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3D Blender Earth Lighting modelling Nasa blue marble

3D Earth

A quick excercise in wrapping a spherical image onto a spherical model using the NASA Blue Marble project imagery

I unwrapped and mapped images from Nasa’s Blue Marble project to create the most realistic rendition of Earth I could for the home/menu screen of a game I am currently designing. The Hyperbolic extrusion in the third image is meant to be a futuristic space travel lift. The fourth image is meant to portray the ‘terminator’ line between day and night, with the sun illuminating the land of Africa, and the city lights lighting up South America. I have set up the two lights to effect individual layers in order to animate the terminator! Below is some footage from the ISS showing its journey to the darkside! In the last frame you can just see the streetlights starting to emerge from the darkness. WARNING! Vertigo sufferers may want to look away now.