Apollo 3D Project (Part 11)

I'm still working on the Apollo 3D project. I needed some nice moon surface surroundings for the landing and EarthRise scenes that I'm planning. So I looked really hard for original material. It turned out that a real 3D scan of the Apollo 15 landing site existed, so I focused on that one. You can actually download it as a free 3DS model, but I started out with a picture that was taken by the same Japanese SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) Lunar Mission that scanned the Apollo 15 landing site. They brought back a huge pile of 3D data from this mission that was used to create the most details maps of the Moon up to date.

And here is a render of the 3DS model that I converted to Cinema 4D. I had a lot of trouble getting that done since it is very big and I needed a PC with a lot of memory and a 64 bits version of both applications, but I got it now. Even though it is a very detailed model it is still taken from very far away. So to make it usable for close-up's I incorporated another 3D model of some lunar craters into it. If you click the picture and look closely you can see a square on left that has a slightly different color on the left. I did that intentionally so that you could see it.

And here is a close-up of that same scene from a different angle. You can see the craters I added in the front. This will make an excellent spot I guess to land a LEM. The mountains in the back also make it perfect to picture a nice illuminated Earth in the distance for a nice Earth Rise scene. Maybe I'll also add some rocks to the scene later to make it even more realistic, but for now I'm very happy with this model that has taken me a very long time to create.

And here is a final close-up of the craters themselves. I think they look just great :) It is great to use real moon scans in stead of some imaginary scenes that I used before. OK enough for now, but I thought it would be nice to share these with you. And don't worry I'm also still working on the music in the mean time. I'm really finalizing the tracks together with my friend Hans. But since the release date for Apollo is set for the 1st of October we don't have to rush that much which is a nice thing of course. We can take our time to make it all as good as we possibly can for you. OK more soon!