If you are working from aerial photographs at an oblique angle, you can texture parts of one visible face (but you still don't get 360 coverage). And the results are really, really obvious. I mean, stupid looking. Clearly artificial. For comparison, how some later driving games have done it is to play Google Street map, but with vehicles set up to take radar or laser mapping at the same time. I have a friend who was working on this sort of mapping and reconstruction in the Valley of Kings. In this case, very specifically images are taken at street level and matched to the 3d reconstructions developed from multiple depth maps. A version of this going around now is to abstract (using edge-detection algorithms and similar) depth data from multiple photographs. It's a largely automated, computer-intensive version of what photogrammetry has been doing for a long time. You are still restricted to what can be interpolated from the available camera angles, however. The one advantage attempts to simulate the lunar surface have is that, sans boulders, it is gently rolling terrain with no undercuts. The latter means that you can actually simulate the depth with a single depth map -- a technique impossible for an object like the LM. Then they had designed a new buiding separately ... or they had a miniatyr model of the building. This was then transferred to the image. For me to prepare Apollo kind of pictures would take 1 day per flight (I just need LM and space suits). The only problem is that there seems to be also pictures taken from Moon surface from AS 15-17 (probably by robot cameras). For example, the huge stones at Hadley Rim walls seem to be real and too detailed for Panoramic camera. I haven't seen mesh models of that level of detail for the A7 yet. I can think of two fully-rigged models of an Apollo-style suit, but neither has the detail required (and neither is that close a resemblance, either). This is a non-trivial modeling task, and what is worse is that with anything less than a fully modern render machine you are going to have to bake a normals map or similar to transfer the necessary modeled details to a mesh you can actually work with. Still, the modeling and texture needs fade to nothing beside the need to run a Radiosity solution. I've been through the process of faking inter-object reflections (in -- shudder -- Bryce) and it is a challenge involving a whole bunch of carefully parameterized extra lights and way, way, way more cycles of render time. If you walked up to WETA today and said "gimme a realistic CGI of astronauts on the lunar surface" they'd say "sure...give us ten months." Not quite the trivial task you are making it out to be. The moon picture books published in early 1970s were either Disney kind of books with very bad quality pics (from a gravel pit and some with lamp lightning - some from Langley flight simulator) or geological books where only Metric/Panoramic camera pictures were used. Apollo was a Moon mapping mission - very good topographic maps were generated ... and at least the latest missions took pictures also from surface (without men). No. You are wrong, and I have the pictures in my hands to prove it. As do most of the other posters on this thread.
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