The Age-Old Newbie Problem = Planets!!!

[MichiganJ.S]

Hi there, everyone! I'm working on a series of short movies for a friend of mine's project, and these movies call for a bit of dramatic dogfighting at the very beginning in the orbit of this planet, which is filled with psychotic, ID4-style alien invaders. I followed the fantastic "BetterSpace" (http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/) tutorials to create the starfield and the huge red nebula (which I really like, and which accentuates the "evil" of the planet) but for some reason, the planet looks just dreadfully bad and soul-less to me. I want the planet to have a nice atmospheric glow around the edges, but I just can't figure it out. Could some kind of plug-in be the answer? I tried using "glow", but that just blows out the highlights of the planet and puts unrealistic haloes on some of the stars. Can anyone help me fix this monstrosity? Any advice will be really appreciated!

http://www.splitpinestudios.com/images/nuplanet_wip_02.jpg

[Dete]

Hi there !

If found this over at cgtalk some time ago.. a great tutorial about modelling a photoreal earth - with atmosphere and all

http://personal.southern.edu/~dascott/tutorial01/nasa-earth.htm

hope it helps..

cheers,

.: Dete :.

[MichiganJ.S]

Thanks for the link, Dete! Sadly, though, it can't work in my case. The Earth tutorial makes the assumption that your planet will be primarily blue, and that you'll be doing the job in LW v.5, which messes it up for me. I actually began my planet model by following that tutorial, but what I ended up with was a wierd blue halo inside the border of the planet, which doesn't look right. This is an older image of that:

http://www.splitpinestudios.com/images/bluehalo.jpg

Is there a newer method for users of LW 7+ to create atmospheres? Maybe the "fresnel" filter could do something (I can never seem to get sensible results from that filter - maybe I'm just not using it right).

[Zarathustra]

Well, that tutorial stands because it still works. Change your gradient to red or something other then blue so you don't get a blue halo.
The atmosphere should be largest sphere, right? I haven't done a planet in awhile.
You can make your own cloud layer and follow his example for that.

The tut is just a launch point for you to then tweak and make your own planet.

[MichiganJ.S]

I understand that the tutorial is just a launchpad for creating original work (that's what I did) but I was just wondering if anyone knew of a different technique to create atmosphere glow that would work on my dark, gritty planet. I read through the tutorial again, and it did remind me of something that I'd forgotten about, which is transparent edges. I put them on my planet for slightly softer edges, but somehow it looks distinctly less planet-like now. Perhaps it's missing something?

http://www.splitpinestudios.com/images/nuplanet_wip_03.jpg

I could still use some critiques to try and make the whole thing better, and more planet-like. What do you guys recommend I do differently to turn this lump of speckly, discolored dirt into a more respectable celestial body?

[manutter]

One thing that strikes me is that your surface texture seems to be the wrong scale, especially the bump map. There's a salt-n-pepper quality to it that doesn't seem to fit something the size of a planet. Have a look at http://www.msss.com/mars/pictures/usgs_color_mosaics/334.jpg for a comparison--there are huge geological features visible, but set against the scale of the planet as a whole, they almost look painted on rather than actual 3D structures. You might want to try for the slightly-scuffed-billiard-ball look, and see if that's more like what you want.

[MichiganJ.S]

Thanks for the critique, Manutter. I totally see what you mean: that's just my weak texturing skills at work. The salt & pepper bit is actually supposed to look like city lights, but I guess that's not clear because the planet is lit too softly and broadly for that contrast to kick in. They aren't included in the bump map, but they look kinda like mountaintops. I'll try to shift the lights around and make that more clear. Looking at my render again, I just realized that the lights aren't aligned rightly either, as they're supposed to travel right along the coast. Gotta' fix that. :P

The reason the scale looks so wrong is that I mixed & matched fragments of different countries from one of Nasa's websites using Photoshop, and I used mostly smaller bits of countries, since they didn't have clouds covering them. Since this project doesn't have to look totally photo-realistic, though, I'm not gonna re-scale the texture maps (wouldn't be worth it). Thanks for giving me your thoughts, though. I agree with the scale thing, I'm just too lazy to do it over again now. :o

[colkai]

Originally posted by MichiganJ.S
Thanks for giving me your thoughts, though. I agree with the scale thing, I'm just too lazy to do it over again now. :o

He he, can't accuse you of not being honest! ;)
One thing that strikes me, the cloud layer only seems visible on the edges, which gives it an almost Fresnel effect and makes it seem more like a shiny ball.
Yes, that's it, it seems shiny around the edge. Plus there are too many "city lights" - if you maybe put a thicker atmosphere on it, tint it red, including the clouds, it may help. Then again, it may not :D

[starbase1]

Hi,
One thing I am very much a fan of, is starting with real maps of other worlds, then tinkering.

For example, if you take a negative of a gray scale radar map of Venus, and use it in the bump channel as well, you get a VERY good moonlike world.

See
http://members.shaw.ca/evildrganymede/art/maps.htm
For an index of available planetary maps.

Also see:
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html
and
http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/

The latter has a STUNNING new map for Jupiter, very subtle and detailed.

See
http://www.space-graphics.com/bluemars.htm
For details on how to make Mars look Earthlike, complete with detailed downloadable maps.

The best tutorials I saw on world building were in Dave Jerrards lightwave book - VERY impressive results, and very clearly described.

The clouds are the hardest part - I have yet to see halfway convincing procedural clouds - The two big problems are the level of detailed structure needed, and that they should 'react' to the land to look convincing.

You may also want to consider using photoshop filters - there is a filter called 'Lunar Cell'

http://www.flamingpear.com/lunarcell.html

I'm not that impressed with the results, but the detail is huge, and it is very easy to use. Initially it seems great, but something is missing in the fine control area. However the style is very similar to what you appear to be aiming for, and its a reasonable price.

Hope that helps some!
Nick

[WizCraker]

Originally posted by Dete
Hi there !

I found this over at cgtalk some time ago.. a great tutorial about modelling a photoreal earth - with atmosphere and all

http://personal.southern.edu/~dascott/tutorial01/nasa-earth.htm

hope it helps..

cheers,

.: Dete :.

Cool, just what I've been looking for. I've been itching to put that super high res [26100] NASA map of the Earth on a worthy sphere.

[MichiganJ.S]

Man! So many helpful ideas, tutorials, links, etc. I've gone out and downloaded tons of those planet maps now (thanks, Starbase!) and my mind is flooding with ideas now of how I might use them. I've gotten my current planet to a point that I'm now happy with it now (I'm rendering an 8-second animation of it right now - I'll link to it after it's finished) and I'm going to use some of those texture maps and tutorials in the creation of the other planets I need as well, but which I'll do later (I actually do have to create the Earth in 3D as well, though it will be in the same less-realistic, more-artistic kind of style as this one). Thanks for the critiques also! My style is kind of a sloppy one. :P You guys rock!

[MichiganJ.S]

8-Second Animation of the evil alien planet - 3mb Quicktime (http://www.splitpinestudios.com/media/EvilPlanet_02.mov)

I upped the diffuse sharpness to create a harsher border between light and dark (to highlight the city lights better) and used that old tutorial for the earth to re-create the atmosphere layer again, and then tweaked it to be more transparent and orange. I then put transparent edges on all 3 layers (ground, clouds, atmosphere) with varying degrees just to take the sharp edge off the image and to create the effect of the bright nebula's color bleeding onto the planet, which I think makes it a little bit more film-like (which is my goal). Of course I changed the clouds again, making them a litter sharper than in my other two images, but also a lot more scarce (why cover up the groovy surface with clouds?) The result is unrealistic, but hella cool, IMHO.