My earth atmosphere has hard edges at the end...not good

[virtualcomposer]

Does anyone know how to feather out or fade out earth's atmosphere? It just seems like it stops right at space and doesn't look right. Is there a setting or shader I can use to fix the outside of the atmosphere?

[sean hargreaves]

Well, if you're not animating it you can do it in Photoshop using the circle template>stroke>gaussian blur.

Other than that I don't know, some genius here will help I'm sure!

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

Are you looking for something like this effect?

[virtualcomposer]

Yeah, with the faded edges leading into space.

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

ok, give me an hour or so and i'll pull up the files and take some screen shots of the settings i used and post them here for you.......

[virtualcomposer]

Thanks Steel Toe!

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

Actually,screw it, it would be easier just to tell you:
1.Make a ball for the planet body. I name it's surface Planet body (I know, real original).
2.Then I make another ball on top of it in another layer, and resize it to 100.5%.
3.Give the second ball these attributes in the surface editor:
color:185,220,255.
luminosity:10%
diffuse:90.5%
specularity:11%
glossiness:58%
reflection:0%
transparency:98.5%
refraction index:1%
translucency:0%

and under the advanced, set the glow intensity to100%.
Name it Atmosphere.
4.In layout,(if your not already there),go into the:Windows> Image Processing> Processing, and check enable glow.
set the Intensity: 80%
Glow Radius:25.0 pixels

That's it. The beauty of having the atmosphere ball separate is you can put your cloud layer on it and spin it around the planet in an animation, or just to move them out of the way if you want a clearer view of a specific continent or planetary feature.
Feel free to tweak the basic settings, these work for me, but you might like less specularity, and so forth.
Changing the color can also give you some different looks as well.........

The way you light it also effects the way it looks.......

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

Give us an example when you get done to see how it turned out for you....

[virtualcomposer]

Hey thanks Steel Toe. I'll upload the picture when I'm done.

[virtualcomposer]

Here's the earth with the glow around it. Still need to blend it in a bit. Not sure how to do that.

[JohnMarchant]

Or try edge transparency :):)

[starbase1]

Here's the earth with the glow around it. Still need to blend it in a bit. Not sure how to do that.

Or put the atmosphere in a separate layer, and under render options set it as faded by (say) 50% - this is nice and easy to adjust. That's the way I do it.

Try searching for recent threads round here where I made the highest res Earth model I could...

Nick

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

Increase the glow radius. Mine look a little more fuzzed out because i use a ball that's only a about 3 meters across. Edge transparency doesn't work as it leaves a visible edge even though it's transparent. The atmosphere has a glow effect because it doesn't actually have a distinct edge in reality.
If it works for you, John, please show an example and settings.
It never worked for me, but I'm always up for learning a new technique.

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

:agree: Starbase, if you read my original instructions I gave him, you'll notice I put the atmosphere in another layer. Not sure if airwolf has done that, but it certainly does make a difference. I tend to go a lot higher, (98%), but it's a personal taste thing........

[STEEL TOE MEDIA]

By the way Airwolf, i replied to your rocket engine thread as well.......:)

[virtualcomposer]

Hey thanks steel toe and starbase, all of your advise is really helping and very informative.