A Simple Planet

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot. That'll help me!!
I did it quite different. I didn't use water. I just separated some blue shiny surface from the land by using some fractal breakup shader.
It doesn't nearly look as good as yours but I like it anyway.

[Marcos Silveira]

I wonder when we'll be able to shape our continents exactly the way we want them.
If we can allready do it, please tell me how...

[nvseal]

Another version.

[zionner]

Nice Work,

Ever thought of Adding N + South Poles into the render?

[nvseal]

I've done it before. I'm yet to decide if I want to do it in this render.

[zionner]

Well, In my view It could add something to the render that feels missing,

as the planet as a whole would have some sort of ice, somewhere at least

[bigben]

I'd stick with the surfaces first... less distraction. The light patches around the coast are a nice addition. If you can do the same thing with some of the other colours, or mix up the patterns for the contrasting colours it will really start coming together.

[nvseal]

A bit off topic from what I'm actually working on, but I thought  would put this out here too being that is along the same lines. No atmosphere (yet). Inspired by Io, this supposed to be a moon. It may not look like. To me it does but at the same time it doesn't. But here it is.

[old_blaggard]

These are really cool colors!  This actually looks like a thick and swirling atmosphere to me.  Your progress with space shots is really amazing .

[rcallicotte]

I like the last two versions.  The Earth version is believable and makes me want to explore it.

The second version is well done and belongs in a sci-fi story.  Totally want to see this in the next Star Trek or in Serenity 2.

[nvseal]

A higher res version.

[bigben]

Looks like someone moved their cloud setup to surface layers   

Some of the patterns look a little too cloud-like but the overall distributions are looking much more believable. There are certainly aspects of this you could apply to your original project.

[Mr_Lamppost]

I like the moon

A couple of those impact craters with the long pale rays spreading out from them would finish it off nicely; I have no idea how you would do those. 

Your colouring makes me think more of Callisto than IO but there is a lot of variation in the colouring in these NASA photos

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03456

[Will]

Neat I like the colors. I can see some Io in there.

[nvseal]

Okay, I tried to add some mountains. I think I need to add a bit more variation and I might add a desert or a polar cap (or both).