MadMan's Planet Thread

[Gepard]

They even have a couple planet Earth mats.

This one looks especially good.

ETA: There's a discussion here about how to achieve scale in CGI; the last post especially makes a good point about planets. If you can find an equivalent setting to LightWave's "diffuse sharpness," use it. (There's a way to do it in Maya, for example, by turning the diffuse down to 0% and ramping the translucency up to 100%; it has the same, effect, vsiaully, of creating that sharp day/night terminator visible in orbit.)

 

[MadMan1701A]

OK, after some research, I have decided not use use Blender to render out my planets at 100%... the method I just tried out consists of a simple texture on a sphere... I rendered the night side separate from the light side, and composited it all together in Photoshop.

I think this looks better...

It's easier than tweaking Blender constantly, too. I'm going to try some closer shots with this same technique, tomorrow...

 

[Hyperspace05]

Much better!

My only suggestion would be to lighten the haze around the edge just a bit... And you appear to be using flat texture projection.

Oh a question... What settings/techniques do you use to create the background starfield for your renderings? I worked some in Blender but I haven't been able to get it to look good.

 

[MadMan1701A]

It looks a little flat because the original render didn't have any shading on the sphere... that's one thing that I'm going to be tweaking, for sure.

The stars weren't rendered in Blender either... they were built in Photoshop after following a tutorial that walks through using the Photoshop add noise filter, and stuff like that.

 

[MadMan1701A]

OK, this time I skipped the Blender step altogether...

Does this look better? I think I got rid of the flatness...

I make make something like this pretty quick, too.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Looks but the nightside has WAY citylights. They aren't even close to the brightness the sun side would have. The dark side should be black.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Yeah, they are a little bright. I didn't realize that you could see them so brightly on the lit side, too.

 

[Gepard]

You just plain shouldn't be able to see them at all. No camera exposure will allow you to see the city lights without the day side of the planet being blown out. Of course, the same holds true for stars, but somehow that's more acceptable.

 

[MadMan1701A]

You just plain shouldn't be able to see them at all. No camera exposure will allow you to see the city lights without the day side of the planet being blown out. Of course, the same holds true for stars, but somehow that's more acceptable.

Well, aiming for total realism, that is probably true. I think it's just an effect that looks cool.

 

[Albertese]

Eh... for me it just makes it look borgified. With the exception of the Luxor Hotel and the occasional spotlight most all lights are aimed at lighting up the ground, not the sky. We see enough satellite pics of the earth from space that the lights being on on the dark side of the Earth is distracting. But it's your art. Don't let us ruin it for you if you like it anyway!

--Alex