MØØNWATCH: a moon phase visualization 3d app using Blender and ThreeJS

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(I posted the same on Facebook, thought I’d share here - please ignore if you’ve seen this already:)

Here’s something I’m working on -
MØØNWATCH: a realtime 3D visualization of the moon’s phases as seen from earth.

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It doesn’t change quickly - (neither does the actual moon;) but it’s accurate, and the phases change accordingly with the moon throughout the month.
Blender was a huge help in this - I had to learn how to literally square the circle, in order to UV map NASA’s rectangular diffuse and normal maps onto a sphere - but luckily Blender has a few nifty UV mapping options custom-made for that stuff.
WebGL done with Three.js, data courtesy of the Burningsoul Moon API.
Probably not %100 ready but realized enough to share.

Project code on GitHub

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Thank you for posting your work here as well. Not all of us FB accounts, I know I deleted mine. They are just evil!

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Good to know, I’ll keep doing so - thanks!

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Amazing,

what code/ how did you make it so you can drag the model round to look at it 360?

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Hi Katie - it’s been a few years:), but IIRC it’s a standard three.js component called OrbitControls. What’s actually happening is the camera rotates around the scene, rather than moving the moon. You can see the API reference here. Hope this helps!