LunarCell 

Flaming Pear Software

What it does What it does

How to install LunarCell is a plug-in for paint programs. It draws moons and planets.

Quick start

Planet

Climate

Air

Clouds

Synth clouds

Cities

Other controls

Memory dots

Mapmaking

Hints

FAQ

Versions

How to purchase

Questions
How to install
Illustrated installation instructions are online at www.flamingpear.com/faq.html .

To use this software, you need to install it into Photoshop.

Just drag the plug-in filter into the folder where Photoshop expects to find it. On
OS X, it will be similar to Applications/Adobe Photoshop/Plug-ins.

On Windows, it will be similar to C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop/

Plug-ins.

You must restart Photoshop before it will notice new plug-ins.

The plug-in is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From
the menus, choose Filter > Flaming Pear > LunarCell.

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Quick start
When you invoke LunarCell, a dialog box will appear.

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If you just want to make a planet quickly, click the dice button
until you see a planet you like; then click OK.

To design your own planets, you’ll need to familiarize yourself

dice
with the controls for each of the elements in a planet:

Planet

Climate

Air

Clouds

Synth clouds

Cities

...and a few other controls that affect the whole image.

Planet

These controls set the shape of the planet.

Size lets you choose planets from point-sized up to

the breadth of the starting image.

Complexity specifies whether the landmasses have

simple or complicated shapes.

Land texture sets the height of the mountains and the

depth of the oceans, if you have oceans. A setting of
zero will give a smooth planet.


simple land

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Crater count Besides the fractal landscape, LunarCell
can produce craters. This isn’t the number of
individual craters -- it’s groups of craters.

Crater size is the average size of a crater group.

When the count is high and the size is large too,

LunarCell may overlap crater groups.

Crater texture is the roughness of the craters. It works

complex land
just like Land texture.

If Land texture and Crater texture are both zero, you’ll

get a smooth planet.

The Color button sets the main color of the planet.

Real Luna, when checked, gives you the shape of the

Earth’s moon instead of the fractal terrain. When you
use this, you may want to reduce the Land texture
setting. It’s possible to add extra craters to the moon.
craters

Climate

These controls let you add color to the landscape.

Ice sets the size of the planet’s polar ice caps. You can
choose the color of the ice by clicking the color
button.

Desert produces deserts near the equator. Use the

color button to pick a color.

Sea level makes oceans. Set it to zero for no oceans, or

green planet color, pale
to 100 for a drowned world. Dark blue water works
orange desert, blue
best.

water, blue-white ice

color button

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Lunar Climate, when checked, gives you the coloration
of Earth’s moon. The Ice, Desert, and Sea colors are
disregarded, and the hue comes entirely from the
planet color button.

Real Luna and Lunar

climate used together

Air

Your planet can have an atmosphere.

Color button sets the color of the air. Pale, muted blue
is the most realistic.

Depth sets how far the atmosphere extends into space.

Brightness changes the brightness of the air.

Sunset influences the reddening of the light near the

terminator (the line that separates night from day). Its a planet with air
effect is clearest when you put the light directly behind
the planet.

Clouds

LunarCell gives you the choice of synthetic clouds or,

with an Internet connection, real clouds from weather
satellites. The controls in this section apply to both
kinds of clouds.

Color button sets the clouds’ color. Off-white is the

most realistic.


real clouds

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Coverage changes the amount of clouds. (When you
use real clouds, you can’t go up to 100% coverage —
because the satellite pictures are not 100% cloudy.)
load clouds
Edges gives the clouds a soft-edged or hard-edged
look.

Height sets the altitude of the clouds.

Shadows sets the darkness of the clouds’ shadows.

Texture sets the amount of the clouds’ surface texture. It’s similar to Land
texture and Crater texture.

Real Clouds checkbox will make LunarCell use weather satellite photos for the
clouds. First you need to download these photos using the Load Clouds button.

Load Clouds button lets you download weather satellite images from the
internet to use as clouds. This is explained below.

Synthetic clouds

There are extra controls to describe synthetic clouds.

Coriolis produces the appearance of shearing winds

between the equator and the poles.

Viscosity sets the “soupiness” of the air. Air with

higher viscosity has fewer small cloud details.

Storm count sets the number of hurricane-like storms.

Storm size is the size of the storms. LunarCell will not synthetic clouds
overlap storms. If you ask for more and larger storms
than will fit on the planet’s face, you’ll get fewer
storms than you asked for.

Storm spin sets the twirliness of the storms.


Coriolis winds
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Cities

You can add cities on the night side of the planet.

The Cities slider sets the density of the cities. Cities are
placed mainly in coastal areas, so you may not see any
cities at all if your planet has no oceans.

Color button sets the color of the cities. Dim, muted

yellow works well.

cities near the terminator

How to download clouds

Click the Load Clouds button. This shows a window

with a list of available cloud images.

Choose the image you want to use, and click OK.

Clouds will be downloaded and then applied to the load clouds
image.

If no clouds are visible, try increasing the cloud

Coverage and Edges sliders.

The cloud chooser screen has some other buttons:

Try cache first will look to see whether the the clouds
you’ve asked for are already on your hard disk. If so,
LunarCell will just use those. If not, LunarCell will
cloud chooser screen
download the clouds.

Update this list will check Flaming Pear’s website to see if there is a newer list
of clouds available. The current version number appears in the top-right corner.
Occasionally we update the list when the images it points to move or change.

Cancel quits without changing any clouds.


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Other controls

Light control sets the light direction.

Backlighting, when checked, makes the light shine

from behind.
light control

Pole control moves the North Pole, influencing

weather, climate, and city placement.

pole control

Dice: This randomizes the settings. Click it as much as

you want to see different effects.

dice
Reset: Gives you the factory settings.

Random seed: This changes the arrangement of all the

random elements like land, craters, and synthetic
reset
clouds.

Position of planet Reposition the planet by clicking

anywhere in the preview area.
random seed

Map mode Chooses how to draw the planet. Normal

draws it on a black background. Composite makes the
planet opaque, and the underlying image shows
through the air. Other modes make flat maps and are
explained in the Mapmaking section.


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Glue: Lets you combine the result image with the
original, instead of replacing it. The next-glue button
advances to the next glue mode. next glue

Send to photo manager: Sends the result to Photos

(on Macintosh).
send to photo manager

Export to PSD: Saves a ten-layered Photoshop file,

with each layer containing a different map of the
planet. This is useful if you want to use the maps as
textures in a 3D application.
export to PSD

Make Gallery: Builds a web page showing all the

presets in a folder that you choose. make gallery

Plus, % and minus buttons: If the selected image area

is bigger than the preview, these buttons let you zoom
plus % minus
in and out. Drag the preview to move it.

Load preset: LunarCell comes with some presets,

which are files containing settings. To load one, click
this button and browse for a preset file.
load preset

Save preset: When you make an effect you like, click

this button to save the settings in a file.

save preset
Undo backs up one step.

Info: briefly explains the controls.


undo

info

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Three more buttons:

OK: Applies the effect to your image.

Cancel: Dismisses the plug-in, and leaves the image

unchanged.

Register: Allows you to type in a registration code and

remove the time limit from the demo.

Memory dots
Although you can save your settings permanently to
files, you can also stash settings in memory dots.

Click an empty dot to stash the current settings in it.

Click a full dot to retrieve its settings.

Hover the mouse over a dot to see what it contains.

Option-click to erase a dot on Macintosh. memory dots

Right-click to erase a dot on Windows.

If a dot is orange, LunarCell’s currently using that dot’s empty

settings.
full
Dots remember their contents until you erase them. If
you’d rather make a temporary dot that forgets when current
you exit LunarCell, control-click it. Temporary dots are
temporary
square.

When you start LunarCell, it puts the starting settings

in a temporary dot. That way it’s easy to start over
without exiting the plug-in.

On Mac, you can drag-and-drop settings files from the

central memory well.

You can build a web page showing how the current

image would look with every memdot setting. Just
option-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) on the big
memdot image.


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Mapmaking

LunarCell can create flat maps that you can use as

texture maps in a 3D animation program.

The maps are drawn in a cylindrical equirectangular

projection, also known as cylindrical equidistant or
plate carrée: meridians are vertical, parallels are
horizontal, and all are uniformly spaced. The map will
fill the entire selection rectangle, permitting super-
high resolution. For proper results you should start
with a selection exactly twice as wide as it is tall.

mode view remarks

normal globe black background

composite globe transparent

background

lit map map complete planet,

lit

map color map land and sea, unlit

land color map land color

land bump map bump map; if

clipping occurs,
reduce “land
texture” slider, or
use 16-bit output.

ocean mask map antialiased ocean

boundaries

air color map color of lit air;

does not include
the thickened
haze near the
planet’s edge.

cloud mask map opacity of cloud

layer

cloud bump map bump map for

clouds

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mode view remarks

cities map just the cities, on

both day and
night sides

mural map complete planet

with uniform-
looking lighting

hypsometric map color-coded

altitude with
contour lines

If you need a complete assortment of texture maps for

a single world, you can generate them all at once by
using the Send to PSD button.

The “real luna” and “real clouds”” options can be used

with maps, but since the images they use only show
one hemisphere, they will appear duplicated on the far
side of the planet.

If you want to build an actual physical globe of your

LunarCell world, you can do that with Flexify. You can
make patterns for polyhedra, gores for a traditional
globe, and an origami balloon.

A hint
Use the “Composite” item in the map mode popup
menu to draw the planet without the black
background.


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Frequently Asked Questions

Can it draw gas planets like Jupiter?

No.

How do I composite the planet on top of another

image?

Click the “map mode” popup menu and choose the

“composite” item. Now when you use LunarCell the
planet will be…

- merged into in the background layer, or

- drawn into a transparent region in any other layer.

Sometimes when I try to increase the number of

storms, no new storms appear.

LunarCell tries to keep storms from overlapping;

sometimes there’s not enough room for the number of
storms you’ve asked for. Try using smaller storms.

What does the wavy-line button do?

Think of it as the “same-but-different” button. It

reshuffles the deck of random numbers used to build
the planet. When you click it, your planet design
remains materially the same, but the specific
placement of landmasses, craters, cities, and storms
changes.

What does the axis control do?

It says where the planet’s north pole is. It influences

the placement of the ice cap, the deserts, the cities,
the storms, and Coriolis winds.

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It’s awfully slow.

Yes.

The sunset control doesn’t do anything.

Its effect is subtle: it reddens the edge of the sunlit

part of the planet. To get a good look at what it does,
put the light directly behind the planet and then try
different sunset settings.

I turned the cities slider up to 100, but still no cities

appear.

Cities only appear near coastlines, so try changing the

sea level.

I can’t download satellite clouds.

You need a working Internet connection. If your

connection is fine but you still can’t get the clouds to
download, it may be that the server that sends the files
is not working. Try again later.

I downloaded some satellite clouds and the image

is corrupted.

Sometimes the supplied pictures contain errors like

bright horizontal lines or blank areas. LunarCell isn’t
smart enough to fix this.

I loaded a preset that calls for real clouds, but I get

the synthetic ones instead.

If LunarCell can’t find any clouds images on your

computer, it will fall back to synthetic clouds. To get
real ones again, use the cloud-downloader button.

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How often are the clouds updated?

Typically once per day.

When I’m using real clouds I can’t make the

coverage go above 50%.

LunarCell can remove clouds from a satellite cloud

image, but it can’t add new ones, so the control maxes
out at 50%. If you use synthetic clouds, you can use the
whole range of the coverage slider.

I can’t see any clouds.

Try increasing the “coverage” and “edges” sliders.

In the cloud-chooser dialog box, I clicked the

“update this list” button, but the list didn’t change.
Why?

The cloud list rarely changes. We only renew the list

when one of its items stops working.

Where do the satellite clouds come from?

At the time of this writing, LunarCell is configured to

get its cloud images from The Space Science and
Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison and the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station.

I just want to make a plain picture of Earth’s moon.

How?

Set the air depth, sunset, sea level, and crater count to
zero. Check the “Real Luna” and “Lunar climate”
checkboxes. Set the Land color to bright gray and set
planet texture to about 15.

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How do I make a terraformed moon?

Start with the above recipe for a plain moon. Then

adjust the sea-level, air depth, and clouds. If you want,
turn off the “Lunar climate” control to get a green and
verdant moon.

What is terraforming?

It’s the speculative technology of turning lifeless

worlds into habitable Earth-like ones.

Does the moon have a name?

The moon’s name is Luna. It’s useful to know when

you need to distinguish it from the several dozen other
moons in the solar system. The sun’s name is Sol, and
sometimes the earth is called Terra.

Where can I get more spacy pictures?

Earth & weather

NASA’s Blue Marble imagery

Dundee Satellite Receiving Station

Geostationary satellite server
Space Science and Engineering Center
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Live earth view from International Space Station
PSC Weather Center

Luna

Earth View

Moon Picture List

JSC Digital Image Collection - AS11-44-6667

USGS Astrogeology Science Center

NASA - JSC Digital Image Collection Home

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Clementine map browser

Maps of the Solar System

Teacher Page: Impact Craters

NSSDC Photo Gallery: Moon

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Version history

Version 1.991

Improves the interface on high-DPI Windows monitors.

Version 1.99

Restores compatibility with Mac OS X 10.8.

Version 1.98

Restores 32-bit compatibility for Mac OS X. Minor updates for OS X El Capitan.

Version 1.97

Fixes an issue with registration codes.

Version 1.96

Restores compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7.

Version 1.95

Macintosh version works in both 32- and 64-bit modes.

Version 1.94

Macintosh version works in Retina resolution.

Version 1.93

Updates the list of downloadable clouds. Fixes a rendering error when air depth
is zero.

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Version 1.92

Fixes previews in 16-bit color.

Version 1.91

Fixes issues with stability and misaligned freeform selections in previews.

Version 1.90

64-bit version for Macintosh.

Version 1.80

64-bit version for Windows.

Version 1.76

Fixes a bug in the Mac version where some sliders would not respond.

Version 1.75

Adds convenience features to the interface. The Mac version is resizable. The
Glue menu is now called Map Mode, but still works the same way.

Version 1.7

Universal binary for Macintosh. The planet’s size is now relative to the breadth of
the starting image. New downloadable clouds have higher resolution.

Version 1.53

Fixes a problem where exported layers won’t open in Photoshop.

Version 1.52

Fixes a problem where craters may not appear properly.

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Version 1.5

Works with 16-bit-per-component color.

Version 1.45

Recordable as a Photoshop action.

Version 1.41

Fixes a crash that could happen when using the menus under Windows XP.

Version 1.41

Fixes the appearance of text in the interface when running under Mac OS X
10.2.3 .

Version 1.4

Now exports multi-layered maps to Photoshop files, and has a hypsometric map
mode. The ocean mask mode now subtracts ice cover from the oceans, so that
it’s more useful as a specularity mask.

Version 1.3

The satellite cloud reader can now handle JPEG images, so there are six new live
cloud sources. These replace GIFs that are no longer updated.

Version 1.2

The glue menu has been replaced with the map menu, which lets you export
unwrapped planet elements for use in 3D animation. The storms have moved,
because now they react correctly to the position of the planet’s pole.

Version 1.02

In newly created presets, LunarCell now pays more attention to the planet color
setting, producing richer color variation. Presets from older versions of LunarCell
will produce the same image as before, unless the user chooses a new planet
color.
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Version 1.0

The first public release.


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How to purchase

You can place an order online here. A secure server for transactions is available.

Questions

The software, documentation, and supporting materials are made by Flaming

Pear Software. Answers to common technical questions appear on our support
page, and free updates appear periodically on the download page.

For bug reports and technical questions, please write to

support@flamingpear.com .

©2017 Flaming Pear Software

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