I would like to begin building some planets in VUE and wondered if anyone can recommend good mats for Earth? I am looking for something that is more photo-realistic like a NASA photo rather than some of the mats available for download that look too "drawn".

I've seen some in Poser for purchase but it's hard to tell how good they will look once I get the package. Any suggestions would be appreciated on this. Thanks!! 

The moon I sell over at Daz uses maps that are based on the best satillite imagry I could find, and it's pretty cheap...

Just search for glowmoon there.

Georgess has some planetary maps as well, and he frequents the poser forum.. contact him for the links.

I'll be bundling up a freebie set based on his maps for my glowmoon customers as well, soon as I can get around to it.

Check out this website before buying anything:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_creator_details.php?creator_id=10

The available maps on the website offrench suggests, i've used on spheres to produce 3D planets in Vue a while ago, too. But it really depends on the settings i use in Vue, if they will look good or less good.
As examples for results here are two of my images showing the one of the hires Mars textures (don't know if that is the quality you're aiming for...) :

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

[ www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

](http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1444215)

Something like http://www.imagico.de/pov/earth_bm2.html

The Celestiamotherlode is great but for the EARTH pics the water is too dark to look natural. I'm looking for something that would render like we see when the shuttle is shown on tv and you can see the earth with its clouds and atmosphere and the water is always a lighter blue with just the right amount of reflection on it.

If you watch any sci-fi movie of recent that shows earth - well - it looks pretty good and real. That is the look I'm aiming for.  But most of the earth maps have water that is too dark and then there's the issue of cloud mats and atmospheres.  Thanks for the help and let me know if there is something else I should look at....

Oh the blue marble stuff looks petty good but I am looking for a mat I can apply to a sphere....

They'll work great if you UVmap the sphere properly.  They wouldn't make these images just for cube worlds.

Tor Oera (http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps.htm) has maps up to 2500x1250 for free. It also has a nice tutorial on world building.

There are color maps, specular maps (water reflects, land doesn't,) bump/displacement maps, and cloud maps.

You basically make three nested spheres. The smallest one is the planet itself. The next one out is the clouds - the cloud map is used as both a trans map and a bump map to add texture. The outer one represents the atmosphere, to give the planet that halo effect.

Thanks!  How best to do the atmophere transparency? I can't seem to get it to where the halo effect will be there but without turnning everything else blue - the color of the amtmoshere. I'm sure there is a refraction setting or something that would work well with this....

Did you make the atmosphere a volumetric material? Then set the volumetric color and density.

I can't get the specularity mask to work on the earth. When I enable it, the oceans reflect the continents on the other side of the planet!

Problem with photorealistic worlds that fill much of the frame, is that you need ENORMOUS image sizes, 8000x4000 minium if you want close shots, actually double that really if it's very close.

For further away shots of course, less will do.

there's a very good tutorial on how to make such a texture on scifi-mehes.com

for the outer atmosphere, I have a freebie material on my Vue mat page, near bottom:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/vue_mats/vue_materials.htm

And I have a large 8000x4000 scifi mapped world for sale on Cornucopia:
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=3236

:)

Thanks. I appreciate it and am playing around with the volumetric download.