Earth Still

[Tony Nelson]

This is a still for an independent film project that I'm working on. I created this using Dean A. Scott's tutorial on modeling the earth, but added the nightlights to give an enhanced effect to the darker side of the planet. Crits please.

The right forum this time.

[Tony Nelson]

Let's try this again.

[groodwanderer]

Looks pretty good. Was there a nuclear war or something? Cause it looks like there are parts of it that were charred.

[cathuria]

The nightside lights seem too bright -- and the relief is way too exaggerated (if you're going for a realistic look). The cloud layer, however, is excellent.

[Tony Nelson]

Thanks for the crit, guys. I'll post another version of this still later this week.

[starbase1]

The clouds look a bit gray to me - perhaps a bit brighter?

Nick

[Tony Nelson]

Here is a revised version. I'm may end up going the un-realistic route on the lights and make them brighter (they seem to have more life that way).

[Rei]

cool, somone nuked america by the looks of it!

Rei

[cathuria]

Nice improvement! I think the reason the lit areas lack life is that they are just flat patches of illumination. I'd suggest using that as an alpha mask and adding a fine noise texture to the luminosity to add some variation & sparkle.

[mmecca]

hmm...i dont know what it is, but the clouds look kind of...low quality, i guess its the texture...

[groodwanderer]

Oh i have a question. Is the black area actually textured black or is it a shadow cast onto the sphere? Just wondering cause it would really effect the picture depending on which you used.

[Tony Nelson]

Groodwanderer, it is kind of both.

I used Dean A. Scott's tutorial on creating a 3D Earth located at http://personal.southern.edu/~dascott/tutorial01/nasa-earth.htm to create and conventionally testure the earth. However, in order to get the effect of the lights appearing when the Earth is not illuminated I used a map of the Earth at night in both the color and luminosity channels of the earth's surface. Then I applied a "gradient layer" with a "light incidence" input parameter above both instances of the earth at night map. The reason for this is so that when the distance light that I have set up for the sun is shining on the surface of the earth, the earth at night map is transparent. But when the light isn't shining on the surface, the map is opaque.

Mmecca, the reason the clouds look of questionable quality is because this is a 4K map (4,000 pixels across) and the rest of the maps are 6k except for the earth at night map which is 10k. Since I'm so close to the earth the quality fades. I plan to eventually render this with 10k maps across the board, though I will have to create one for the clouds since the only one that I've found is the 4k that I have.