Saw the tutorial for Carrara on how to make planets.  I make planets in Bryce, but the cloud presets don't achieve what I want.  Anyone know how to make realistic clouds surrounding a planet in Bryce?  Possibly through Photoshop? 

This site has a number of tutorials on planets however I can't check right now to see if it has one on clouds specifically as they were hacked and are down temp.  http://www.solarvoyager.com/

Here is a tutorial may be the same one on SolarVoyager http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_2/painting_planets/planets_01.asp  they posted about 100 tutorials some are quiet interesting http://www.3dtotal.com/ps100/pstut100.html

I just spent 45 minutes in the DTE and came up with a DECENT cloud texture in Bryce 5.  With a little more work, I could probobly get it even better.  I might do that later on.  I don't know what you are looking for as far as quality.......  well,  probably as good as you can get, but here is what I came up with in Bryce.

My advice is to really dig into the DTE and experiment no matter how experienced you are with it.  You would be suprised as to what you can come up with!

Benjamin

Assuming you have no idea what to do the dte won't  help - but if you do then ignore me:
so you got your sphere(an oblate spheroid would be better but who's gonna notice 80 miles on the scales we're talking about?). you'll need a texture map for the terrain also one for your clouds. both should be 2(horizontal):1(vertical). so all you need to do now is figure out in the texture editor what those A B C and D things are for right? also you'll need to figure out the masking for the clouds  . . .  I can't go on - it's too painful (no really !!! it hurts to type due to pulled muscles in my upper arm.

looks good, Benjamin !!

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2432 Have a look here if you want 'wrap around' cloud textures.