High Detail Planet

February 13th, 2003, 05:37 PM

This is an occasionaly wip that I've had going for about 6 months now althogh most of that time has been spent staring at stuff and trying to keep up with university... bah.

http://www.imdanet.com/projects/knh/geina/geina.01.jpg

Things to do:

Make my own clouds. Right now I'm using the 'standard' earth cloud map sort of thing. What I'd like to do is get hold of some hi-res images of clouds and paint them in to place, but that's going to take a while.
Stop relying on Lunarcell. Yes, it's made with Lunarcell, that wonderful plugin that makes planets for you. I've tweaked the textures it makes a fair bit, and put a bit of work in to them, but it just doesn't make decent continents yet. I spent most of my time clicking the refresh button for this. But, I have to say, it makes some of these things a lot easier.

So that's that. I'm going to try painting my own planet sooner or later because you ust can't beat that home-made feel... so this may very well be the first major prohject of the rest of my life. Or words to that effect. Anyway, tell me what y'all think of it.

Here's another one to keep you going.

http://www.imdanet.com/projects/knh/geina/geina.02.jpg

February 13th, 2003, 05:47 PM

Nice, Just commenting on the planet itself it looks very well done.

Were you trying to get the blue edge? I have trouble getting the blue glow of the atmosphere on my planets.

ps. Don't worry about the Lunacell thing, no one here will think any less of you

February 16th, 2003, 01:51 PM

Spot the difference.

http://www.imdanet.com/projects/knh/geina/geina.03.jpg
http://www.imdanet.com/projects/knh/geina/geina.04.jpg

I decided I'd go for a compromise sort of thing, having the shape of the continents but getting all the features by cloning stuff from a real image of earth. Unfortunately the scale is way off and they're too big, but it looks better I think.

Darrell Lawrence · February 16th, 2003, 01:57 PM

Looks like the shadowing is different from the clouds. Also looks more .... I dunno.... flat.

February 16th, 2003, 02:07 PM

Yep, that's definitely an improvement.

I'd start adding more variation to the coloring as well... too much green and blue. Especially of the same shades and intensities.

Darrell Lawrence · February 16th, 2003, 02:11 PM

Yeah... that's why it seems flat to me

More color variation!

February 16th, 2003, 02:19 PM

The coloring was much better in the last one. But agreed, there should be some more brown areas and such. But its good work!

February 16th, 2003, 04:01 PM

Howzzat then?

I just realised I'm going to have to make a new version of this when I'm done. It's only 4000x2000. I can't use it for closeups!

February 17th, 2003, 01:25 AM

Great work.

Don't worry about using Lunar cell. you can creat some great maps (and photoshop planets with it). If only there was a setting to make Earth! (I want to play with the water level and change the clour of the sea)

February 17th, 2003, 04:19 PM

The cradle of civilisation, modelled loosely after europe. See if you can spot it on the previous image.

Darrell Lawrence · February 17th, 2003, 04:41 PM

That last image is pretty cool

February 19th, 2003, 09:31 PM

Wow!!!

All you are missing for ultimate perfection are some large-scale mountain ranges with snowcaps.

February 22nd, 2003, 08:37 AM

Awesome effect Prox. How did you do it?

February 22nd, 2003, 04:04 PM

I'm not sure how it works in photoshop, but in PSP I just take the airbrush with a density of about 8, and a size of 3 or 4 to make the main arteries, then I use a larger brush with a lower density and a lower opacity to spread the lights around a bit. Bit, I think I'm going ot have to go back and redo that part because I've improved my technique somewhat.

Still working on the mountains...

February 22nd, 2003, 08:24 PM

More awesome-ness...

But one thing looks weird - The clouds seem to cast shadows in the *opposite* direction of what I would expect...For example - The small straight-line whisps of clouds in the center of your last image - they seem to cast their shadow towards the sun, when the shadow should be on the other side. Or am I just seeing things?

February 23rd, 2003, 05:22 AM

I know. I was working on a way of cheating the cloud shadows so I dind't have to raytrace them, but I haven't got it figured out yet. I had my 'shadows' layer slightly rotated. It messed up.

February 23rd, 2003, 09:00 AM

Cheater!

February 23rd, 2003, 10:50 AM

Hey, if it means I can render a planet in 3 seconds then I'm all for it. :P

I wonder if there's a way I can warp the texture. Anybody know anything about Max Script? I never really got in to it...