Show HN: Data-viz project for ray-tracing the Moon model

Ray-tracing is done in a Python notebook. Data originates from NASA public resources. I searched for the highest resolution data to make the Moon almost touchable. So it is made of 118m elevetion model and 480m surface color. There is also 59m elevation model, but this 22GB does not really fit into my laptop's GPU.

Code can run on GCP instance. Laptop/desktop is more convenient, though.

If you'd like to go straight to pictures: https://www.behance.net/gallery/84326717/Making-of-the-Moon

or tutorial: https://medium.com/@sulej.robert/the-moon-made-twice-at-home...

Thanks to all for the feedback and comments!

@rcarmo Yes, bumps are enhanced, to make the surface more dramatic. This scale is a parameter in the notebook, it can be set to the realistic 1.15% of the mean radius.

On another forum, someone pointed out that the Lambertian shading makes the Moon surface too smooth. So the diffuse material roughness will come in the next PlotOptiX release, in a few days. :)

Maybe this help with: https://github.com/x3dom/x3dom

As I heard it's based on explicit DOMs.

Have anyone tried X3DOM?

The video is very nice, although the bump/displacement seems a little too strong - craters should look a little shallower :)

Do you use Lola data? What resolution and from where?

What hardware did you use to produce such photos?