G.Plates

[Krmp4]

Just another question.

So I downloaded G.Plates for my map (in Mollweide) shown here. I want to create a whole series of continental drift sequences.

PARA C MOLL.jpeg

Just saying, but I'm a huge fan of Furahan Biology. He (the creator of the blog) posted a video of his planet's continental drifts. I was wondering how you can actually replicate that in G.Plates with my own maps. I just want to figure out the positions of the continents in time frames of 10 million years, then I will transfer the sequences to a morphing software to make the transitions smooth.

The link to the blog post can be found here:

http://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2015/11/progress.html

Thanks everyone!

[ascanius]

I did something similar for my map. I don't have gplates installed anymore so I can't give details because I don't remember. The basic idea is to create a plate using one of the drawing tools, don't remember which. Then set the Euler pole for that plate and move it to where you want. In the settings for each plate there is a bunch of data, somewhere in there you add plate movements by changing the start and end time. I don't know if this helps I really don't remember the interface at all. Check out the gplates user manual, your going to be playing with plate reconstructions menue a lot, it gets tedious.

[Krmp4]

No I meant like ACTUAL continents moving around, not plate direction.

[Pixie]

Do you mean something similar to this?

I think g.plates will only help you so far, since it simulates the movement of 2d shapes in the surface of a sphere with you in control direction and speed of that movement. However, you will need to do a lot of painting if you want something more than that. Also, bear in mind that as the continents move about, they will change a lot, in terms of actual coastline and colors of the vegetation cover... If you are aiming at perfect, you gotta take that into account. That's why, even for Earth, you don't see that many quality animations of this kind.

Charerg recently worked with g.plates to develop his conplanet... this is his thread, I don't know if you ever read it, but he did manage to attach images to the plates although he didn't explain how.

[Krmp4]

Yes exactly that. Thanks.