Planets and Space Scenes

Kirtemor

How do I create a photo-realistic planet, say earth, in DAZ Studio 4? Can't seem to get it to look right....:red:

Herald of Fire

The first thing to think of when designing anything to look realistic is to think about how it's constructed in the real world. The Earth, for example, has an atmosphere which generally gives off a blueish hue. A good way to emulate this in Daz is to wrap it in a sphere which just barely exceeds the size of the Earth itself and invert it so that the polygons face inwards. You can then shade this so that the atmosphere appears behind the planet.

Another tip which often gives better results is to do some post-processing in Photoshop. Render out the planet against a blank background and apply a layer effect over it for a glow. You can then composite it all back into a single image.

Another thing to note is that clouds also cast shadows on the planet surface, so using a separate cloud layer for planets will help add that extra realism.

Kirtemor

sounds good, will try the invert thing. how do you invert the polys?
%-P

wancow

There used to be a freeware space scene creator out there... maybe eight or ten years ago? Was it Universe? I can't remember.

When doing this scene:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2332697&user_id=647585&np;&np;
I used three spheres. One for the earth surface. One for the clouds, and one for the atmosphere tinted blue. I had to make my own transparency map for the clouds, but I found them on the web ready to wrap around a sphere.

wancow

Here's a new render that better shows what I did.

wancow

here's another I just did

Kirtemor

cool, will try that too.... will post what I render. thanks.

wancow

One thing, and I haven't figured this out, because I haven't spent any time on it: if you look at photographs of machines in space (satellites, orbiters, etc) they have very VERY harsh shadows. Pretty sure this is due to the lack of ambient light in space. Now, planets with atmospheres, not so much. The moon, of course, has harsh shadows. But if you look at the earth, it always has fuzzy, soft shadows going to the dark side. The other part is that when something is in shadow, it merges with the background black of space, becoming invisible.

So if you want to make your renders look hyper real, you'll figure this part out... and when you do, you WILL tell me how you did it! :P

mjc1016

Here's one...

Inner sphere...texture mapped
Outer...a volume shader applied (I'll post the ShaderMixer network later...)

Kirtemor

LOL... will do.:coolsmile:

wancow

here are a couple of examples

wancow

mjc1016 said:

Here's one...

Inner sphere...texture mapped
Outer...a volume shader applied (I'll post the ShaderMixer network later...)

SUWEEEET!!! I'll be anxiously awaiting that one.

wancow

there is a fantastic cloud texture on this page:
http://www.ozone3d.net/tutorials/s3tc.php

Scroll down

Szark

Salashin's Space Enviro Kit LE hosted here http://www.blackraven3d.com/ is a niffty Space kit I have used in the past.

mjc1016

Here's the network....hopefully the forum will keep the images in order...

mjc1016

The Ambient Strength setting can provide some very interesting effects.

The Gain setting is another fun one to play with.

Here's a render with it set at 30%, as opposed to the 5% in the first render...

The second one is the same shader, with Ambient color set to an orange at 100% and the sphere color yellow at 100% Ambient at the same color as the Diffuse...only a specular light is lighting this scene...

SpottedKitty

wancow said:

Pretty sure this is due to the lack of ambient light in space. Now, planets with atmospheres, not so much. The moon, of course, has harsh shadows.

Not so much ambient light, it's the actual softening and blurring effect of an atmosphere that's missing. The moon is a special case: look at photos of an astronaut or one of the landers and you might see the shadows aren't completely black. That's because the sun isn't the only light source — because there's no sunlight-absorbing atmosphere, the surrounding lunar landscape is also very bright, so it tends to slightly fill in the otherwise deep shadows. The same is seen in photos of the space station, where light is reflected from lots of white-painted modules or shiny solar panels.

It's been a while since I last tried to get somewhere with space lighting, but I remember I did eventually get something I liked by using a low-level environment light and a single bright white distant light.

niccipb

Hi...

Lots of great tips here... :)

And if I might add, consider the distance of the planet from the camera... If the planet, earth in this case, is far from the camera, you can just use a single sphere with a combined texture map, ie: surface and clouds... from great distances in space, the atmosphere layer of a planet is not visible... but the closer you get, the more prominent and fuzzier the atomosphere becomes... also as you look towards the sun horizon line, the brighter it becomes...

Another important thing for closer planetary views is to have good maps, color, bump, displacement, specularity, cloud, night lighting... and they can be found through alot of sources on the web...

A good source for HiRes maps of the earth is from NASA Visable Earth, they are very large, but can be re-sized if needed...

Adjusting the surface settings of the cloud and atmosphere layers goes along way in creating a more realistic planet... diffuse, spec, bump, displacement...

In the image below I used a primative sphere for the planet and then geometry shells for the clouds and atmosphere... done in DS 4.5 and rendered with 3Delight

I added bump, displacement and specularity maps to the planet surface... texture, transparency and displacement maps for the cloud layer... and then applied UberSurface to the atmosphere surface, turning on velvet, subsurface and translucency, and changed the opacity color to a light blue...

I used a single distant light with raytraced shadows and set the shadow softness to 30%, so that the clouds shadows would not be harsh... also the horizon line shadow and terrain shadows would blur...

The sun is pointed just off the west coast of Africa, and you can see the blur of the horizon line just about the center of the planet... most of the light that is wrapping around the side of the planet is being bounced off of the cloud and atmosphere layers... if the camera was further away, you would want a harder shadow on the horizon...

A little bit of postwork can soften some of the hard lines, especially the sunside edge of the atmoshere layer...

Good luck, can't wait to see how you do... :)