Interactive planet-creation tutorial

[edwardgtxy]

hmmm, need some suggestions. still seems to be a little weird... but i cant figure out whats wrong with it?

[vissroid]

bump/normal mapping seems insanely high and I'm not sure if the other bumps are supposed to be the clouds or not. if thats the case you either missed out on the defuse or opacity mapping for it I'm thinking. lol

[edwardgtxy]

what should be normally? like 10?

[aszazeroth]

Originally Posted by vissroid

Actually I was tempted to contact you ...

You can drop me a PM in these forums if you like... I read them on the average once a day.

@edwardgtxy

Vissroid is quite right about the bump. I might elaborate some more in the tutorial appendix or in a more article style letter about the nature of maps and how they might interact. -IF- you go for a photoreal look, I suggest not having a bump at all, for a full disc render is the way to go. You have to go pretty darn close to a planet to actually resolve bump-i-ness. Even on smaller bodies like our moon, you need a pretty heafty magnification to detect "bump", although a smaller body have more elevation to radii ratio.

You might want to take a look at your atmosphere settings and the specular on land/ocean, but keep them renders churning out.

//Dr. Asz

[Treyvan]

Such good work here, I'm still new to all this myself. I've started with a few tutorials and had some okay results in trying to make a mesh of earth (i needed it for an animation project, another learning experiance heh) My problem is atmospheres. I'd like to try to get the correct glow, without having to do it in photoshop as all this is gonna go into a scene. If anyone knows of any tutorials, or maybe some settings I just don't know about I'd be appreciated to any insight anyone can offer.

Thanks.

[su_liam]

Originally Posted by edwardgtxy

hmmm, need some suggestions. still seems to be a little weird... but i cant figure out whats wrong with it?

I don't mind the bump mapping. It's a little more than realistic, but not visually unpleasant. It looks like the water level is a little higher than the edge of the land. There looks like a vast wall of water around the low coasts.

Lower the water level, maybe reduce the bump amplitude a bit and it should be good.

If your going for fullan hard realism, remember that in scale the Earth is about as rough as a cue-ball.

[sggrafixs]

Your surface is chopy and not properly spherlized, your shadow is overcontrasted and your glow is messed up. Make the inner glow a more realistic color and larger and fix the outer glow. I got some photoshop tutorials on this site if you need some help. That is, if you did it in photoshop.

[Chris Vickers]

Sir, would it be possible to get a pdf or Word Document of the information? Trying to put together a manual on a DVD for private use ONLY. I have no intent to redistribute it.

[aszazeroth]

The PDF is the intended final format of the tutorial... I just have to finish off the last pages and add some cool stuff to an appendix. Time is my enemy here since I do all this on my spare time. But things are chilling down at work before the summer, so I might find time to finish it off soon.

//Aszazeroth

[Lonewriter]

what happen to the pics on the front page? I am starting over on my planet and need to know the size to make my alpha map.