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steve-burg — Exo Planet Approach
Published: 2011-09-25 22:20:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 9134; Favourites: 145; Downloads: 543
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Description
This is an earth-like planet in orbit around Zeta Tucanae. At present the star is not known to have planets, but I'm taking artistic license!
A closer view of this same planet can be seen here: [link]
All the textures were custom painted - from scratch - in Photoshop. No photos, nothing - that was the point of the exercise.
Painting the clouds was a nightmarish process that required numerous test renders to see the effect when lit in 3D, then jump back to Photoshop and tweak it some more. But I wanted to break away from using the cloud map that is very prevalent in a lot of 3D planet art.
Incidentally, the shadows cast by the clouds are actual raytraced shadows, and the red shift at the terminator is a result of some complex 3D shader work. No matter where the "Sun" is, the color shift into the shadow remains accurate.
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Comments: 34
hello may i use your photo for a book project. i will definitely reference you. the photo is beautiful...
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Very cool! And much respect for painting the clouds (I don't cause I'm lazy 
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It's all cheating!
I made noise, then swirled it around, then warped it, then smudged it, then started over!
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Great granular detail in the clouds and that refracted terminator is just a wonderful touch!
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Some of the clouds are little more than 1 pixel, maybe 2 - and that's on an 8K texture...
I kind of wish there was some fractal noise or something that could make convincing clouds - but I couldn't figure it out, so in the end I had to paint it in Photoshop...
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You might consider using some of the fractal noises from the planet sets here if you have access to this software that is. Perhaps you can use the trial version and pick the presets apart to see if there is anything useful.
[link]
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Thanks for the link. I didn't know about Genetica - but it looks very promising. I'll have a look as you suggest!
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Hm. I'd be surprised if there weren't an app. out there to handle cloud creation. Can't you do planets in Vue? If so, what kind of resolution does that allow for - any idea?
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Vue is great, an Terragen also. But the render times are monumental! Life is short... I spent about 3 days painting the cloud map, that's probably less than the render time would be for the size I needed! Strange, but true
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Great planet and texture work. lighting is fantastic.
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I like what you did with the red shift. I've never figured out to do that in a 3d modeling program so I usually just render one out in Terragen. Then with that add some photoshop atmosphere layers and come out with something pretty alright. Your's tops mine though. Great piece sir.
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Thanks! Yes, Terragen does something similar with the light falloff - but it calculates it like a true atmosphere... so very long render times! Mine is actually a transparent object that takes its color (neutral to red) from the angle facing the light that is my Sun (parametric gradient, to use some gobbledygook techno-speak!). It is almost 100% transparent, but set up to "tint" whatever is beneath it (it is a partial sphere slightly larger than the atmosphere.
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Nice, i might have to try that. And yeah, Terragen renders are insanley long.
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Terragen is fantastic - it's ridiculous how good it is. However the render times are prohibitive, and that really cuts the "learning feedback loop". My rocks and things might be 3 polygons with a photo-texture tiled over it - but they render fast!
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Yeah its amazing program minus the long renders. I also feel like the really tried to be over complex on naming things. Half that stuff doesn't make since to me even when I know how to use it.
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Software engineers have a different sense about naming things. There are unusual names like "quality" and "density" in various software - and I can't relate the name to what the thing actually does. "Quality" had to do with some kind of opacity falloff of volumetric particles - maybe that's in Lightwave, I'm not sure. It would have made as much sense to call it "spiciness" or "nutrition level" to pick something at random
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