This is just a very quick image -- would have qualified for the 15 minute challenge (took me about 10 minutes to put together, but I had made the "earthlike" texture earlier), but you all did a "space object" 15 minute challenge while I was moving. So, I just thought I'd pop this up for your enjoyment. There are three newly restored 70mm prints of 2001: a Space Odessy playing around the country. One of them is across the street from my apartment. What an amazing film. Two spheres (one subdivided in the vertex modeller to remove the pointy edges), procedural textures on both. The background was created in diard software's universe creator. You can find that at www.diardsoftware.com. Comments always appreciated and welcome. - Dex

Very nice work! The space background is a photoshop image? Or is this a procedure as well? Blacksteel

How'd you do the atmosphere?

Outstanding! You get an A++ -Kix

Thanks for the compliments.... The starfield is from Diard Software's Universe creator; they have a plug-in version for Photoshop or a stand-alone version. I used the stand alone version because the plug-in version is 2.6 Meg and the stand alone is 1.03 Meg. (Why? I don't know....) But they both work really well, and they're both pretty cheap. It's a 640 x 480 starfield that I tiled 10 times horizontally, 5 times vertically in the background. The clouds on the foreground planet are part of the shader -- it's got lots of nested things going on. The haze of the atmosphere was added in photoshop. I selected the shape of the rim of the planet, modified the selection to a border, feathered the selection, then painted the haze in with a brush on a new layer. I adjusted the opacity of the layer to taste, then flattened the image. That's it....