We will learn how to make planets with spheres and the Solid Terrain and Solid Rock shaders. We will use a Starfield background to finish the scene.
The Scene
The scene is very straightforward. Just create a new empty scene file and make sure there is no ambient light. Ambient light is the light that has bounced several times from several sufaces and “is just there” In our space scene, there is no ambient light because there is nothing to bounce it off.
Starfield
We will use a Starfield background as the visible environment.
The star density and brightness were increased a bit from the default setting, and the Nebulae were deactivated to obtain just stars.
WARNING
To have the Starfield background render properly, we need to render from a camera window or from a modeling window that is not in Orthographic view.
This window will render the Starfield background properly.
This window will just render a black background.
The Textures
The textures for the planets are as follows:
The Blue Planet
This is a Solid Terrain texture based on the Blue Planet preset.
The relevant parameters here are:
- Ice Caps
Controls the size of the ice caps on the poles of the planet - Sea Level
This one controls the balance between land and sea - Color Scale
Color Scale controls how many different color shades are shown in the planet. - Distortion
Distortions controls how fragmented the land masses of the planet are. - Bump Amp
This parameter controls how high will the planet relief be.
The Brown Planet
This is a large, gas planet, similar to our Jupiter. We shall use a Solid Rock texture for this one.
Turbulence and Morphic control how smooth the strata are. For this example we will set both to 1.0. The colors on the right are the colors of the different strata.
The Satellite
The Satellite uses a Solid Terrain texture based on the Ice Planet preset.
In this example, the colors have been desaturated, to make the planet further resemble a satellite.
Atmosphere
The “earth-like” planet atmosphere is an Aura FX.
Remember that the Aura effect is a post-render FX, so it will not appear until the render is finished.
That is a simple, quick way to create a space scene. Of course, you will need to add the spaceships yourself.
