MadMan's Planet Thread

[MadMan1701A]

I thought I would do something a little different... I got tired of having to use low res images in my backgrounds, for planets and such, and decided I would break down and build a few of my own.

These aren't perfect, by any means, but this is the best I could do after playing for about 6 hours....

I'm going to do the moon, a terraformed mars, and venus next. I'm also going to re-build Saturn, and make a custom Saturn-Like planet.

What do you guys think?

 

[Wingsley]

I love the blue halo along the horizon. Should the land masses be darker?

 

[Kaiser]

Wow! O.o thats very highly detailed and accurate

 

[MadMan1701A]

I love the blue halo along the horizon. Should the land masses be darker?

Yes, they probably should...

The problem I was having was that the water was showing up much too dark... so I tweaked it. I think I reached a good balance, though.

 

[Vance]

Personally, I think the land needs to be a smidge darker and there be a little less contrast to the colors overall. But mileage varies.

 

[BK613]

Not bad, not bad at all

 

[MadMan1701A]

Thanks guys.

I think this will work, for the purpose I'm going to use it for. I'm going to start doing more "post" work on the renders, after they make it out of Blender, and into Photoshop.

 

[Albertese]

I'd suggest going a bit bolder with the cloud masses. don't be afriad to obscure som land area!

--Alex

 

[Hyperspace05]

Nice! But overall the colors are much to saturated... if realism is what you are going for.

Here is a real spaceshot at similar viewpoint as your first rendering:
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/79/92879-004-973D4BC2.jpg
Higher res, different contrast here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0703/bluemarble_apollo17_big.jpg
- Note that the planet looks almost entirely white or dark blue.
- The land masses are visible, but desaturated.
- All land has a blueish tint from being seen through the atmosphere.
- Oceans looks very deep blue, almost black
- The edges of the sphere (where the atmosphere is thickest) are more white than blue.

These things probably easy tweaks to make...

Here's a site which has earth textures that already have a realistic color tint: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/BlueMarble_monthlies.php (at least as a starting point... some still look too saturated, IMO)

 

[MadMan1701A]

yeah, I chose the older "Blue Marble" image in favor of the newer ones, because the water is so black in those newer ones.

I think I hit a limitation in Blender that is going to cause me some serious issues, later on... When I build an object large enough in proportion to my ships and stations to be a planet, it's too big for the camera to see the entire thing. I'm going to have to approach planets differently....

 

[Vance]

Easy enough, since planets will pretty much always be a background piece, render seperately and then composite as a background image outright.

 

[sojourner]

Or maybe scale everything down and move it all closer to the camera? Forced perspective is a wonderful thing.

 

[Gepard]

yeah, I chose the older "Blue Marble" image in favor of the newer ones, because the water is so black in those newer ones.

I think I hit a limitation in Blender that is going to cause me some serious issues, later on... When I build an object large enough in proportion to my ships and stations to be a planet, it's too big for the camera to see the entire thing. I'm going to have to approach planets differently....

Well, according to this thread on the subject, Blender has a fixed 5000-unit clipping distance, and one Blender unit = one lightyear. So. no problem on scaling there.

 

[MadMan1701A]

yeah, I chose the older "Blue Marble" image in favor of the newer ones, because the water is so black in those newer ones.

I think I hit a limitation in Blender that is going to cause me some serious issues, later on... When I build an object large enough in proportion to my ships and stations to be a planet, it's too big for the camera to see the entire thing. I'm going to have to approach planets differently....

Well, according to this thread on the subject, Blender has a fixed 5000-unit clipping distance, and one Blender unit = one lightyear. So. no problem on scaling there.

whoa. in that case, all of my objects have been gigantic! I've been scaling them more or less with what models import like from lightwave and whatnot.

If I scale down everything, then my light sources and stuff get messed up...

I guess I'm going to be doing it in separate renders, then.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Easy enough, since planets will pretty much always be a background piece, render seperately and then composite as a background image outright.

Yep, that's what I'm going to end up doing. Even so, that's not going to work well for animations.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Easy enough, since planets will pretty much always be a background piece, render seperately and then composite as a background image outright.

Yep, that's what I'm going to end up doing. Even so, that's not going to work well for animations.

How about doing it this way... render you animation without background. Then copy the scene, removing or hiding all objects except for the camera. Then remove all translation from the camera (just keep the rotation). Add your planet and space background, and then render just that. Composite each frame in Blender or some other software.

Doing it this way allows you to build the background in whatever scale you want.

 

[sojourner]

Wait. One blender unit = one lightyear!?! wtf? is that a joke? How are you even supposed to pretend you are modeling to scale with that? Is that some concession to how light works in the rendering engine?

 

[Hyperspace05]

Yeah nobody would model at that scale. Or setup a scene like that... What would be the point?

But all your lights in a space scene should be infinite (sun) lights, where scale as no affect on the brightness. The only issue where lighting could be problematic for scaling is if you have a self-illumination on the ship.

 

[Gepard]

Wait. One blender unit = one lightyear!?! wtf? is that a joke?

It could be. I'm not familiar enough with Blender to know for sure.

 

[sojourner]

Madman, just curious, have you seen:
http://matrep.parastudios.de/index.php

Looks like an excellent site for Blender materials. They even have a couple planet Earth mats.