UFOs on the Moon, March 2020

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I see many UFO clips, but post few of them as they rarely pass muster. But this is like...hmm. Nothing here couldn't be done with CGI of course, and it could very well be that - it's a very fortuitous capture otherwise. But it is cool either way.

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[jc71]

Not sure the shadows are in the right place if you think of the direction the sun would be coming from?

[kittywizard]

I have a telescope and p900 camera and I have seen something very similar. It occurred quickly I was not expecting to record, and was using a crappy tripod, so I never got video. This looks pretty legit to me. Something is going on up there... no need to fake it!

[DeDukshyn]

Not sure the shadows are in the right place if you think of the direction the sun would be coming from?

Good eye.

The shadows don't look right at all. If I were to make a CGI analogy (I do some work in 3D - simulations, art, animation, etc), it looks like the wrong type of light is being used. You generally have two main types of lights - one that can cast rays outwards in every direction from a point, called a "sphere" light; and one that will cast rays in only one direction, perfectly straight, called a directional light.

Since the sun is a sphere, one might mistakenly think that you should use a sphere light to represent the sun. Unless one is making a to scale model of the solar system, you should always use a directional light. The reason is that the sun is so huge and far away, that by the time the rays hit the area around earth - pretty much every ray is traveling perfectly straight. So when you have to place a light in you seen, you have to place it close to the other objects (because the farther out you place objects from the center of a 3D scene in a 3D program, the less accurate the calculations become). This is one of the reasons why the directional light exists - so you can emulate a very distant light source while place your "light" in close to the other stuff in your scene and get a "sunlight" effect.

However, if you placed a sphere light in the scene, and had it say just outside of the visible screen to the right. The shadows will look as they do in this video - they start off directly underneath the objects ... this shouldn't be, but as the objects move toward the dark area, then we see them stretch out a bit, as though the light was being cast from a sphere, just to the right of the objects.

That's probably a crappy explanation, but it is what I am seeing.

Other than that, I don't really see any evidence of this being CGI, although I am fairly certain it is, and I am 100% sure I could reproduce the shadow behaviour almost exactly by setting up the scene as I described above with incorrect lighting.

It also looks like the camera tracking is poor -- meaning that the moon footage is real, but if the objects are CGI, then the "3d" camera must track to the erratic movement of the real camera - its a tricky process and often the give-away of CGI enhancement over real footage. That said I am giving leniency here due to the fact that atmospheric waves can cause distortions.

Oh and just as a disclaimer before someone gets upset: I am not saying they're aren't objects on or flying around the moon. I am referring to this video.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Good analysis Dedukshyn, quite right about the shadow, I've worked in 3D programs (Lightwave) so I know what you mean. In other words, one wouldn't expect the shadows to be so elongated.

[DeDukshyn]

Good analysis Dedukshyn, quite right about the shadow, I've worked in 3D programs (Lightwave) so I know what you mean. In other words, one wouldn't expect the shadows to be so elongated.

Elongated might be correct considering the actual position of the sun, but how they start directly under the craft and then move toward a position that you might expect, is suspect to me. It means the light source is just off the right of the screen, and we know the sun is actually millions of miles away.

I'm bored, so I think i may try to recreate this scene in 3D today. :)

Edit: another thing I noticed was the posted video doesn't belong to the person who posted it - but they gave a link to where they got it, I checked that link and again it was not the owner - the description on both the french and the english channels (that didn't seem related) had the same description "This isn't mine, a friend just gave it to me".

No one seems to own this video ...

[Andre]

For those of us who don't work in 3D CGI, just following the shadows closely using pause/start/pause/start appears to reveal real inconsistency in the shape, definition and length of the shadows as they move.

[Le Chat]

Not sure the shadows are in the right place if you think of the direction the sun would be coming from?

Not sure about the shadows not being consistent with the direction of the sun. I have to say that I totally believe this footage, and have seen similar 'craft' on other videos.
Besides, if someone was faking this wouldn't they show a bit more detail on the craft? Maybe I'm just thinking about how I would go about doing such a thing...

I posted this before reading all subsequent posts. Wouldn't it be good, I thought to myself, as I was typing, if a member on this forum had the technical know-how, the time and the inclination to fake something similar - just to see how well it can be done, and there was Dedukshyn offering as much.

To quote Penn & Teller "Fool us..." :sun:

[jc71]

Not sure the shadows are in the right place if you think of the direction the sun would be coming from?

Not sure about the shadows not being consistent with the direction of the sun. I have to say that I totally believe this footage, and have seen similar 'craft' on other videos.
Besides, if someone was faking this wouldn't they show a bit more detail on the craft? Maybe I'm just thinking about how I would go about doing such a thing...

I posted this before reading all subsequent posts. Wouldn't it be good, I thought to myself, as I was typing, if a member on this forum had the technical know-how, the time and the inclination to fake something similar - just to see how well it can be done, and there was Dedukshyn offering as much.

To quote Penn & Teller "Fool us..." :sun:

Hi Moonlight,

I suppose I agree with Dedukshyn, and was coming from the angle (no pun intended) that the way the shadows move relative to the craft look like the shadows from a much much closer light source than the sun which is a massive distance away from the Moon.

I am not expert though - it was just my gut reaction to it. I also am not a disbeliever in UFOs being seen near to the moon. I am just not so sure about this one being authentic. But who knows...

JC

Additional Note: I just looked it again, I think it is also because the shadows look too large. They shouldn't really be significantly bigger than the craft due to the fact the light should be coming in with no spreading rays of light - they would all be straight due to the distance. These shadlows look like they are coming from spreading rays of light that in my non-professional opinion would be from a light source that is close and spreading out as they go. Just an opinion though of course...


Additional Additional Note: On the other side of the argument - I have still not fully understood why we get spreading rays through clouds on earth. The explanation I have been given is light hitting the atmosphere, and then spreading out from there, but it has never fully settled in my mind. The moon however, we are led to believe, has no atmosphere to speak of.

[DeDukshyn]

Not sure the shadows are in the right place if you think of the direction the sun would be coming from?

Not sure about the shadows not being consistent with the direction of the sun. I have to say that I totally believe this footage, and have seen similar 'craft' on other videos.
Besides, if someone was faking this wouldn't they show a bit more detail on the craft? Maybe I'm just thinking about how I would go about doing such a thing...

I posted this before reading all subsequent posts. Wouldn't it be good, I thought to myself, as I was typing, if a member on this forum had the technical know-how, the time and the inclination to fake something similar - just to see how well it can be done, and there was Dedukshyn offering as much.

To quote Penn & Teller "Fool us..." :sun:

You must have visited the art thread :) I didn't think anyone ever visited that thread ...

[DeDukshyn]

My attempt is here: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?82303-The-Share-Your-Art-Thread&p=1348590&viewfull=1#post1348590

Did that yesterday, its full 3D, no real footage, I got the diffuse and displacement maps from a NASA resource site, and the craft are just capsule shapes - no details. Took me about 3 hours to set up the scene, and maybe 2 hours to render.

It could be better, but in the time allotted, it turned out ok.

[DeDukshyn]

... They shouldn't really be significantly bigger than the craft due to the fact the light should be coming in with no spreading rays of light - they would all be straight due to the distance.

While working on my attempt, posted above, I had to increase the size of the craft to ridiculous levels to get the shadows to really show up. I used a directional light which cast only straight rays and I got really small shadows. If I had used a spherical (sometimes called an omni light) then I would have gotten the effect you described -- shadows too big. What also became apparent when working on that, is if the craft in the OP are real, they are scores of kilometers across - unrealistically huge.



Additional Additional Note: On the other side of the argument - I have still not fully understood why we get spreading rays through clouds on earth. The explanation I have been given is light hitting the atmosphere, and then spreading out from there, but it has never fully settled in my mind. The moon however, we are led to believe, has no atmosphere to speak of.


Most of the Earthly spreading of rays from within clouds is illusion of perspective, but the clouds do scatter the light at the edges of the "hole" so you get some rays spreading out due to this scatter effect from reflecting off the clouds. The Rays from the sun travel pretty much perfectly straight, which is why the sun produces hard shadows and not soft ones.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Really impressive! You nailed it I'd say. It doesn't necessarily prove the 'original' is a CGI fake, but it definitely proves it could be.

Very well done indeed.

[DeDukshyn]

Really impressive! You nailed it I'd say. It doesn't necessarily prove the 'original' is a CGI fake, but it definitely proves it could be.

Very well done indeed.

I was a bit surprised that my shadows didn't come out too far off from your video here. But I struggled a bit to even make them visible. And yes, it doesn't prove anything, except to my ego saying "I could do that!" ;)

[Le Chat]

You must have visited the art thread I didn't think anyone ever visited that thread ...

No, I didn't - I didn't even know there was an art thread :idea:

[Justplain]

I thought that the craft were far too large to be plausible. Given that these craft were supposedly passing over the crescent edge of the moon, as they passed over that massive impact crater they'd have to be kilometers long, and although very large craft might exist, it makes this video more implausible. The lack of an identifiable source for this vid, plus that dedukshyn mimicked it effectively, in essence negates almost any possibility that this is real.

I have seen real ufo's and have no doubt that they regularly visit the moon.

[Helvetic]

Someone in the youtube comments pointed out they forgot to keep applying the “distort” effect to emulate the atmospheric distortion from 0:34 - 0:38 sec.

Ouote:
"If you guys put attention, during the 0:34 - 0:38 sec, they forgot to keep applying the “distort” effect to emulate the atmospheric distortion. Yes, I’m also an animator and they totally forgot to apply the effect over that specific time... it’s a shame! I really wanted this to be real! :( "

[JDarktide]

I ordered a new telescope just for these things, cant wait to get some footage