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Blender Planets

A while ago I was introduced to what would become my favorite Blender trick. That was plugging a noise texture into a color ramp. I first saw this technique used for quickly making planet textures, but very quickly realized how versatile it could be.

It was pretty great for planets, but I found myself eventually wanting to try for something a bit more realistic, and experimented with using a separate sphere to make a cloud layer that would cast shadows and have actual depth. It worked well enough, but left a very visible sharp edge around the planet.

I looked around for tutorials on how to make better looking planets procedurally, but all the ones I found started with "first you steal a picture of a planet surface from Google images," and I was like "THAT'S NOT WHAT PROCEDURAL MEANS." Yesterday I happened to be scrolling down ArtStation's latest posts and saw an awesome looking planet someone had posted along with a link to the tutorial they used to make it. I checked it out and it was FINALLY exactly what I had been looking for. Great terrain texture, realistic cloud layers, and even some compositing tricks to really push that realistic sun-on-atmosphere glare!

Tutorial is here: https://youtu.be/2oV48DAvwYg

Most recent attempt. Followed a tutorial. I LOVE how the cloud layer looks with this technique. (2023, Cycles)

Most recent attempt. Followed a tutorial. I LOVE how the cloud layer looks with this technique. (2023, Cycles)

First attempt at an Earth-like planet. I was pretty proud of it at the time, but really wanted to try and get something more realistic. (I did this one in Eevee because Cycles made it look too shiny.)

First attempt at an Earth-like planet. I was pretty proud of it at the time, but really wanted to try and get something more realistic. (I did this one in Eevee because Cycles made it look too shiny.)

A later attempt. Used a second sphere with alpha mapping to try and get better looking cloud layer with some depth. Better, but the second sphere was clearly visible around the edges, so I tried using depth of field to blur it. (2022.)

A later attempt. Used a second sphere with alpha mapping to try and get better looking cloud layer with some depth. Better, but the second sphere was clearly visible around the edges, so I tried using depth of field to blur it. (2022.)

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