Quote - Here-

http://planetpixelemporium.com/planets.html

Click on the 'Earth' scroll down you'll find a flat high detailed lunar map that you can slap on a sphere. Light as needed :)

geo

 

Those are pretty cool maps - thanks for the link!

On the subject of the original question, I did some playing around and devised way to animate a moon going through it's phases. In the next series of posts, I'll layout the process in case anyone may still find it useful.

To set the stage, I used a standard Poser hi res ball and applied the moon map from the link geoegress provided and made the background black. This process uses animated texturing in the transparency channel, so it is mainly done entirely in the Material Room..

Hey! His nose is dry! ... Someone should lick it,  just in case. - Diego