Greening Mars

[cyphyr]

Well yes I know it's a bit of a trope and more than just a little generic but I have always wanted to try this


The greening effect is done by separating out the colour channels of the original mars map and altering their levels to make a green.

Greening Mars

C & C welcome, thanks for viewing and enjoy.

[WAS]

This is pretty darn cool! I love the water effect. That was a good idea.

I think with how far mars is, the greenlands would be very low, and the highlands would start accumulating heavy snow and water, which seasonally be melting off into the oceans, creating a continual water cycle.

While I like the water effect, being super unique, it's not realistic, as where is it coming from? Showing the glacial highlands forming with the water may make it seem more plausible.

The stars could use some work too. Maybe a faint milky way. To note I also shared a generator you could fiddle with in photoshop: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,629.msg254801.html#msg254801 (Also shared a legacy version later in that thread too)

Just my idea though. I really like this. Quality of the planet looks good.

[cyphyr]

I didn't think too much on how the water got there lol.
It might flow down from the highlands, or it may come from underground frozen aquifers and ice caps.
My "logic" as far as it goes was that the green areas would extend forward of the wet areas by a few hundred meters (500 in this case).

The star field I am actually quite pleased with. All the photos I have seen are blurry and/or noisy and both the Terregen technique and the standard Photoshop technique create small dashes and marks that are not pinpoints of light. This was done as a procedural environment texture in Lightwave. Could definitely be improved on though I admit.

[WAS]

I didn't think too much on how the water got there lol.
It might flow down from the highlands, or it may come from underground frozen aquifers and ice caps.
My "logic" as far as it goes was that the green areas would extend forward of the wet areas by a few hundred meters (500 in this case).

The star field I am actually quite pleased with. All the photos I have seen are blurry and/or noisy and both the Terregen technique and the standard Photoshop technique create small dashes and marks that are not pinpoints of light. This was done as a procedural environment texture in Lightwave. Could definitely be improved on though I admit.

No offense, but the same dashes are in yours too, as well as weird cloudy-perlin-based fading of stars which isn't accurate at all and unlike any NASA photo I'm aware of.

The dashes are also seen in NASA images too, as it's simply two points [or more] close together.

Your stars also have no colour definition. Stars are rarely white. That's a product of our atmosphere. They shimmer in each wavelength hitting the camera, and I believe none of which are white. Whiteness comes from our atmosphere or exposure blending wavelengths.

[archonforest]

Cool experiment.

[cyphyr]

OK I fixed the stars (a bit)
It's very difficult to get something as small as a star (1 px screen space) to not flicker as it moves and I don't like having the stars different sizes.

https://vimeo.com/353213598

[DocCharly65]

Cool idea and cool look!
When I played with Terragen 0.9 approx. 200 years ago I had a similar idea to do something like that with the moon but never finished that idea ( I think I only did a start and an end frame and had no Idea how to animate this (of course not... TG 0.9 or was it even 0.89? 
Congrats - you did it!

As a Sci Fi fan with a quite low affinity to absolute physical correctness I will not question where the water comes from or how the stars would look like in reality 

I only saw two things I personally would change: The clouds could have a much faster movement if you consider that it's a time laps with the speed of many months in one minute - what do you think?
And the green letters in the beginning look very dark on my PC.

[Hannes]

Great idea! Fascinating and well done!

[WAS]

OK I fixed the stars (a bit)
It's very difficult to get something as small as a star (1 px screen space) to not flicker as it moves and I don't like having the stars different sizes.

https://vimeo.com/353213598

I know what you mean about the flickers. I've had the same annoyances with AE. However viewing 4K ISS footage, you see the same deal with real stars. Maybe it's just our monitors or just how the camera light interacts with frames being intermittent wavelengths.

Stars look much better, like the new update a lot.

I do agree with cloud movement but I wasn't immediately drawn to them. More focused on the greening and water.