moving from orbital to ground level

[Master chief]

OK i have a project for school in which i need to take a realistic earth model and then zoom into ground level , like the spy satellites in the movies , once it gets to around 200 Feet the ground will change to blue print style rendering .

 

my problem currently is

 

1 how do i make a realistic earth model , using real map topology, ie Africa and Canada are not joined at the hip

 

2 how do i zoom in in a realistic manner

 

 

any help would be appreciated

[robcat2075]

This is something I've almost never seen done well. They use different models for the different distances.

 

They zoom into the earth, then replace that with a more detailed model that just covers the picture area and keep on zooming until they need to replace that wiht a more detailed model again.

 

 

 

 

Obviously it has to be a smooth transition between the far-off and close-up models and all those inbetween, but tricky to hide the fades. The faster you zoom the better I think.

 

It could all be done with 2D images instead of models if you don't have to fly over anything.

 

I think there's already an Earth made somewhere around here.

 

 

I bet there's an app somewhere on the web that will handle animating the Google maps view and maybe even capture the frames for you. That would be easiest.

[Fuchur]

If I had to do it, I would try to use several models and fly with the camera through clouds. Whenever you need to change something there is a cloud and you just fly through it.

 

That should do the trick quite well. It is very hard to do it in another way... anyway the spline-nature could help here, but it would very likely result in huge rendertimes to model something from the greates detail you need and go to the space to render it.

 

Hope that helps.

 

*Fuchur*