Free and open source software for the planetarium dome and other immersive environments.
Your favorite Open Source Sorcerers are at it again!
We take a dive into the birthday cake model I worked on for use in the planetarium, and we get to explore Ron’s delightfully clever way of using shader nodes to display a fading orbital trail.
Be sure to hit the Like button, and please do subscribe to both of our channels while you’re there.
The birthday cake was shown in the previous post along with a link to the blend file.
The file Birthday_Cake.blend can be downloaded from
https://github.com/waystar/Featured-Blend-Files
I’ll post a followup linking to a peek at how I made parts of it in the current episode of The Ron and Way Show.
Ron invited me to hang out and make some YouTube videos and I’ve been having a great time. Here is our latest:
The UV dome is in my previous post here on FOSSdome, and here is the cute little galaxy I just made with Ron’s script and node setup:
I frequently need to apply fisheye images to a virtual dome within Blender. Sometimes I’m prototyping, sometimes I’m building a scene with a dome in it, sometimes I’m splitting the dome into parts for special effects in the planetarium.
The quickest way has always been to create a UV Sphere and delete the bottom half.
This results in a nice looking hemisphere, but we can’t apply a fisheye, since the UV map is half of what was created for the full sphere..
Applying an image to the map yields a fun result, but not what we want..
By unwrapping the hemisphere model, we can create a closer UV map..
But the rings toward the edges get closer together, and this causes distortion at the edges of the hemisphere..
After giving up on getting Gemini to help me extract a proper map from a UV hemisphere, I asked Gemini to write me a python script with 3 parts:
It worked! And just look at the spacing on this lovely UV map… 
And the same image texture applied.. just look at those edges, they are true!
The script can be downloaded here: UV_Dome_Generator_for_Good_UVmap.py
For the script, example blend file, an exported fbx model, and summaries of the method and the several wrong turns it took before I thought to make a circle first, go to https://github.com/waystar/Blender-UV-dome-generator.
A few updates and some cool Chandra X-ray Observatory stuff!
Links mentioned in the episode:
Museum & Informal Education Alliance https://informal.jpl.nasa.gov/museum/
Kim Arcand https://www.kimarcand.com/
Walking Among the Stars (VR stuff) https://chandra.cfa.harvard.edu/vr/
Chandra 3D models https://3d.si.edu/collections/Chandra
PPA Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-pfVOHnkvAV_fdnKLdqzwA/videos
Stellarium Landscape zip files for easy installation https://github.com/waystar/StellariumLandscapes/releases/tag/v1.1
A few weeks ago, I watched this video, produced by the Griffith Observatory a year ago:
As in the demonstration video I watched, I used Gimp. Of course I could have used Krita, but Gimp is my go-to since I’m so familiar with it.
First I downloaded set of images from 2021-07-21 Perijove 35:
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=11074
I opened the three color PNGs as layers and colorized them accordingly.
Then I played around with the individual layers’ brightness and contrast settings, then combined using Screen as the blend mode.
After I got the colors close to how I liked them, I used the G’Mic Tone Sharpening to bring out the detail. (https://gmic.eu/index.html)
I spent very little time on it, about 25 minutes total. I’m pleased with it and look forward to showing others how to make their own.
An update on what I’ve been up to, followed by some useful sources for open textbooks.
Links mentioned in the episode:
The Changelog: Open source goes to Mars https://changelog.com/podcast/440
Learning with Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Allen Downey https://greenteapress.com/wp/learning-with-python/
Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3 by Chuck Severance https://www.py4e.com/book
Eloquent JavaScript https://eloquentjavascript.net/
MIT OpenCourseWare https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/online-textbooks/
OpenStax https://openstax.org/subjects
Milne Open Textbooks https://milneopentextbooks.org/
The Missing Link https://milneopentextbooks.org/the-missing-link-an-introduction-to-web-development-and-programming/
American Institute of Mathematics https://aimath.org/textbooks/approved-textbooks/
Games and Puzzles http://www.artofmathematics.org/books/games-and-puzzles
Green Tea Press https://greenteapress.com/wp/
OER Commons https://www.oercommons.org/
Open Textbooks Library https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Introduction to Permaculture https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/introduction-to-permaculture
Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/
Links mentioned in the episode:
NASA 3D resources https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/
The Celestia Motherlode http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/
ESO https://www.eso.org/public/
ESA/Hubble https://esahubble.org/
NOIRlab https://noirlab.edu/public/
NASA Science Visualization Studio https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA Open Data Portal https://data.nasa.gov/
NASA Photojournal http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
Planetary Data System https://pds.nasa.gov/
NOAA Science on a Sphere http://www.sos.noaa.gov/Datasets
USGS Apollo panoramas http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/maps/moon-apollo-landing-panoramas
The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/
Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques (DAMIT) https://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/damit/
OpenClipArt.org https://openclipart.org
OpenGameArt.org https://opengameart.org/
HDRI haven https://hdrihaven.com/
TextureHaven https://texturehaven.com/
3DModelHaven https://3dmodelhaven.com/
This week I followed a rabbit hole that led me to rediscover some projects I’d previously not liked, but now they have the potential to be what I need.
Links from the episode:
unfa channel https://www.youtube.com/user/unfa00
TechHut channel https://www.youtube.com/user/TechHutus
TechHut top 10 Linux apps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeVJydgFKWo
Vokoscreen https://github.com/vkohaupt/vokoscreenNG
KdenLive https://kdenlive.org/en/
KDE https://kde.org/
OpenShot Video Editor https://www.openshot.org/
ShotCut https://www.shotcut.org/
Blender https://www.blender.org/
