I used the Lunar Cell plugin for Photoshop to make the planet texture and bump as well as the cloud layer on another sphere over the surface; very high-rez 2000x4000. Used the soft shadows on sun/moon button in the sky editor per Vile's suggestion. the texture was modified a great deal though from the plug-in's direct output. For one, lunar cell makes the water a single flat color and I wanted the hues to change with depth as they do in reality so I did lots of layering and fiddling with the water. I'm still not terribly convinced or happy with the realism and will likley dull the greens a bit on the land masses in the future. Will also try to get a wee more blue in the haze of the atmosphere as well a some more cloud cover before using it in an actual scene with a starfield and such. Beyond that I'm open to suggestions (especially from Vile) on how to improve the planetary look.

Funny thing happened though, On the first version of this file I had clicked on that same button but every time I rendered the image the shadows had a sharp cutoff. when I went back to the sun/moon editor I found the button unchecked. So, I clicked it again and again the setting wouldnt take hold. So, I saved the file, closed Bryce restarted the machine and opened the file again to the same bizzare behavior. Finally I had to start over. Luckilly the image is only 3 spheres so it wasnt difficult to reproduce. This time the setting stayed on. I thought It might have been a temporary situational bug or glitch but the problem was actually saved with the original file. Has anyone else run into this sort of thing?

Dave

hmmm... why don't you just photoshop the land and clouds together? that might save you the trouble... drac

Aye, I think perhaps it's the ambience setting of yuor planet's materials? Perhaps post a screenshot of the Material/s you're using? To be dead black, the ambience LEVEL should be zero, and not running through any channels? Just some ideas... Also, the way we used to do it was to use a negative light on the night side. Set it to ranged, have it's power equal that of the positive light (if you're not using the sun, anyway)... Just a workaround!

Hey, that's a great suggestion DragonLord, and one I hadn't considered when I did my "cracked planet" pic in my gallery! I might dig out the scene file and try your idea.

That was that bryce glitch I talked about the soft shadows will not stay on till the little preview window is finished rendering then you click save in micro saves back in the main window click that save again should work then!