I seen a lot of great planetary images where the moon, planet, etc. are in the background and the atmosphere (clouds) are between the object and the landscape. How is this done in Bryce? I was playing with a city tutorial and as you can see, the moon is under the sky.

You need to create a cloudless sky (in the sklab) and do your clouds by creating a volume cloud plane and assigning a cloud material to it, rather than by just selecting a sky in the skylab. Once you have your volume cloud plane(s) set up the way you want, you can put the planet above it/them. Also, when working with overhead planets in scenes, make it big and put it far away (e.g. at x = -2000, z = 2000), it'll look much more real than a smaller planet at closer range.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=10700&Start=1&Artist=archetype&ByArtist=Yes

Also set your haze settings fairly high and move the planet away from the camera a bunch (you will then need to resize it larger so it appears the same size in your pic.) The further back you go, the more haze will obscure it. Check out the link to the pic I made to get an idea of what Im talking about (you may not want the haze&fog to be as thick as in mine, but you get the idea.)

Ive read a tutorial some time ago where you make your material 'additive', in that tutorial it blends with the sky but only seems good on certain scenes. You might want to give that a try.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=72313&Start=1&Sectionid=0&Form.Search=guslaw&Form.se

Check out the attached link to one of my pics. Is this what you have in mind? You can have a preset sky if you make your planet/moon partially transparent. You'll have to play with the transparency setting 'till you get what you like. You might also want to check out Steve Savino's tutorial on making crescent planets/moons (the link is in my next post). In my picture I used a combination of both Steve Savino's technique and playing with transparency settings on flat 2D disk. The disk is the same diameter and in the same location as the sphere of the moon. I hope this helps. Walter

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/2470/cresntut.html

Here's the link to Steve Savino's tutorial... Walter

Thanks for posting the link guslaw. I love your dragon pic btw...

This is why I love Renderosity. Great help everyone! Now I've got some study/playing to do. Thanks.