I'm hoping to find a.... Earth prop.. i mean like a planet type prop. If any of you guys know where i could find one.. please yell at me. :) Thanks!!!

There's one at RDNA, called the Microcosm Planet. Comes with some neat textures and stuff, too :D

Is it ground type stuff you want or an actual planet sphere. For ground type stuff, the DAZ cyclorama is also good to have. If you want a planet just make one with the HiRes ball prop in primitives and apply an image map of the earth or mars or any other planet looking stuff.

Attached Link: http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/data/callisto/index.html

You can use a hi-res ball primitive or make a new sphere in UV-Mapper and save it out as "planet" with the map. There are all sorts of space-maps of the moons and planets online. They are cylindrically-mapped, IIRC. Here is a link to a map of Callisto, with information as to how the artist made the map... it is intended for 3d rendering rather than scientific accuracy or landing missions, but is still darned good. When I made planets, I just stretched the maps I found onto the template, making sure to save planet objs and their maps under new names. You can do this with real moons and planets or with fake ones that you've created (suppose that you need a water-world with oodles of islands, you can whip one up in PhotoShop once you get the feeling for wrapping them onto spheres.

Attached Link: http://www.max3dnn.narod.ru/textures/planets.htm

This site has a bunch of the planetary maps. Most are made with NASA imagery, but I can't find the specific NASA source right now. (Our government's stuff is copyright-free for us to use, but the agencies do like a credit line.) Anyway, this should get you started. Carolly

Attached Link: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

Nasa's Blue Marble page will let you download some very detailed eath images which can be mapped onto a sphere.

That's a nice view of earth with lights. Thanks for the link!

The maps at the NASA site also faeture a seperate cloud map that can be used on a second, slightly larger sphere so that you have a seperate cloud layer. Just plug the cloud map into the transparency channel and maybe the colour channel. Clouds cast shadows too, so try turning on shadows and lowering the shadow density.

I've layered spheres before to get good-looking planets, as well as magical orbs and such where a glow or fuzz facter is needed. It is necessary to get the appearance of atmosphere. For dry worlds and airless moons, you need sharp shadows and crispness. It is all in the experimenting. :) More than a decade ago, someone named Joel (I'm blanking on his last name) wrote an article for Amiga which detailed how to build a planet and lay out the map in Deluxe Paint using the palette range and the gradiant brush tool to create the land masses and snow-capped poles. We wrapped that rectangular map around a sphere and... voila! It was oodles of fun and most of us game artists made lots of worlds. Carolly