Ahh!
So you are not moving the camera at all.
I was thinking that if I layed out my planes in z-space in a linear fashion, I could simply adjust the travel time of the camera in the IPO window to simulate the logarithmic acceleration effect. In theory this could work, however, the image plates we are working with are not scaled in a linear fashion and I think that is where my pulse effect is coming from.
yes, AE is a 2D manipulation program, so he had to do it only by zooming in and merging one pic with another.
But you have a good point and fresh approach, Atom. You could fly a camera back through the planes, so that when it passes through a plane, that plane goes to alpha 1 to match the image beneath it (but it is of a bigger scale of area). Eventually, the camera will sitting outside looking at the globe. That’s actually a neat idea.
I am moving the camera … the difference is that my image planes are in a different order then yours and that i scaled each of them to make them fit …
I am actually doing them same thing like showed in the video tutorial … he is also scaling the “canvas” with the image applied to make each image fit . I am using Blender geometry planes and to avoid that there could be any intersection , i just separate the planes a little bit in the z axis (very little ) … if you have a look again at the screen shot i posted earlier , you can see how the planes/images are aligned and the left window is the camera view
i could have even used the same “Masking” like he did in the video , by using Bezier curve and ID or pass index in the compositor later …
Edit … i just had a look again at the video tutorial … and there is one thing i made different and that is that instead of resizing the aligned images/planes together , i started with the closeup building and then i placed a plane behind it with the next image and only scaled that one to aligned it … then i place the following image behind that one and only scale that image until it is aligned … and so on until i got to the last image aligned …
Greetings Patrick
Ok,
I have officially given up.
You can view what I have here:
www.atomicperception.com/downloads/atomic_earth_zoom.zip
This includes a quicktime video in the H264 format and my final .BLEND file. Perhaps someone can take the blend file and adjust it so it does not “jump” at every image plate change.
Patricks,
After reviewing your video again, I can see what you mean by the stacking order. You simply placed everything on top of the final earth image. I wanted to go from street level to outer space so I started backwards.
Maybe I’ll try it again some day…
I did learn a bit more about using UV image maps and their various modes, however!
geez Atom, Patrick got it…you should not give up in advance of the holidays. What are you going to have to work on Xmas afternoon if you give up now?
Patrick: so if your city block is dimension 1x1 BU, does that mean your earth pic is 4000 BU divided by the camera’s relative distance, so if camera moved 10 BU the plane is 400 BU wide? At least, I think that’s the way it works, right? If a camera is twice as far away from an object, it is half-size rendered?
i am nearly finish with the animation , i have added rotation, clouds, stars and the earth glow … just need to fine tweak some things and maybe i am going to add some lens distortion or camera shake … if sombody is interested i can post later the blend file ( without images … you will have to download them at the video tutorial side and apply them later to the planes ) … i think a blend file will explain things better 
Greetings Patrick
I wouldn’t mind checking out the .BLEND file.
If I could run it backwards, I could achieve what I wanted which was from the ground up to outer space.
yes i made this one starting from the earth and zooming out to space
Greetings Patrick
yes, you should add a bit of a shake as it passes through clouds and atmosphere, then REALLY smooth as it leaves the atmosphere in space.
Here it is done with just scaling - no camera movement:
http://www.geocities.com/ajr650/zoom3.blend.zip
I was going to pack the file but it came out too big so you’ll have to relink the textures.
I didn’t do any of the composite masks, some of the images aren’t quite aligned exactly (don’t have the SVN build) and the IPO isn’t smoothed but here is a test render:
http://www.geocities.com/ajr650/zoom.mpg
(right-click download if it won’t load)
If you want to try adjusting the IPO, make sure to not set keys on the z scale of the empty. Only scale in x and y.
Alt-a to play the animation in the viewer.
Hi everybody
here is how it looks so far
www.kerkythea.net/users/Patrick/EarthZoom_A40001_0225_B1.zip
i am not happy with the clouds and i think i have to improve some other stuff too … anyway it was just a test to see if it was possible to make with Blender … i will see if i can add some sound to ( anybody knows where i can find some free sound effects ? ) tomorrow i will post the Blend file after making some changes to the clouds and some other changes
ohhh … i did not add any shake to the camera yet … can i use the camera shake py script with a already existent camera IPO curve ?
Greetings Patrick
Hi everubody
here is my final version ( without camera shake ) … i think that the clouds are a bit better now and i also added a bit MBlur …
here you can download the video
www.kerkythea.net/users/Patrick/EarthZoom_A60001_0225.zip
and here the corresponding blend file ( i disabled MBlur to avoid long render times when testing ) the file contains also the images , so pleas unpack the file … you should get the same result like shown in the video
www.kerkythea.net/users/Patrick/EZoom_001.zip
@osxrules i have tested your blend file and it is working good … i have used nearly the same method but instead of scaling the planes (which was my first try) , i move the camera
i think that both methods are good and can serve depending on the situation you have when you want to make such effect combined with maybe some other things
i think it would be useful if we could also see on the UV mapped planes a video and play it back in real time ( the thing that is not working now is seeing the video in real time in Texture mode ) … this could add some more possibilities for video post pro effects …
Greetings Patrick
I have to say patricks, I like the animation! I didn’t know you could use the compositer in such a way to do those types of animations (then again I havn’t really used the compositer much).
I some times wish that blender had less limits on the distance the camera can see so that way we could have more room to do things like an earth zoom but in 3D with out having to use pictures. Like you could switch directions or something in mid flight if you wanted. Who knows, maybe the next update will have it.
Hi Shar
i think that we already can do it in 3D too like you suggested it … it is a matter of using 3D and 2D at the same time and mixing the “views” in a proper way … anyway regarding my Earth zoom animation … i only used the compositor for the earth glow .
My point here was to see if we could “adopt” some techniques that After Effects uses … and by using UV mapped planes in Blender, it seems to work …
now we need that Blender get some Camera tracking features soon ( there is already a patch for that but i dont know how to compile Blender … so i have to wait until sombody compiles Blender with this patch )
Greetings Patrick
patricks, it pops in the end. just that you should start fading it out before you enter space and before you exit the clouds. Otherwise, really great !
Hey Patrick! Can you re-upload your works? Links are broken. 
Thanks…
I will like to know about the final result of this topic in the forum, is quite a lot intresting and i ve been searching a lot and this is the only place u talk about zoon in in the earth more precise, i will like to see the final result, please guys share the file or show the node compositor .
All the best!!