Interactive planet-creation tutorial

[aszazeroth]

Originally Posted by Ozylot

...I'd like to know a bit more about how you achieve the land textures, are they entirly hand painted? also wondering how you will get mountain ranges in there too.

Nah, not entirely handpainted... basis for the land texture (not the palette, that was truly painted) are stock photos of oxidized minerals Then I blend and paint and clone and brush and .... Short... I zoom in and wander around with my tablet-brush trying to "create" features that I like. I do have a small collection of earlier work to lean upon, but most of the time each planet look pretty unique in the end. As for the falloff.... it's alot of parameter tweaking. I cannot before hand say what is working or not. Try it out, render some edge, look at NASA (Service mission 4, maybe) photos, change parameters, render again or use an IPR in maya. Get stuck !? post in the WIP thread and we can discuss.

//Dr. Asz

[Tinukedaya]

Thanks Asz. I wasn't much smart from what you said. I understood, but it made no sense. Oh well. It made sense, but I wasn't able to make something up from just those few hints.

BUT... one of the hints has proven vital. Deks.

Now up for drawing some unique textures.

[aszazeroth]

Originally Posted by Tinukedaya

Thanks Asz. I wasn't much smart from what you said. I understood, but it made no sense. Oh well. It made sense, but I wasn't able to make something up from just those few hints.

BUT... one of the hints has proven vital. Deks.

Now up for drawing some unique textures.

Hmm, I am know to have that effect on people... my wife and kids always complains when I try to explain something

Looking forward to them textures !

[backstept]

I'm anxious to get on to ohw to do land details like mountains and rivers
oh and clouds too

come on come on come on
yes I'm an impatient son of a gun

[Ozylot]

Originally Posted by backstept

I'm anxious to get on to ohw to do land details like mountains and rivers
oh and clouds too

come on come on come on
yes I'm an impatient son of a gun

Indeed! ^^

Ive started experimenting with a bump map, seems to work but ya cant see it from directly above. Im curious to see how the masters do it.

[aszazeroth]

Ah, again we embark on the journey of the quest for the grand prize, the creation of my first tutorial...

Well first of, as you faithful followers probably have noticed, them PSD file are now in full swelling well above 400 Mb or more. Not really suitable for working with, so, at any point you feel like you have a nice map, do a "ctrl-a" and "copy merged" (will copy all your active/visible layers) and do a "file new". Paste the copy in and then drag-drop the alpha from the large file to the new. Vola, something along the lines of 119.17 Mb two layers (one empty white bg, that you can throw) and the correct and so useful alpha.

Back to painting.... painting and some more painting. Then for my planet I googled some pictures of oxidized rock and made some funky collage of some of their colors and a few surface details. A worthy note is to be darn careful when selecting surface features, since most photos are way off scale compared to orbital shots. Study some satellite pictures to get the feeling. Then.... paint and some more paint. I also try to paint in new layers and then experiment with the blending for interesting results. So without further due here is phase 2 of the entire surface-map.


Fig 7.1. Updated surface-map.

I will now try to add some of the requested details, such as mountains (although my world is only expected to have few such) or I'll make a detour to another world of mine. Have not decided yet. 3D render pending... ran out of RAM trying to load the map

Cheers
//Dr. Asz

[Ozylot]

Thats crazy and beautiful! and please... minor detour!

[aszazeroth]

Alright, some goodies from another planet map


Fig 8.1. Jungle-Kilimanjaro-Clone

The mountain is made from copy-clone and re-painting some Norwegian mountain from some aerial over a fjord I found trying to study Slartibart's finest work. Esentially I wanted to have a mountain rise above the Jungle in a LPO (Low-Planet-Orbit) shot. Guess I have to render that shoot someday


Fig 8.2. Part of mountain massive.

The mountain massive was intended to be apart of my whopping 16k Vulcan map (still unfinished) based upon canonical records and sources. It was made from a medium rez BlueMarble picture-outtake of mountain massive located somewhere in South America (exact location eludes me). All original colors where stripped and new, painted and blended in.


Fig 8.3. Final(-ish) render of the above mountain massive.

We'll come back to these when addressing them bump-maps. Gonna see about getting some river shots too, if I can find the darn planet with the river

Cheers
//Dr. Asz

[backstept]

wow
I dunno if I'll ever be able to do something like that

[lennier1]

@aszazeroth: That´s some seriously great progress and it´s already given me quite a few ideas. I especially like how you blend together the different climates and make it feel natural.
@backstept: Don´t forget that he didn´t exactly start doing maps like these yesterday morning.