OK, trying to get a good planet- this one is 3 spheres- one with continents text and bump, next slightly larger with cloud map and transparency, third all transparent with glow- rendered with 3d aura enabled. Stars are post.

Close up. Comments/sugestions welcome.

Attached Link: http://www.theexperiment.com/3dsmax

This is the info from the read me file: The 3dsmax Experiment planet materials: Here contains a complete set of materials for making our solar system. The list includes: Earth + Clouds Jupiter Mars Mecury Moon Neptune Pluto Saturn Uranus Venus All of the maps -Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus have bump maps. Also the earth cloud map should be applied to a slightly larger sphere than the map the earth is on. tip: A good tip for making realistic planets is to use a glow video post effect. I hope you enjoy. I'll be working on making the rings for the planets that need them and also trying to find maps of certain planets moons (e.g. Jupiter). Jason Soares jason@theexperiment.com The 3dsmax Experiment: http://www.theexperiment.com/3dsmax

Very nice atmosphere effect =) . The clouds look a bit pixelated, have anabled Interpolate on the T-map ? And thanks for the link!

"have anabled" I meant "have you enabled" ;P

The earth image looks very good. The pixellation might have been introduced when converting to jpeg under the 200 kB limit here. The maps are excellent, although I noticed the cloud map is 1/4 the area of the earth map.

Just to say you that it is really BEAUTIFULL !!! like in a dream

Very nice! I think you captured the earths atmosphere perfectly. Your method of creating the atmosphere gives an ethereal feeling to the images. Do you mind posting your shader settings? Thanks, Keith

I was just browsing the Ray Dream Handbook (that's about four years old now) and saw a tutorial for making a glowing atmosphere for a planet. It's a little different than the Aura. You put a bulb light at the center of the planet sphere, and give it a Light Sphere effect with a radius slightly larger than the planet's radius. Turn on turbulence, etc. Never tried it - I wonder how it turns out? Beautiful render.

I wanted to post the planet to download, but the 3 spheres, 2 mapes and the glow shader grouped and saved comes to 11MB, 6MB zipped! Sooo.. Here are the shader trees I used on 3 spheres- each aprox 5% larger then the prev. Maps are from the link above. Earth shader

Cloud map

And the glow map that gives the aura when 3d aura is enabled in the sceen render settings. I tried to set a glow using the clowed shader but it either left a white film on the planet if it was to high or the glow was absent when the clouds were absent.

Thanks ppowellaa, for posting the shader screens. It all makes sense now. God is in his heaven an all is right with the world.....or at least with the world shader. Thanks again, Keith

when i put the cloud sphere over the earth...the cloud sphere isn't transparent.....please help.....thx

OK, duble check the cloude shader, if you only put the trans map in the trans setting instead of using the blend setting it will not be transparrent. Also turn off refracted trans in the render settings. Hope that helps!

is there anything under the source 1 of the cloud sphere? i did exactly the way u did in the texture screens. how was ur spheres lighted....could that be a problem?

I am soooo sorry for that collapsed part!!!! It was kinda important :( No lights other than ambient at 100% Image has expanded shader and 3D Aura settings.