Cycles: Transparent Alpha Image

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi,

I have created two Ico Spheres, with one inside the other. The outer sphere uses a (projected) texture map of clouds:

http://www.shadedrelief.com/natural3/pages/clouds.html

I have also created a texture map that uses alpha, instead of black.

The idea is to have the white clouds cast a shadow on the inner sphere. (To simulate clouds on Earth.)

I have read the following pages:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Nodes/Shaders

Outer sphere node setup:

How would you make the clouds appear and cast shadows on the Earth?

Thank you!

P.S.
Blender 2.60a (with Cycles).

2

http://www.imgplace.com/img703/7182/80schermata112455884all.th.png

I hope it helps.

paolo

3

Ah. UV unwrapping and mapping a diffuse/transparent colour. Nice. Thank you.

4

can you share a small sample file showing the set up

cause a lot of other peoples will want to redo this and we could reference back to this thread if possible

thanks

5

Before you can render it in cycles, you have to unpack the texture on disk (it is a quite low res jpg).

clouds.blend (1.57 MB)

paolo