A Simple Planet

[nvseal]

No clouds, just surfacing. It's not exactlly finished; it's just big. 

[dhavalmistry]

nice work....did you mask the land or use planet shader???

[nvseal]

Power fractals and surfac layers, it's all procedural.

[dhavalmistry]

oh kool....

[sjefen]

Very nice, but why don't you have clouds on this one.
I'll bet i will look ten times better with some clouds. Especially since it's going to be your clouds

[rcallicotte]

I like everything, except that sunshine spot and yet I know you know.  Anyway, with your clouds it will be fantismo.

[nvseal]

Well, if I added the clouds that would probably push this render (at this resolution) to at least three or four days, maybe a week.  That makes me scared. 

[sjefen]

I like to watch people get scared

[Hannes]

Wow, that looks very realistic. What are your athmosphere settings? I also tried to create something like this, but the "continents" always look kind of pale. There's also this falloff from a lighter blue to a darker blue in the center of the planet. Is this the reflection shader?

[Hannes]

Btw, how did you create the transparency of the water, is it also procedural?

[cyphyr]

Very nice work here. I was wondering when you'd take the next logical step. I always found it hard to get convincing cloud scape's and still see the land masses below, it always seemed to be one or the other. I'm sure you'll go as far with this as you have with the planetary atmosphere.
Richard

[nvseal]

The atmosphere has a haze density of 0.5 with a Blue sky density of 0.8. The fall off from dark blue to light blue comes from the water shader attached to the ocean surface layer. It is just reflecting the atmosphere. The fake transparency is indeed procedural. By using two (or if you want, more) surface layers using the same fractal you can change the colors to fake the transparency and alter the coverage as needed to derive the desired effect.

[Hannes]

Great, thank you!!
I have one more question: How did you get the shape of the continents? I can't create a fractal that looks like yours. Either it's too fuzzy (small scale) or it's too round (greater scale - less octaves).
Would you share your file? That would be fantastic!!!

[nvseal]

First, the continent shapes are made by the "ocean" surface layer being placed over the "land" shader. That said, getting the actual shapes has to do with a balance between the smallest scale and color roughness (for th most part). Perhaps the file will help.

[bigben]

Coming along nicely although it still looks like fractal surfacing.  Trying to put my finger on what else you could do so bear with my rambling  (it's late here... or at least that's my excuse  )

The patches of colour vary in size across the terrain, but the pattern of variation with contrasting colours is relatively uniform. If you mix it up with some distinct patches of colour with less variation in them, and other areas with smaller scale variations it may start to look a bit more natural.  I guess you could draw an analogy with your clouds.... sharp fluffy clouds, wavy clouds, diffuse clouds, wide coverage, widely spaced etc....

I'll have a look at the TGD later and see if I can explain it better there but I suspect you may have some ideas already...