# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Sci-fi/Modern Mapping >  Looking for a Venus base

## Ilanthar

Hi,

I want to do a Venus map for my game but I can't find a proper base for it. I need a map of Venus with altimetry/topography with a good accuracy. I've just found some maps with false colours (flashy blue, yellow and red) and it's not very accurate...
There are a lot for Mars, but not for Venus.

Oh! I used to work on classic surface maps. But another format will do.

Tell me if you have one or know a good place to find it.

Thanks by advance.

----------


## atpollard

Do you realize how NOT inhabitable the surface of Venus is?
Imagine building a city on an active volcano at the bottom of the ocean ... only the water is sulfuric acid.

Try looking here:
Nasa Technical Reports Server

----------


## jbgibson

Would the map on this page do you?

----------


## Midgardsormr

Has anyone seen toff recently? He had what looked like a radar surface map of Venus for his Venus Transit Map, but I don't recall if he said where it came from. 

If that false color image is of sufficient resolution, you might be able to remap the colors to a more usable grayscale heightmap. As I recall, there's a topo made from Magellan data that uses a rather garish hypsometric scheme. If that's the one you have, then the reds are high altitude, the blues are low altitude, and the grays are areas where no data was captured. I considered using that image to get a displacement map for a 3d model of the planet, but I never had cause to look beneath the clouds, so it's sitting in one of my archives somewhere. I seem to remember that it was quite low-res, though, so I'd have had to do some pretty serious processing on it to get a usable texture, anyway.

----------


## bartmoss

Quick googling gives us: http://planetpixelemporium.com/venus.html - but I don't have time this morning to sift through the results to find a better  one. (Besides, you can easiyl do that part yourself.)

And yeah, if your game is hard sci-fi you will need to do some serious thinking on that base. Even if it's a soft sci-fi setting, consider a city on the talles mountains, and even then a well protected one - thick walls, dome shapes to provide pressure resistance, etc.

----------


## Ilanthar

Thanks a lot everyone!  I had not looked on the guild news for quite a month.
Actually, I've already found quite good venus maps and I have worked on my elzevir venus map since then (but it's not finished).

I'm a scientist, so I know quite well about the harsh conditions on Venus atpollard. But my Elzevir's world is a kind of uchronia, so I stated that Venus and Mars were suited for life (but with certain conditions nevertheless). Venus and Mars are in the habitable zone and both had know an era (sometimes very short) with surface water bodies and a thicker (for Mars) or less carbonated atmosphere (for Venus).

I hope I am gonna be able to finish the map before 2012!

Again, thanks for your kind answers.

----------


## bartmoss

You're welcome.

Are the maps /base images you found freely accessible? If so, could you post a link please?

----------


## Ilanthar

I think so, it's provided by the NASA on the IAU/USGS website. For Venus, here's the link : 
http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Pa...o10m_Altimetry

There's plenty of interesting things on this site by the way!

----------


## Ilanthar

Wow, that one was a hard one... Finally, my elzevir Venus Political Map then.
In my Elzevir World, Venus has a moon called Neith... But just now, I'm gonna wait a bit before doing it.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...2&d=1327684039

----------


## Ilanthar

This one was a harder one!
This is my Elzevir Political Map of Venus then. Venus has a moon in my Elzevir's world, which is called Neith and is inhabited. I'll do it a bit later...

Hope u enjoy it.

----------


## johnvanvliet

if you still need a topographic map i recently ( in February )  completed a massive 12 gig  ( 131072 x 65536 Px. )  RGB image of the SAR radar 
and a 4 gig 16 bit topo Height map( 65536x 32768 Px.) reworking the SAR data to get the height data from it 
if people want i can resize it down 
some links to images  OF it 
the C-1 compressed Magellan SAR DATA ( destripped )
 
http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/f3bc...72twzupqy07sj/
the Topo Height data
 
http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/gd89...06292pigyou39/
rendered Venus Height data
http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/tv28...jwc99c254uzl1/

----------


## Midgardsormr

Superb! Thank you so much for sharing that with us!

----------


## bartmoss

Very cool - how is this licensed?

----------


## johnvanvliet

> how is this licensed?


http://pds.nasa.gov/citation/index.shtml

the standard NASA license 
but i tag on CC-BY-SA 

right now i only have texture add on for Celestia published 

but  a  16384x8192 or 8192x4096 Px. image can easily be put on a torrent

----------


## Ilanthar

Well, thanks a lot,

I'm thinking to improve my venus map as I did for mars, so... It's a good start for doing it I guess!

----------


## johnvanvliet

here is a link to a 16384x8192 8bit gray image of the SAR 
http://www2.zshare.ma/z64e3f6ly9xr
-- this map --- 50.4 Mb ,16kVenus.zip


0 deg long is in the center 

90 north to 90 south
-180 west to 180 east

----------


## Ilanthar

Well, I changed my mind a little bit...

My Elzevir world is an uchronia with a different technology progression than our history line, but it's current date is 1948, and I think the NASA picture is far too detailed than possible in this context. So, I found another base from USGS based on altitude lines.

Here are the results for the "normal" and the political maps.



Thanks again for the support !

----------


## arsheesh

Hey that's really cool!  Nicely done.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

----------


## Ilanthar

Thanks a lot Arsheesh !

It was a long term work.

----------


## brm0700

> if you still need a topographic map i recently ( in February )  completed a massive 12 gig  ( 131072 x 65536 Px. )  RGB image of the SAR radar 
> and a 4 gig 16 bit topo Height map( 65536x 32768 Px.) reworking the SAR data to get the height data from it 
> if people want i can resize it down 
> some links to images  OF it 
> the C-1 compressed Magellan SAR DATA ( destripped )
>  
> http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/f3bc...72twzupqy07sj/
> the Topo Height data
>  
> ...


Hey johnvanvliet,

Thanks so much for your work on building the SAR radar and topo maps. I realize this thread hasn't been visited in quite a few years but I was just curious to see if you still had those maps in their largest resolution available? The reason why I ask is I'm working on an animation involving a spacecraft being sent through the Venetian atmosphere and touching down in the Alpha Regio area and could definitely use maps of decent resolution for creating the landscape. While the topo map is most appealing to me, I am definitely interested in both if it's possible to have them hosted somewhere. I believe I saw at least the topo one parceled out on the Celestia Motherlode but as much as I use maps in my own animations, I don't have a ton of experience stringing together or compiling the tiles that are being hosted on the site. I often just work with the large cylindrical maps within our 3D programs.

If you could, lemme know if you do happen to have those large Venus maps available. Thanks!

Brian

----------


## johnvanvliet

i do have a 25 gig 131072 x 65536 pixel colorized ( image) reflectance  map and a 8 gig 32bit float 65536x32768 heightmap 

for large images i use the internal working image format for the VIPS image library  and or the geo referenced isis3 *.cub format

----------


## brm0700

> i do have a 25 gig 131072 x 65536 pixel colorized ( image) reflectance  map and a 8 gig 32bit float 65536x32768 heightmap 
> 
> for large images i use the internal working image format for the VIPS image library  and or the geo referenced isis3 *.cub format


Apologies for the slow reply johnvanvliet, been caught up in all the other details of the animation that I missed your response. 

I am definitely interested in both the colorized reflectance map and the heightmap, especially if you happen to have it in tiff format or similar.

Would it be possible to host it somewhere or is too large to upload? If it's too much trouble then no problem - just curious to see if you still have the whole map projection hosted to get. The animation I'm working involves a spacecraft touching down in the Alpha Regio area as part of a proposal. So I've been looking for maps with enough resolution to focus on this area.

Thanks,
Brian

----------


## johnvanvliet

-------- EDIT ------
I will be deleting the zip at the end of the month 
-----------------------



Hi

i uploaded a test zip file with 3 images in it 
all are 8192x8192 px 
a texture using the reflectance radar data 
and two height maps 
one a 16 bit unsigned lsb( intel CPU)  tiff 
and the other a 32 bit floatingpoint tiff 

all of the same Alpha Regio area 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6Z...ew?usp=sharing

this is a 357 MiB zip

----------

