The Celestial

[nvseal]

Rendered in TG 2. The starfield was rendered using TG 2 but was imported from another source. I used photoshop to add the lensflare. The orginal image took 18 hours to render. I had several possible version at different rotations that I thought about uploading but I decided on this one. The clouds are from my old setup.



Full size: http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs28/f/2008/133/6/4/The_Celestial_by_nvseal.jpg

[Seth]

too bad for the grainy look of some clouds...
even the lensflare is cool !

[nvseal]

too bad for the grainy look of some clouds...
even the lensflare is cool !

I had a problem wih that grain before and I think I can fix it by turning off acceleration cache, but that takes too long.  Also, this cloud setup was originally supposed to work for renders from about 100 km high to shots of the entire planet. The problem -- as can be scene here -- is that what looks good from one height may not look good from another. For example, if I rendered a scene from about 200 km above those grainy clouds, it would probably look okay. And that is one of the reasons planetery clouds are so hard. 

[rcallicotte]

I haven't tried clouds like this, but from all your past work I'll take your word on the challenges such are.  Like your work.  Not as exciting as Mars...to me.  But, I always like your work.

[EBAndrew]

too bad for the grainy look of some clouds...

I like the clouds, grain and all. I'm honestly not sure how much detail you'd see at this height, in that I'm not sure how much of the reflected light would blur together when it hits your eye, but given the super-detail of the starfield I think the smaller details of the clouds suit the image.

...The starfield was rendered using TG 2 but was imported from another source...

Is that the starfield clip file that's floating around the forums, or is there a starfield shader in the alpha? (I've been away from the community for a while...)

[nvseal]

Is that the starfield clip file that's floating around the forums, or is there a starfield shader in the alpha? (I've been away from the community for a while...)

No, the starfield is just an image.