Interactive planet-creation tutorial

[backstept]

here's the WIP thread:
http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/3...-tutorial.html

[aszazeroth]

Alright... this was a blast from the past... I guess I lost this thread there before xmas. Time to pick it up I guess and finish both the tutorial and the planet.

About them cloud maps... There are several ways of doing them. A rule of thumb is to have the cloudmap twice the resolution of the landmap, ie 8k land => 16k cloud. I know it can be damn depressive to paint 16k maps, but it's only greyscale, so it should be less taxing on your PSDs and only one layer too. 16k or 32k landmaps are the worst . Now what to use for a cloudmap, sort of depends on the planet you are playing around with. In my case here I guess I will go with Earth-like. Other revenues are gasgiants, venuslike planets, volcanic worlds and so on. In this particular case I used clouds from weather satellite pictures, water-vapor or reflected IR is good. A new path of mine is to use Maya Fluids to get some nice custom clouds that follow continents, exoplanet derived coriolis patterns and jetstreams... damn exciting really and best of all... in the end it can be animated, showing fast forward of an exoplanet with moving cloud systems.

Anyways, I guess it's time to finish of the landmap and tweak the ocean and head on to the cloudmap here in the tutorial, before we try out some 3D program and their techniques. I had planned for 3DSM, Maya and Blender for the finale.

Wow, massive post... sorry about all that reading.

Cheers all, and keep asking questions !

//Dr. Asz

[Tinukedaya]

Hmhm... again I have not get that that much. I guess your explaining techniques are somehow too complicated for me. hehe. nah j/k

What I wanted to ask thoough is, if there is any particular reason for the cloud map to be 2x the res of land map?

And thanks for the link Backstep ...

[Zardoz]

Wow! Amazing tutorial. It's the thing that i was needing, because, in some point of near future, i will need to begin make planets for STO, and i not had idea of how doing the planetary textures from scratch !

Good Work guy!

[aszazeroth]

OK, time for some weather(tm)-systems

Here's how I envision the major currents in the ocean (based upon Earth-ish patterns). These currents will be the basis for the weather system I am gonna paint for this planet.

Off to cloud-making then.

Cheers
//Dr. Asz

[aszazeroth]

First pass at clouds systems, using some Maya fluids. Not sure I am able to fluid all the way, but I always wanted to try out the technique/theory so that I might animate stuff in the future. Similar static pattern can be easily done in PS.

Details and cloud banks next.

Cheers
//Dr. Asz

[Tovette]

@Aszazeroth- when you refer to 8k,16k maps are you refering to their size or pixel width?

[aszazeroth]

Opps, my bad Tovette, guess I should have defined those numbers earlier on. In this tutorial I use cylindrical maps projections with a scale factor 2:1 (width:height). So to confuse a bit I usually just refer to the rounded width measured in k:s (really abhorring and not mathematically correct)... So.

8k => 8192 x 4096 px
16k => 16384 x 8192 px

Note, that several programs will bugg out on such large textures and thus will require all sorts of funky work-arounds and fixes =)

[Tinukedaya]

Finnaly got to post this!

Whoa! You sure go far with your planets Asz, huh? I mean, envisioning main currents and from that the weather system ??

I think I have asked earlier... But is there any particullar reason for the cloud maps being 2x higher res then the land map?

<points to the other thread> I just put an old earth cloudmap on my planet.

And one more question... cylindrical map? Not spherical? <- hmm. thats interesting...

On and now really last one. How are you dealing with teh map defrmations at the poles?

[aszazeroth]

Opps, more definition problems... I paint in what could be a perceived as cylindrical projection in Photoshop, but the final result is spherically mapped in 3D.

As for the weather systems, I guess when some of my planets end up at friends at NASA they are sure to pick on me for not sticking to principal physics...and besides that, I really like to envision far away worlds in all their chaotic weather system glory.

Ah, the famous polar pinch problem. I have a small *NIX program that (after some editing) convert between any projection I want, cylindrical->mercator->spherical and so on. I run that and the set the corresponding in the 3D program.

Sorry about forgetting about the cloud map. The reason I use a 2x rez is that I mainly use it as an alpha to control a white-ish shader. Small details and small clouds then are really crucial to get that photorealistic look. It can only be achieved by higher rez... The land details are more forgiving to a "slight" blur. I'll demonstrate some examples later on when we add the land and cloud up for some render in some 3D program, possibly Blender for the sake of accessibility within the community.