Earth viewed by Apollo 8

[Hannes]

I tried to recreate this old image:
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/36000/36019/AS8-16-2593_lrg.jpg
I used a 16k earth colour texture, a 10k specular mask and a 21k cloudmap. There is no environment light and GI is disabled. I also didn't apply a displacement map, since I haven't seen any NASA or other satellite image of earth from that distance where there was some noticeable displacement.
The cloud layer has a regular (large scale) density shader masked by the cloud map I mentioned above.
Thanks to Greg (T) who inspired me to make another earth view image by asking me some questions about an old orbit image of mine.

[Nacer Eddine]

nice job,
dependament of the method used, personally i prefer used 3d software as for example 3D Studio Max, which I can use the ultra hight definition of the texture more than 8000x4000. (earth, clouds and atmospher). after that i can fly at anywhere i can with a long animation.
but still terragen is good for several things.

[Kadri]

Nacer what Hannes used was 16 000 , 10 000 and  21 000 pixel wide.
Not sure what you mean...
Terragen can use those and more without problem.
8000x4000 is every days easy job for Terragen.
Only animating would be easier in 3DStudio Max.

[Nacer Eddine]

yes with this pictures its very hard to use animation in Terragen.
by the way what is the biggest picture taken by NAZA ?, i think they  published one , i dont  know the name ?

[Hannes]

I don't really know what NASA's biggest map is. Anyway even the 21k map doesn't work for closeups, so I am trying to use a combination of both the image map and some procedural clouds where the camera is closer to the surface.
I have to say that it's a pleasure to see how TG works easily with those huge image maps. I remember the first time I tried that (it was the old TG 2 times). I had to rescale the textures to 10k maximum. Otherwise TG would have refused to work.

[Hannes]

Btw animating would be easier in 3ds max, but not because of the textures. I could imagine creating an animation in Max and exporting it to TG... oh boy, this is tempting...

[TheBadger]

^^ do it do it do it!

[Mahnmut]

Hi, nice work.
The biggest difference I see is the reddish effect and rather sudden fading near the terminator, I tried to get rid of that in my mars-pics but never succeeded. But thinking about it now, maybe one has to turn out the redsky decay for planetary views?
My best Regards,
Jan

Badger, did anyone tell you you are obsessed with anmation?
-Wait, I did

[TheBadger]

  If you guys don't lead, I cant follow

[Hannes]

I guess I'm obsessed with animation as well....

Turning off or reducing the red sky decay did the job. I always thought it should look that reddish, but NASA images seem to tell the truth.

[Nacer Eddine]

This is test animation with 3ds max, I have  used 2 others programs for nubulas (with some mistaks hehehehe).
hope its a good test to give some idea !!!

 

[gregtee]

Looks great Hannes.  I've  been playing with some orbit stuff a little over the weekend and have made some adjustments to the cloud fractals that are cooking now.  They look promising.  I'll post some tomorrow on this thread if you don't mind.

Greg

[Hannes]

I don't mind, Greg. Looking forward to it.
Here is the same image with almost no reddening. (somehow I liked it...)

@Nacer Eddine: I already used Max for earth images and animation. Of course animation is easier to set up in Max, but it's incredible how well TG handles large textures and also huge models. TG itself doesn't use that much RAM, so there is plenty of memory left for other stuff.

[N-drju]

Very nicely done. Do I get it right - these are just textures? Not a single cloud layer, terrain or lake/ocean sphere at all?

[Hannes]

You didn't get it entirely right. There is one planet. I added one surface layer with an earth color texture. Then I added another surface layer with the same texture but with a reflective shader as child layer and masked with a black and white (continent/ocean) map.
There is one cloud layer with a large scale density map, masked with a hi res b/w clouds texture map.
No displacement, no terrain, no lake object, no water shader.