Threw this together for fun...

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Got a sudden inclination to give this object a try... First test render with a simple sphere and a simple decal.

 

Can you guess what it is? (Science Fiction buffs probably will...)

 

 

I purposely made the seam face the camera for me to make sure the decal is on there correctly. I DID cheat a bit. Found that cylindrical mapping gives smoother results near the poles. The trick is to spherical map first, screen capture and use the capture as a rotoscope for sizing the cylindrical decal placement.

[Walter Baker]

Death Star

[Fuchur]

Death Star

 

Don't think so... Somehow I have an assosiation with a roboter head with an eye in the middle like the one from Planet51 (Rover) or something like that... So I am not totally sure.

 

*Fuchur*

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Bigger... much bigger. Think "planet".

[Darkwing]

I would say Dyson Sphere, but I remember that being greyer

[MMZ_TimeLord]

I would say Dyson Sphere, but I remember that being greyer

To that particular answer, I would say "Think smaller"...

 

Seriously, planet... like about Earth sized.

[thejobe]

Hmm its got styling from like hitch hikers guide of the galaxy I think.

[Darkwing]

Is the entire object a sphere or is this sphere you've made part of the larger object?

 

EDIT: It's not a sphere is it, it's just the decal? Hmmm, this is tricky, I feel like I should know this though :/

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Okay, the decal/texture map in the first test render was not and is not complete yet. It's just a base reference for me to paint on. And my painting sucks, so I'll be making the basic coloring in Visio first, then painting over it later in Gimp.

 

The Hexagon grid IS complete and accurate as well as the poles and equatorial band. A planet. I can't be clearer without giving it away.

 

[Walter Baker]

My Girl friend thinks the main ship in 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

If she is right I will never speek to her again.

[MMZ_TimeLord]

BZZZZZ... thank you for playing. Please try again.

[Rodney]

I confess. I give up.

But that is one very seriously fine model (the approach to texturing it that is!)

 

This is the first time I've every heard anyone say they were texturing a model in Visio.

Yet another tool in the toolbox to consider.

[KingVidiot]

It looks like a hexagonal playing field for a strategy game. I can't think of a sci-fi reference.

 

I was also going to say Dyson Sphere which is too big of course.

[Wildsided]

Dalek Crucible?

[Darkwing]

Okay, the decal/texture map in the first test render was not and is not complete yet. It's just a base reference for me to paint on. And my painting sucks, so I'll be making the basic coloring in Visio first, then painting over it later in Gimp.

 

The Hexagon grid IS complete and accurate as well as the poles and equatorial band. A planet. I can't be clearer without giving it away.

 

 

Ok what about a different hint, is it from a Tv Show, Movie or Book/Comic/Literature of some form? I've honestly wracked my brain and can't think of any blue and white planets comprised of a hexagon pattern with black poles and a red equator. The hexagon pattern suggests some sort of mechanicalness, it doesn't look like cybertron which is the only mechanical planet which comes to mind

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Okay, final hint. It's from a Science Fiction book series from about thirty years ago.

 

I won't reveal the author, but he's one of my favorites.

 

The white is primarily UNpainted, the blue is ocean. Here's a minor update.

 

 

Rodney,

 

As to painting with Visio, I can't draw consistent hexagons to save my life, so I arranged them in Visio first. Now I just select them and choose a fill color. When all the main coloring is done, I will go into Gimp and using the push/smudge tool and blur tools to make it more organic looking.

[Darkwing]

That explains why I don't know it then. Only sci-fi I've ever really read is Asimov's stuff from like 50 years ago

[Walter Baker]

Ok books! I'm out of the running.

Have a hard time reading my mail it ends up in the trash.

But will keep watching , really curious now.

[Rodney]

As to painting with Visio, I can't draw consistent hexagons to save my life, so I arranged them in Visio first. Now I just select them and choose a fill color. When all the main coloring is done, I will go into Gimp and using the push/smudge tool and blur tools to make it more organic looking.

 

I've always wanted to use Visio but never really had the need for it. I opened it up at work a few times and mess around with it.

We need to get you a video capture program because what you've got going on looks like a great workflow.

 

 

Extracurricular: I wonder how hard it would be to create a utility that recursively moved through those hexagons in an image, located a dot of color that was different than the border and filled in the remaining hexagon (or any shape for that matter) with the found color. In this way all you'd have to do is go in and make sure there is at least one (even if only a pixel) within the inside of a hexagon. Of course, if it found a particularly designated color it would add that to the Alpha Channel which also contains a copy of the outline/borders so that they could easily be dissapeared. (I lie awake at night thinking of stuff like that. )

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Rodney,

 

Visio is useful for lots of decal layout. You can make a checkered grid and save it as a image file (.jpg, .png., .tga, .tiff, .bmp, etc.) Visio even has the ability to export to Adobe Illustrator format. I find that VERY useful if I've got a general layout for something and just need to extrude it.

 

I'm still doing my research, but I'm thinking at this point I'll just start picking hexagons and colors. At least I'll try and find the various references in the books for the environment, so I can get most of them started in the right color. (tan for desert, dark green for rain forest, etc.)

 

More to come... Author's name is Jack L. Chalker *BIG HINT*

[itsjustme]

Rodney,

 

Visio is useful for lots of decal layout. You can make a checkered grid and save it as a image file (.jpg, .png., .tga, .tiff, .bmp, etc.) Visio even has the ability to export to Adobe Illustrator format. I find that VERY useful if I've got a general layout for something and just need to extrude it.

 

I'm still doing my research, but I'm thinking at this point I'll just start picking hexagons and colors. At least I'll try and find the various references in the books for the environment, so I can get most of them started in the right color. (tan for desert, dark green for rain forest, etc.)

 

More to come... Author's name is Jack L. Chalker *BIG HINT*

 

I'm not familiar with Jack L. Chalker...but a search turned up "Well World" as a possibility. I was more of an Asimov/Zelazny/Heinlein/Donaldson/Niven/Herbert reader in my youth.

[Fuchur]

Never ever heard about it... have to have a look at it.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[livewiresrus]

The prison planet Melchior?

[thekamps]

.

[MMZ_TimeLord]

itsjustme and thekamps,

 

You guys got it, but I knew as soon as I released the name of the author it would be just a matter of Google seconds.

 

thekamps, that image is WAY off, but a cute little attempt.

 

Unfortunately, there are many mathematically verifiable contradictions in the books. Here's all my notes and what conclusions and decisions I came to for where to start the model.

 

Enjoy.

 

Maps and Mathematics of Jack L. Chalker's Well World

780 Southern Hexagons
780 Northern Hexagons
1560 Total Hexagons (p 62 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym])

614.86 km is the length across of each hexagon (p 88 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym])
355 km is the length of a side of each hexagon (p 62 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym])

Avenue width: 35.5 meters or 1/10,000th of the length of a side of a hex (p 199 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym])

Area of a Hexagon
½ x (6s) x h
½ x (6(355) x 307) note: h is the radius so it is half of 615
3,269,552^2 Area of a Hex. (This is roughly the size of India)

3,269,552^2 x 1560 (number of Hexes)
510,049,800^2 (projected area of Well World)

Area of Well World is 5.1 x 10^8 km^2 (p 55 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym])
5.1 x 1,000,000,000
or 510,000,000^2

This is remarkably close to the surface area of the Earth which is 510,072,000^2

We are told that the hexes that border the equatorial barrier that separate the Northern from the Southern Hexes
are “two hexes wide and half a hex tall” (p 287 [acronym="Midnight at the Well of Souls"]MatWoS[/acronym]). We are informed there are 24 such split hexagons. (p 71 [acronym="Quest for the Well of Souls"]QftWoS[/acronym])
This would mean there are only 12 avenues if 24 refers to the actual hexagons and not the pairs. If pairs, then 24 Avenues.

No exact reference that I have found is given as to the width of the equatorial barrier, nor it's height. I will make it about 35
kilometers tall. 1/10 the height of a hexagon side.

Lastly the occupied surface area of the Well World is not all of it. The text below refences large black polar caps.

If all of this information is used along with the partial southern and northern maps to compile a model of the Well World,
there is a serious contradiction of information.

1. 780 Southern and Northern Hexagons will NOT map in a strip 10 Hexagons high with the split hexagon spacing shown
in the map. If we take the map as the more likely source, then the total count per side would be 800 hexagons. This would
allow for 20 Avenues total.

2. If we use the 24 split Hexagon data, along with the 12 avenue model, then the total hexagon and area count drops significantly.
Calculations show the total number of hexagons per hemisphere would be only 480. WAY too small to be the size stated in the book.
If we use 24 Avenue model then the total number of hexagons rise to 960. This is quite a bit larger than the size in the book, but not
out of the realm of possibility.

3. Either of the larger models, 20 or 24 Avenue, would result in a larger circumference than mentioned in Exiles at the Well of Souls,
which was 40,000 km.

No matter how you map the strip map onto a sphere, the southern most and northern most hexagons WILL be distorted. This is verified
in the The Return of Nathan Brazil. (p 128 [acronym="The Return of Nathan Brazil"]TRoNB[/acronym])

If we base our calculations for the equatorial circumference, planet diameter and radius on the hexagon dimensions given above:
(355 km on a side)

20 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 800 hexagon hemispheres, 42,600 km circumference, 13,560 km Diameter, 6,780 km Radius
24 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 960 hexagon hemispheres, 51,120 km circumference, 16,272 km Diameter, 8,136 km Radius

Earth, as we know it today, has an approximate 40,074 km circumference, 12,756 km Diameter, 6,378 km Radius

Subtracting the unoccupied area of the poles would still give us a nearly equivelant surface area to Earth.

I would infer with these discrepencies, that the 20 Avenue model is likely to be our closest one without seriously distorting the overall size
of the Well World.

If we take the 24 Avenue model, then the total number of hexagons per hemisphere is VERY much in error as well as the size of the planet itself.

Based on all this, I have begun modeling the Well of Souls based on the 20 Avenue calculations.

Refence text:

From Exiles at the Well of Souls:

"Look-you got all those jewel faces on the south, but you can tell it's lots of green and ocean and stuff like that. Our kind of world.
Then you got that great dark-amber strip around the equator, and then a whole different kind of world up top."

"The poles are interesting, too," Gil Zinder noted. "See how dark and thick they are, and how huge. Almost like great buildings
hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers across."

"Finally clipped it a little low, got within the Well's influence, and got nonteched, same as the first one. The reason you haven't
heard is that they had swung up North for a look. Near as we can tell, they went down in 1146 or 1318,  Uchjin or Ashinshyh.
Got anything on them?"

From Quest for Well of Souls:

A tall minotaur paused before the door, looking curiously for a moment at the symbol embossed on everything. Unlike his native
Dasheen, which used a standard hexagonal symbol, Yaxa used an ideogram which he mistook at first for a pair of stylized wings.
After a moment he realized that it was not so. Yaxa was a state along the Equatorial Barrier. It was composed of one half of a hex
split horizontally joined to one half of a hex split vertically. Only twenty-four such hexes were so split on either side of the Barrier.
The "wings" were, in fact, two half-hexes joined.

From The Return of Nathan Brazil:

Mavra smiled wanly. "Like anyplace else, really. Just imagine a planet that was a lot of little planets, fifteen hundred and sixty of
them, in fact, each roughly six hundred and fifteen kilometers wide at the Well World's equator—they get a little distorted as you
go toward the poles. Each one is shaped like a hexagon, the Markovians were nutty about the number six. Each one with its own
plants, insects, you name it, and all with different dominant races. All the carbon-based ones are south of the equator, seven
hundred and eighty in all. The ones north of the equator are non-carbon based. They can be anything."

[robcat2075]

Can you guess what it is? (Science Fiction buffs probably will...)

 

I used to think I was a sci-fi buff because i liked "2001" when I was 8 but later I met actual sci-fi buffs and realized i wasn't even close to being a sci-fi buff.

[Gerry]

I used to think I was a sci-fi buff because i liked "2001" when I was 8 but later I met actual sci-fi buffs and realized i wasn't even close to being a sci-fi buff.

Same here, I gave up on being any kind of a nerd years ago. I can talk the talk when it comes to Marvel comics but it's all show.

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Okay, another update. I'm done with checking the books for reference on the hexagons that were mentioned. Now I'm just painting random on my own.

 

Hope to start on the Northern hemisphere tomorrow, then start blending and making it all a bit more organic.

 

Enjoy!