Flaming Pear LunarCell Manual

What it does

How to Install

Controls

Mapmaking

FAQ

Versions

How to Purchase

Questions

LunarCell

What it does

LunarCell is a plug-in filter for paint programs. It draws moons and planets.

How to install

To use this software, you need a paint program which accepts standard Photoshop 3.0 plugins.

Just put the plug-in filter into the folder where your paint program expects to find it. If you have Photoshop, the folder is Photoshop:Plugins:Filters or Photoshop:Plug-ins. You must restart Photoshop before it will notice the new plug-in. It will appear in the menus as Filters->Flaming Pear->LunarCell.

Most other paint programs follow a similar scheme.

If you have Paint Shop Pro: you have to create a new folder, put the plug-in filter into it, and then tell PSP to look there. In PSP's menus, choose File-> Preferences->General Program Preferences... and click the Plug-in Filters tab. Use a "Browse" button to choose the folder. The plugin will appear in the menus as Image->Plug-in Filters->Flaming Pear->LunarCell.

Controls

When you invoke LunarCell, a dialog box will appear:

Quick start |  |  |

If you just want to make a planet quickly, click the dice button until you see a planet you like; then click OK.

To design your own planets, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the controls for each of the elements in a planet:

> Planet

> Climate

> Air

> Clouds

> Synth clouds

> Cities

...and a few other controls that affect the whole image.

1. Planet |  |  |

These controls set the shape of the planet.

Size lets you choose planets from point-sized up to 2000 pixels diameter.

Complexity specifies whether the landmasses have simple or complicated shapes.

Land texture sets the height of the mountains and the depth of the oceans, if you have oceans. A setting of zero will give a smooth planet.

Crater count Besides the fractal landscape, LunarCell can produce craters. This isn't the number of individual craters -- it's groups of craters.

Crater size is the average size of a crater group.

When the count is high and the size is large too, LunarCell may overlap crater groups.

Crater texture is the roughness of the craters. It works just like Land texture.

If Land texture and Crater texture are both zero, you'll get a smooth planet.

The Color button sets the main color of the planet.

Real Luna, when checked, gives you the shape of the Earth's moon instead of the fractal terrain. When you use this, you may want to reduce the Land texture setting. It's possible to add extra craters to the moon.

simple land

complex land

craters

color button

2. Climate |  |  |

These controls let you add color to the landscape.

Ice sets the size of the planet's ice cap. Ice appears near the poles. You can choose the color of the ice by clicking the color button.

Desert produces deserts near the equator. Use the color button to pick a color.

Sea level makes oceans. Set it to zero for no oceans, or to 100 for a drowned world. Dark blue water is best but the color button lets you experiment.

Lunar Climate, when checked, gives you the coloration of Earth's moon. The Ice, Desert, and Sea colors are disregarded, and the hue comes entirely from the planet color button.

green planet color, pale orange desert, blue water, bluish-white ice

Real Luna and Lunar climate used together

3. Air |  |  |

Your planet can have an atmosphere.

Color button sets the color of the air. Pale, muted blue is the most realistic.

Depth sets how far the atmosphere extends into space.

Brightness changes the brightness of the air.

Sunset influences the reddening of the light near the terminator (the line that separates night from day). Its effect is most plain when you put the light directly behind the planet.

a planet with air

4. Clouds |  |  |

LunarCell gives you the choice of synthetic clouds or, if you have an Internet connection, real clouds from weather satellites. The controls in this section apply to both kinds of clouds.

Color button sets the clouds' color. Off-white is the most realistic.

Coverage changes the amount of clouds. (When you use real clouds, you can't go up to 100% coverage -- because the satellite pictures are not 100% covered in clouds.)

Edges gives the clouds a soft-edged or hard-edged look.

Height sets the altitude of the clouds.

Shadows sets the darkness of the clouds' shadows.

Texture sets the amount of the clouds' surface texture. It's similar to Land texture and Crater texture.

Real Clouds checkbox will make LunarCell use weather satellite photos for the clouds. First you need to download these photos using the Load Clouds button.

Load Clouds button lets you download weather satellite images from the internet to use as clouds. This is explained below.

real clouds

load clouds

5. Synthetic louds |  |  |

There are extra controls to describe synthetic clouds.

Coriolis produces the appearance of shearing winds between the equator and the poles.

Viscosity sets the "soupiness" of the air. Air with higher viscosity has fewer small cloud details.

Storm count sets the number of hurricane-like storms.

Storm size is the size of the storms. LunarCell will not overlap storms. If you ask for more and larger storms than will fit on the planet's face, you'll get fewer storms than you asked for.

Storm spin sets the twirliness of the storms.

synthetic clouds

Coriolis winds

6. Cities |  |  |

You can add cities on the night side of the planet.

The Cities slider set the density of the cities. Cities are placed mainly in coastal areas, so you may not see any cities at all if your planet has no oceans.

Color button sets the color of the cities. Dim, muted yellow works well.

cities near the terminator

7. How to download clouds |  |  |

It's as easy as pie. All you need is an internet connection. If you are using Macintosh, you need to have MacOS 8.6 or later for this feature.

Click the Load Clouds button. This will call up a window with a list of available cloud images.

Choose the image you want to use, and click OK. Your clouds will be downloaded and then applied to the image.

If no clouds are visible, try increasing the cloud Coverage and Edges sliders.

The cloud chooser screen has some other buttons:

Try cache first will look to see whether the the clouds you've asked for are already on your hard disk. If so, LunarCell will just use those. If not, LunarCell will download the clouds. (A cache is repository of data kept around for possible re-use.)

Update this list will check Flaming Pear's website to see if there is a newer list of clouds available. The current version number appears in the top-right corner. Occasionally we update the list when the images it points to move or change.

Cancel quits without changing any clouds.

load clouds

cloud chooser screen

8. Other controls |  |  |

Light control sets the light direction.

Backlighting, when checked, makes the light shine from behind.

Pole control moves the North Pole, influencing weather, climate, and city placement.

Dice This randomizes the settings. Click it as much as you want to see different effects.

Random seed This changes only the arrangement of all the random elements, like the land, craters, and synthetic clouds.

Position of planet Reposition the planet by clicking anywhere in the preview area.

Map mode Chooses how to drawthe planet. Normal draws it on a black background. Composite makes the planet opaque, and the underlying image shows through the air. Other modes make flat maps and are explained here.

Plus, % and minus buttons: If the selected image area is larger than the preview are, these buttons will let you zoom in and out. You can also reposition the preview by dragging it around; your cursor will turn into a hand.

Auto Preview When this box is checked, the preview automatically updates whenever you move any control. Turn it off if you want to save time.

Load preset LunarCell comes with some presets, which are files containing settings. To load one, click this button and browse for a preset file.

Save preset When you make an effect you like, click this button to save the settings in a file.

Undo backs up one step.

Three more buttons:

OK Applies the effect to your image.

Cancel Dismisses the filter, and leaves the image unchanged.

Register Allows you to type in a registration code.

light control

pole control

dice

random seed

map mode

load preset (top)
and save preset

undo

Mapmaking

LunarCell can create flat maps that you can use as texture maps in a 3D animation program.

The maps are drawn in a cylindrical equirectangular projection, also known as cylindrical equidistant or plate carée: meridians are vertical, parallels are horizontal, and all are uniformly spaced. The map will fill the entire selection rectangle, permitting super-high resolution. For proper results, you should start with a selection exactly twice as wide as it is tall.

mode | view | remarks
normal | globe | black background
composite | globe | transparent background
lit map | map | complete planet, lit
map color | map | land and sea, unlit
land color | map | land only, unlit
land bump | map | bump map; if clipping occurs, reduce "land texture" slider.
ocean mask | map | antialiased ocean boundaries
air color | map | color of lit air; does not include the thickened haze near the planet's edge
cloud mask | map | opacity of cloud layer
cloud bump | map | bump map for clouds
cities | map | just the cities, on both day and night sides
mural | map | complete planet with uniform-looking lighting

The "real luna" and "real clouds" options can be used with maps, but since the images they use only show one hemisphere, they will appear duplicated on the far side of the planet.

If you use MacOS, you can make a map that's twice as wide as it is tall, drop it on MakeCubicPPC, and create a bizarre 360° view of a planet as seen from the inside out.

map mode

Frequently Asked Questions

Can it draw gas planets like Jupiter?

No.

How do I composite the planet on top of another image?

Click the "map mode" popup menu and choose the "composite" item. Now when you use LunarCell the planet will be...
-- merged into in the background layer, or
-- drawn into a transparent region in any other layer.

Sometimes when I try to increase the number of storms, no new storms appear.

LunarCell tries to keep storms from overlapping; sometimes there's not enough room for the number of storms you've asked for. Try using smaller storms.

What does the wavy-line button do?

Think of it as the "same-but-different" button. It reshuffles the deck of random numbers used to build the planet. When you click it, your planet design remains materially the same, but the specific placement of landmasses, craters, cities, and storms changes.

What does the axis control do?

It says where the planet's north pole is. It influences the placement of the ice cap, the deserts, the cities, the storms, and Coriolis winds.

It's awfully slow.

Yes.

The sunset control doesn't do anything.

Its effect is subtle: it reddens the edge of the sunlit part of the planet. To get a good look at what it does, put the light directly behind the planet and then try different sunset settings.

I turned the cities slider up to 100, but still no cities appear.

Cities only appear near coastlines, so try changing the sea level.

I can't download satellite clouds.

You need to have a working Internet connection. If your connection is fine but you still can't get the clouds to download, it may be that the server that sends the files is not working. Try again later.

I downloaded some satellite clouds and the image is corrupted.

Sometimes the supplied pictures contain errors like bright horizontal lines or blank areas. LunarCell isn't smart enough to fix this.

I loaded a preset that calls for real clouds, but I get the synthetic ones instead.

If LunarCell can't find any clouds images on your computer, it will fall back to synthetic clouds. To get real ones again, use the cloud-downloader button.

How often are the clouds updated?

Typically once per day.

When I'm using real clouds I can't make the coverage go above 50%.

LunarCell can remove clouds from a satellite cloud image, but it can't add new ones, so the control maxes out at 50%. If you use synthetic clouds, you can use the whole range of the coverage slider.

I can't see any clouds.

Try increasing the "coverage" and "edges" sliders.

In the cloud-chooser dialog box, I clicked the "update this list" button, but the list didn't change. Why?

The cloud list rarely changes. We only renew the list when one of its items stops working.

Where do the satellite clouds come from?

At the time of this writing, LunarCell is configured to get its cloud images from The Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and The Laboratory for Atmospheres NASA Goddard Space Flight Center .

I just want to make a plain picture of Earth's moon. How?

Set the air depth, sunset, sea level, and crater count to zero. Check the "Real Luna" and "Lunar climate" checkboxes. Set the Land color to bright gray and set planet texture to about 15.

How do I make a terraformed moon?

Start with the above recipe for a plain moon. Then adjust the sea-level, air depth, and clouds. If you want, turn off the "Lunar climate" control to get a green and verdant moon.

What is terraforming?

It's the speculative technology of turning lifeless worlds into habitable Earth-like ones.

Does the moon have a name?

The moon's name is Luna. It's useful to know when you need to distinguish it from the sixty-odd other moons in the solar system. The sun's name is Sol, and sometimes the earth is called Terra.

Where can I get more spacy pictures?

### Weather imagery

Live Weather Images * www.weatherimages.org
GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE SERVER
GOES-8/10 Full Disk and Composite Images
SSEC - NOAA GOES-8 Satellite Images
SSEC - NOAA GOES-10 Satellite Images
NOAA Home Page Main Page
EarthKAM: Main Menu
Satellite Weather Information - Weather - Net Links
PSC Weather Center
GOES-10 Current full disk visible image Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
GOES-10 Current full disk visible image Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
GOES GMS METEOSAT Realtime Data
GOES Full Disk
GOES Full Earth

### Luna

Hawaii 20µm High Resolution of the Moon
Earth View
Lunar Outreach Services
Full Moon
The Galileo Moon Images
Almost a Full Moon
1st Quarter Moon
JSC Digital Image Collection - AS11-44-6667
Moon Image Index
Moon Picture List
USGS CLEMENTINE
Browser for Earth Observations from Shuttle
NASA - JSC Digital Image Collection Home
Clementine
The Living Earth
Maps of the Solar System

### Craters

cass.jsc.nasa...c/cchome.html
Teacher Page: Impact Craters
MWO Museum Exhibit: Close-Up of Some of the Moon's Craters
Impact Craters
Lunar Impact Crater Geology and Structure
NSSDC Photo Gallery: Moon
Lunar Features
Apollo 17 Metric and Panoramic Photography
Lunar and Planetary Science, winter 1998-1999, Lunar Mapping Lab
Solar Physics Holdings on NDADS
Encyclopedia Images

Hints Use the "Composite" item in the map mode popup menu to draw the planet without the black background. Updates and hints are online at http://www.flamingpear.com/lunarcell.html . |  |  |

Version History

Version 1.1 December 2000

The glue menu has been replaced with the map menu, which lets you export unwrapped planet elements for use in 3D animation.

The storms have moved, because now they react correctly to the position of the planet's pole.

Version 1.02 November 28 2000

In newly created presets, LunarCell now pays more attention to the planet color setting, producing richer color variation.

Presets from older versions of LunarCell will produce the same image as before, unless the user chooses a new planet color.

Version 1.0 September 22 2000

The first public release.

Version 1.01 September 23 2000

Fixes a problem where the Windows version would forget its registration code.

How to Purchase

You can place an order online here. A secure server for transactions is available.

Questions

Answers to common technical questions appear on the support page, and free upgrades appear periodically on the download page.

Trouble with your order? Orders are handled by Kagi; please contact them at admin@kagi.com .

For bug reports and technical questions about the software, please write to support@flamingpear.com .