Nested Images Trial

[icosahedron]

Here's a little project I've been playing about with to get a feel for layering images in Viewingdale (and to play around with its marvellous zoom).

Fig 1. The orange spot is a sun. This isn't quite Viewingdale's maximum outward zoom, but it's not far off, and once the sun drops to a pixel or two it's darned difficult to relocate if you lose sight of it...

Fig 2. The sun is a Public Domain NASA image. The white pixel to the lower left of it is Zeta Kai's planet, Muhka Rarha.

Fig 3. Here you can see the planet near the limb of the sun, just to give a sense of scale - though of course, their separation should be MUCH wider.

Fig 4. And here is Zeta's Muhka Rarha in full glory. At this scale you can't see my modification, though.

Fig 5. Zooming in toward the horizontal sea near the northern ice, you can see my inset. This demonstrates why I need some details of the world at intermediate zoom. The inset seems to float because the background is pixellated under it. With a better defined background, in several layers of zoom between the planet and the inset, the inset would settle.

Fig 6. Here is the inset with two smaller insets nested within it. The middle one is a good one, it's hard to see the join, but the outer one is the floaty one and the inner one of the volcano, doesn't really fit, but it's the best I could do with what Google Maps provide.

Excuse the plug for Google, but from what I understand from their use regulations I have to put that on in order to legally post it. :

Fig 7. This is the inner of those three nested pictures. It's the picture of Mt Rainier's glaciers that first gave me the idea. The pixel in the middle of the crater is my Ice Tower, as featured in my recent WIP.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=6759
This picture is itself made from a number of nested images, created by printscreening from Google Maps at different zooms and then importing and nesting them in Viewingdale.

Fig 8. Here's the crater of the volcano showing the Ice Tower in the middle. There is a colour mismatch between the photographed snow and the bluer snow texture of my drawing, but again, there's not much I can do about that.

Fig 9. This is the Ice Tower atop it's rocky knoll at the centre of the crater. You can just make out a guard at the corner of the gatehouse.

Fig 10. A close up of the gatehouse shows the guard (thanks, Kimmo).

Fig 11. Here's the guard up close and personal. The dark pixel on his neck...

Fig 12. ...is a flea. This is the lower limit of Viewingdale's versatile zoom.

This looks so much better when you can zoom in and watch the scenes unfolding. It was Viewingdale's ability to hold a sci-fi universe in this way that first attracted me to it. I can create inset areas for castles, cities, haunted forests, whatever, on a million worlds if need be.

Probably, I'll do most of my nested insets from my own drawings, but I was struggling for a long time on snow, hence this shortcut. Eventually, I might copy the photo as an original drawing or three in Gimp. Then I know I have all the necessary rights, and I can ditch the messy labels.

Disclaimer: AFAIK, showing this stuff here is legal with the Google labels included, but if anyone knows differently, feel free to remove it. It's only for peer review on the map nesting technique anyway.

[icosahedron]

Images 6-10...

[icosahedron]

Images 11 & 12.

[Redrobes]

A flea LOL. I did an ant once. In fact isn't there an ant in the help pages... but solar system to flea is even sillier.

Your ice castle fits in well with the terrain you have for it now. Its all come together very nicely.

Right - just the rest of the planet to do then

BTW. Your planet still looks a bit squashed. I put in a feature in V1.08 for you to fix that. Under F4 Visible Height option there is a new set of exact aspect buttons. I think you need the exact 5:4 one and that will fix it.

EDIT -- We want the movie of that now hah hah.