Planetary rings

[Dune]

I can't leave a problem lying around, so I got to experiment a bit today. Used a very simple 24poly imported disc, single side, forced displacement, and added a black default shader masked by a fake stone distribution in the opacity slot (made very white from the stone colors by color adjust shader), fed output into empty surface shader with the same stones set as child.
Soft shadows, detail 0.8 no defer atmo, AA8, rendertime: 6mins! Planet disabled. Two lightsources for the brightest stars, the others are tiny dots, very luminous on a simple (imported) no shadow single sided plane behind the 'planet', opacity-masked the same way.
The planet, btw, is a 3m diameter sphere, with some pf's and a tiny cloud on a 3m diameter invisible planet (which I could have used for the planet anyway, but I added the clouds later).

One thing I have to find out; why the clouds are greyish.

[bobbystahr]

That's purty durn awesome man...keep the tenacious attitude, it serves you well.

[Dune]

I might carry on with this with a map for Saturn. Rendertimes really please me. Tried a spherical image (view in appropriate app), but the after effects still need to be such that it continues. In the scond render the sun suddenly dissappeared  Other ideas for better stones to pursue as well...

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[bobbystahr]

Love the planet texture, is that an image map or procedurally done?

[Dune]

Made a little smaller than 6000px.

[Dune]

Image map, Bobby.

And another test.

[DannyG]

Nice rich tones in this. Th rugged rock rings are awesome looking

[Dune]

Thanks Danny. Like I said this is built on a very small scale; 3m diameter imported disc, and very small 'planet'. Tiny fake stones mix. A universe that fits in a hand, sort of.

[bobbystahr]

Image map, Bobby.

And another test.

Gotta up my reading comprehension...you said that before and I brain cramped it...Love your palmiverse..

[cyphyr]

sweet solution and works well. Is it one imported disk or two (one reversed)?

[Dune]

Just one. Two might be interesting with inverted stones matching, but without lateral displacements.