Planet Modeling

[Rooky Animator]

Does anybody know how to model a planet? I've tried making a giant sphere, than place a material on it, but instead of a planet,

it looks like a giant marble! So, I would like some assistance please!

Thanks,

Rooky Animator

[Eric2575]

First off, there are plenty of posts about planets and the making of them. Second, what exactly makes you say it looks like a marble? Lighting and environment play a huge factor in making a planet look real. Post your marble render.

[johnl3d]

Also scaling your material could help

[the_black_mage]

textures!!!! thats what you need, theres a whole site with textures for every planet for free!!!!! i used it for a school project last year!

 

Planet textures

 

you can apply them as a projection map material.

[Rooky Animator]

Thank You Ultimate Mage! I used these maps and they sure do look realistic! Now how do I make my own planet? Maybe my materials are too simple and that's why it looks so weird?

[johnl3d]

I thought I would whip up some planets to help you

 

Two spheres off the CD primitives with easy materials. I used materials so I could animate them

 

tryplanet.mov

 

I animated the materials a little too much but then this was a quicky project

 

tryplanet.zip

[Darkwing]

Darksim!!!!! The coolest planet materials are in the darksim materials!! They don't take all that much longer to render either, unless your doing a huge project.

[the_black_mage]

Thank You Ultimate Mage! I used these maps and they sure do look realistic! Now how do I make my own planet? Maybe my materials are too simple and that's why it looks so weird?

 

two ways...

 

1. edit the images of the planets

 

2. use turbulence materials, things like turbulence in turbulence in turbulence in gradient. if you know what i mean....

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Some resources from the board ... (just searching for earth... several pages in)

 

Sol System

 

High Resolution Earth project

 

Hope that helps.

[Rooky Animator]

Thanks you guys for all your help! All these ideas, links and downloads are really helping me a lot. I can't wait until I'm able to help other people with their problems and I'll be the expert, but that's going to be for a long time. Well, thanks again guys!

 

Rooky Animator

[jpappas]

If you have Photoshop, an easy and fun way to generate planet textures is with Flaming Pear's "Lunar Cell" plugin, only $20. The default setting makes a picture of a planet, but change the output to Image Map and it generates Spherical Maps for use in A:M, including color, bump and cloud mask maps.

 

-Jim

[the_black_mage]

Thanks you guys for all your help! All these ideas, links and downloads are really helping me a lot. I can't wait until I'm able to help other people with their problems and I'll be the expert, but that's going to be for a long time. Well, thanks again guys!

 

Rooky Animator

 

yeah dude its totally our thing!

[phatso]

You don't have to know what you're doing to post advice; I'm the poster child for that.

 

Coupla things:

 

1. The atmosphere doesn't do much for the model. Real planets' atmospheres' dimensions are to their planets as an eggshell is to an egg. Way thin. Ditch the atmosphere and maybe add just a little bit of glow around the planet.

 

2. Lighting is extremely important. If you have the planet lit at an angle by some kind of sun, the transition from light to dark (or day to night, if you want to think of it that way) on the planet is very sharp. (No air in space so no scattering.) You can play with this by adjusting the falloff control.