Ok, I wanted to try something I hadn't done for a long time.  Here's the thing:

Take your camera and set it at world center.  Create a sphere and set it at world center, making sure the sphere is larger than the camera.  Set the sphere's texture to standard glass.  Select black for the infinate ground plane and then select a nice cloud preset for the sky.  the resulting images once you switch to the camera is supposed to bend the image around the sphere and with a little tweaking makes it look like a large scalre planet.

Here's the problem... I did it in bryce 5, (I have the image in my gallery), but 5.5 won't do it, no matter what I do, what am I not doing or is this even possible anymore?

 

Have you got TIR (Total Internal Reflection) switched on dude ?

 

Len.

Hi Cujoe. Did you remember to use the camera banking controls to invert (make upside-down) the picture? This way the black plain is the sky and the former sky looks like the planet below.

Trust me, it works! I've used it in several animations. All you have to do then is invert your ships so they match as well.

anybody have a picture of what this looks like please

Here's a quick and dirty render using the method I described. I made  the ground plain black, tried several sky presets before I found one I liked, and also added a volumetric cloud plane.  Just as cujoe described, you put the camera in a glass sphere which distorts the horizon giving the illusion of  the edge of a planet. Use the camera view and tinker with the glass material and position of the sphere around the camera and you should be able to get similar or better results.

kewl thanks for the pic it gives me a good idea of what to expect

No Prob!

I also added a sphere with the "nebula" volumetric mat applied and a few spheres with  a high ambience mat applied to look like stars, planets, whatever.

 

Attached Link: Planet scenefile thread

Try this.

Cool trick. I think I'll try it sometime.

Yep, same principle, method, whatever. The cool thing about using this method is that you can use the banking controls to get any angle view you want of the planet's edge. PadawanNick used a similar approach, but he made a "lens' using a sphere and booleaned out half of it with a cube. He put this in front of the camera instead of putting the camera in a sphere.

ok, I didn't fully explain what my problem was, I apologize.  no matter where I move the sphere, camera, or anything else, I absolutely cannot get the horizon to bend.  I've spent the better part of an hour tweaking the camera and the sphere, but there's obviously something simple that I'm missing.  I guess this may not seem like a major problem, but it's bugging me becuase I use to do it all the time.  anyone want to post the numbers of thier objects and anything else related?  Ok, maybe I'm asking too much now. :P

Well, I did this in Bryce5.1,  I haven't tried it in 5.5 but it doesn't seem to make sense that you couldn't also do it in 5.5.  I used the light glass II preset for the material of the sphere surrounding the camera. I tried some of the others, but that preset worked best for me.

If you with bend mean tilting the planet, try the banking button.

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