I remember reading about the Buran as a kid, and saw drawings of it, but i never knew it actually flew.

Anyway, look at these great pictures of a space program that, had it survived the Soviet fall, could have made a huge difference in space development today. And just think about actually having this beautiful machine and just watching it rust... Now it is as lost as the Saturn 5...

Link (scroll down):
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russian-buran-space.html

- rthorvald

Thank you, rthorvald, a very interesting link on a scarcely known subject, at least by me.
Looking at the "Comments" in that page, I found this link to a zillion of Buran images:

http://www.buran-energia.com/bourane-buran/bourane-photos.php?file_dbt_=1

Enjoy!
Bye

Andrea

There are some super 3d models here:

http://www.buran.ru/htm/3d-model.htm

Not for Celestia unfortunately!

bh wrote:

There are some super 3d models here: http://www.buran.ru/htm/3d-model.htm Not for Celestia unfortunately!

Thanks for the link; a Celestia version should not be too difficult, provided it is possible to locate a licence.

They have a 3ds model there, i managed to download and unzip it, but my 3d modeller crashes when i try to import it; i don´t know why. I have Cheetah 3d. Anyone else able to open the file?

Here is the link:
http://www.buran.ru/3d/3D_Max/be.zip
And here is the zip password: energy

This model supposedly shows the spaceship mounted on an Energia rocket, and it seems to be very detailed. And, it IS .3ds, not MAX format.

- rthorvald

The 3ds is Ok, i confirmed that by converting it to CMOD, but that is not enough - it needs editing, as it is much too complex, there are tons of textures that needs to be customized, and there are a number of inverted normals. Also, a platform is attached to it, and that does not look too cool in orbit

Chris, do you have time to take a quick look? If i can get it into Cheetah, i could take it from there...

- rthorvald

bh wrote:

There are some super 3d models here: http://www.buran.ru/htm/3d-model.htm Not for Celestia unfortunately!

These models are fantastic, I remember opening one but unfortunately they are not at all done for a real time use...

rthorvald wrote:

The 3ds is Ok, i confirmed that by converting it to CMOD, but that is not enough - it needs editing, as it is much too complex, there are tons of textures that needs to be customized, and there are a number of inverted normals. Also, a platform is attached to it, and that does not look too cool in orbit Chris, do you have time to take a quick look? If i can get it into Cheetah, i could take it from there... - rthorvald

Cross posting...

Unfortunately they cannot being optimized easily... (in a few words one must redo the whole model based on this one...)

ElChristou wrote:

Unfortunately they cannot being optimized easily... (in a few words one must redo the whole model based on this one...)

Well, i´d like to look closer at it anyway, but this particular 3ds won´t load in my editor for some reason. If you are able to open it, could you convert it to something i can use? Perhaps-re-export it to 3ds, or save it in jas?

- rthorvald

rthorvald wrote:

ElChristou wrote: Unfortunately they cannot being optimized easily... (in a few words one must redo the whole model based on this one...) Well, i´d like to look closer at it anyway, but this particular 3ds won´t load in my editor for some reason. If you are able to open it, could you convert it to something i can use? Perhaps-re-export it to 3ds, or save it in jas? - rthorvald

I'll try.

I can open it (it's a pain) with Amapi, but it hang up at exporting... Anyway you would loose all UV mapping doing such export...
I doubt Cheetah can open such a file... IMO it's a job for 3Dmax (you could edit without loosing the mapping)

ElChristou wrote:

I can open it (it's a pain) with Amapi, but it hang up at exporting... Anyway you would loose all UV mapping doing such export... I doubt Cheetah can open such a file... IMO it's a job for 3Dmax (you could edit without loosing the mapping)

Well, i am not buying MAX just for this...
There are 53 files to map, whether it is worth the time depends on what quality i would be able to output. But if you can´t export it anyway, it won´t happen.

Anyway, thank you for the effort.

- rthorvald

I think I don't have enough resources to handle the file; you should ask Cham, he do have a version of Amapi so perhaps he can re-export the file...

ElChristou wrote:

I think I don't have enough resources to handle the file; you should ask Cham, he do have a version of Amapi so perhaps he can re-export the file...

He says he already tried and that it is too messy to work with. So, no Buran in Celestia for now...

- rthorvald

Just for your information. I opened (an saved as a .JAS file) the buran-energia file with Cheetah3D 4.0. It's really a huge model with a zillion of small pieces. Most pieces are having problems, flipped normals, and the number of polygons is just insane.

Just don't lose your time with this monster, it's really not worth it.

EDIT : And wtf is happening to my signature !?

Cham wrote:

Just for your information. I opened (an saved as a .JAS file) the buran-energia file with Cheetah3D 4.0. It's really a huge model with a zillion of small pieces. Most pieces are having problems, flipped normals, and the number of polygons is just insane. Just don't lose your time with this monster, it's really not worth it. EDIT : And wtf is happening to my signature !?

Cham,
Thanks for trying.

As for the signature, i suspect you made it before we set up the forum at the ibiblio server. The system here uses a different character set from the old host, so that when we imported the database, strange things happened with a lot of text. If you just re-write it, it will be Ok.

- rthorvald