Planet generator
The planet-map generator shown of this page has been developed in
small increments over more than 20 years, so the code is a bit messy.
But if you just want to run the program, this shouldn't matter for
you.
As of Febrary 2013,
a web interface is
available. It does not have all the options of the offline version,
and (so as to not overburden the server, which I share with many
others) the size of maps is limited. But it is easier to use and does
not require any installation.
The offline program (which you can download below) runs from a
command line, so no fancy GUI. Lots of command-line options, though.
A thing to note if you are using both the web tool and the offline
program is that seeds in the web tool are integers that get "0."
prefixed to then to get the equivalent for seed for the offline
version. So, for example, the seed 1111111 in the web tool
corresponds to the option "-s 0.1111111" in the offline program.
A few examples of maps generated by the program are shown
below. Click on the pictures to see larger versions.
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Mollweide projection of full planet
with 30° gridlines
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Stereographic projection of detail
(with daylight shading)
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Mercator projection of another planet
with 15° gridlines
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Orthographic projection of same
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Using monochrome colour map (yellow.col),
bumpmap and outline to emulate old-style maps. The map on the left
is a detail (using Mercator projection) of the planet on the right
(which is shown using the square projection).
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Last update: March 13 2013.
The zip file contains the source code (in C), a manual and a few
other files. You need a C compiler to compile the program.
This is compiled with the Tiny C compiler, so no fancy
optimisations are applied. You may also want files (e.g. colour maps)
from the zip file.
Last update: May 1 2012.
Last update: March 13 2013.
The manual is a plain text file describing command-line options and
instructions for compiling the program.
The slides explain how the maps are generated and compares to other
map-generation techniques.
Torben Mogensen
DIKU, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 1, DK-2100
København Ø
E-mail: torbenm@diku.dk
Telephone: (+45) 21 84 96 72 Fax: (+45) 35 32 14 01
