Input needed on printing the planets in a 3D printer...

It's in a way a complicated tricky thing, at least for an amateur on a
shoestring
budget. Could be broken up into the following list of "things to do":

1. Aquiring topographic data for planet in question (how?/where?).
Perhaps it is necessary
to scan it from an atlas? (which one?)

2. Turning it into a spheroid (if it isn't already in that format).

3. Increasing surface elevation/decreasing depressions 50 or 100
times. (program to use?)

4. Aquiring "surface colour data" (a picture in visible light of the
surface) for planet in
question (how?/where?) Some atlas could have quality pictures (which
one?).

5. Turning that data into a spheroid (if it isn't already in that
format)

6. Perhaps processing "surface colour data" so it's "aestetically
pleasing" and "easy to
see"

7. Merging colour picture and topographic data

8. Actually printing the planet on a 3D printer (what brand of
printer?; cost of a "print"?)

I have been thinking of starting with our own moon. Could google moon
be a shortcut somehow?

The most important thing is perhaps learning to use and tweak some 3D
program. Or some
cartographic program.

All input welcome!

http://cseligman.com/text/moons/moonmap.htm ---here you can find a
colour coded
topographic map of the moon. But how do you get it into a 3D program?

DK

In article
,
Dean Keaton wrote:

All input welcome!

http://cseligman.com/text/moons/moonmap.htm ---here you can find a
colour coded
topographic map of the moon. But how do you get it into a 3D program?


The Wavefront OBJ file format is pretty easy to understand. If this were
my project I would write a program to create a sphere in that file
format, then map the coordinates from a jpg image onto the sphere.
Wikipedia has all that you need to decode that file format. Blender and
Meshlab are among my favorite free programs for working with meshes.