inspired by someone else asking about moon and planets earlier i have come so far

no i would like to add a "glowing on the border" atmosphere. i have tried the vue 7 ple own glowing atmosphere material with adding an angle of incidence node to global transparency but i am missing the glow on the other side (lower left). is there a way to achieve this?

thanks in advance
chris

Personally I use a sphere slightly larger than the planet, use the glowing atmo on the sphere and adjust to suit!
You may need to light it from different directions!

I'm sure there are other and better ways, this is just how I do it!

I would do it in Photoshop, you get complete control over your atmosphere that way. You would need your planet on a separate layer, though, so you can apply an outer glow to it.

i played in gimp and managed to create this (the lights i added with a luminosity layer in vue). the lower left atmosphere glow was added in gimp. the sun with the flare is a mix of positioning the sun close to earth in vue and then mixing/postprocessing in gimp with the previous render ...

this was fun to do. have to redo it in the office and make a nice wallpaper without the watermark :)

p.s. if anybody has tips how i can create this within vue please let me know!

Do you mean something like this?
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1741954

BTW, maybe this image is familiar to you... This image was chosen for the box cover of Vue 7 Pioneer.

The atmosphere is a sphere slightly larger than the planet, with a volumetric material, which is set like this: lighting model "shaded", difuse 100%, ambient 0%, density production made with a "incident light angle" node (to make it "thicker" at the borders and more transparent in the center. You have to adjust density and fuzziness to suit the size of your sphere (in my case, density is 50 and fuzziness 10).

MyCat, that looks really, really nice!
The only problem I see is that the atmosphere is very bright on the dark side too. In principle, that shouldn't happen in reality. What lighting model did you use? Maybe additive? Mine is shaded.

free material that does exactly that on my site, you know, folks :)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=7541

thanks to various helping hands i managed to create these entirely in vue 7 ple!

btw ... this forum is the best :)

Looks great! :-)

But, still, and forgive me for insisting on this topic, it's not realistic at all that the atmosphere shines in the dark. Maybe you can try changing the lighting model into shaded, as I suggested.

Another thing: up close, the border of the atmosphere seems too sharp. Maybe you can increase the fuzziness.

Yes, this forum rocks! :-)

yep, i know that it might not be realistic but i like it better for artistic reasons (although i am not so sure about it ... wouldnt the light of the sun be "forwarded" from the other side into the unlit part of the planet side ... i am sure we learned this in school but i cant remember :-) ).

it was an exercise for me to have one atmosphere material that makes the sunshone part of the globe blueish and have another that makes the small glow contrast in the dark half. i only used the volumetric material for an additional glow layer, the other is "just" an angle-of-incidence on transparency layers.

actually all of this was a great exercise for me and i have learnt alot how to use and apply function editor stuff.

you are right about the closeup atmosphere. i also want to finetune it but i will do that once i get back in the office where i have my official version.

Attached Link: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/earth/gal_earth_moon.jpg

For sure not. Look at photos from outer space of Earth and other planets and you'll see that the dark side is totally dark. There's no shiny atmosphere in the dark, that's for sure. :-)
Look at the link above. That was taken by the Voyager. Here are more photos of the Voyager:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/photogallery-voyager.html

Well, in fact, even in the iluminated part the atmosphere is barely visible because it's so small. The Earth's atmosphere has a 120Km depth and Earth has a 12756Km diameter. So, the atmosphere is only less than 1% of the total planet diameter. That's almost invisible at the distance, as the photo above can also testify. Up close, it's visible, as this other photo shows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Top_of_Atmosphere.jpg

man you are thorough! hats off to you :)

so i will have to file my pics under the creativity tab then!

just a little update ... while i was reproducing the earth at the office i found something that i did not expect. this was my first attempt. all looks fine and probably even rutra will find it realistic :)

then i reduced the shadow to 50% as i found the ones produced by the clouds on the planet sphere to harsh ... and suddenly the other side of the planet starts to have a glow!

does this make sense?

The other side does glow, iirc, the light does get scattered, but it's very soft :)
similar ot why a lunar eclipse is red, the light gets refracted and scattered by the edge of our atmosphere and thus shifts to red, and then hits the moon.

remember, most cameras cna't pick up the fiant light our eyes can.

Space doesn't have much ambient light (no atmosphere), there is some from stars, but it's swamped out in pictures by the harsh Sun light.

Very very well done!! :)
did you add a speculairty channel for the ocean? that's only bit that looks to matte.

i added a highlight map but i toned it done real low as the default was awfully strong. maybe i overdid it :) when i have time i want to do some tweaking with the water ... would you see surface structure from that far?

Yes, that looks good! :-)

I never use shadows so low. All kinds of strange results can happen. You just proved that. :-)
If the clouds shadow is too dark, you could play with the cloud materials, make it more transparent (play with filters, for example). In principle, problems should be solved at their root cause. :-) So, if the problem was with the clouds, change the clouds material. :-)

I agree that the water needs a bit more highlight.

Quote - "remember, most cameras cna't pick up the fiant light our eyes can."

Silverblade, have you been in space already and have you seen it with your own eyes?! :-)
I admit I've only seen atmospheres from outer space and objects in deep space, in images captured by cameras. :-) For all of us, this is the reality. IMO, it's completely irrelevant if cameras can pick more or less than eyes can, in what concerns trying to make realistic space scenes. From this point of view, atmospheres in the dark don't glow and stars do not cast enough light to make shadows any brighter than deep black. :-)

 Personally, I'd kill the cloud shadows. Makes the earth look to '3d' imo.

shadows killed, highlights tweaked ...

I have to watch the Planet Earth BBC documentaries and see how they rendered our planet esp in regards to the sea part of it. Or maybe they even have some satellite footage ... but I think my version will be my wallpaper for quite some time :)

 Nice job. Very nice job.