Hey,
today Farsthary sent a mail to the mailing list, with very good news.
He is working on a new procedural texture type in Blender called “Planet”.
Yeah, as the name indicates you can make planetary structures with it.
See his mail: http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2010-November/029453.html
and http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2010-November/029458.html
He will post more infos on his blog soon. 
Here some early images he just sent me via e-mail:
any built with this feature to test
seems very intersting indeed!
and will this be integrated in 2.5 ?
thanks and a happy 2.5
He said that he will release the patch tomorrow.
That’s so awesome looking >.<
I want o.o
This also being available via texture nodes will indeed allow complex planet/overhead terrain textures without the incredibly complex many-step node setups (along with the long rendering times) required now.
It would probably already be powerful enough for some terrain/planet uses as a single layer, but combine it with multiple planet procedural texture types and Blender’s other procedurals in texture node trees and you may have a truly powerful setup.
Sure it will be aviable as a node too 
and sure it will allow some pretty complex and powerfull procedurals 
You can actually make pretty good textures in blender by using the texture paint with a texture on the brush, you have allot of control that way to.
Wow, farsthary! I can see that being useful for all kinds of things. Kudos!
Wow… realy cool, thank you very much.
i think blender should have some more procedural terrain and erosion functions,
something like this:
http://dmytry.pandromeda.com/mojoworld/erosion_fractal/home.html
http://www.geocontrol2.com/e_index.htm
Damn where does he find the time ? I’m not trying to be disrespectful to the other developers out there, but every time he seems to amaze me.
@farsthrary
Thanks will this be put into a built for vista at graphical.org and also added in 2.5 in next built
would be great to test theses feature
cant wait to test this!
Thanks and a happy 2.5
I’m not yet convinced by this. It still looks like a procedural texture and I can’t think of a planet with such kind of structures. Better call it slime texture, that would fit more the visual style I think.
I found this interesting when I found it:
http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/morenoise/morenoise.htm
Haha, he does not have internet/games/movies to distract him.
Wouldn’t it be possible to use other textures in a texture node tree setup to modulate the transitions and other effects on the planet texture? Farsthary is interested in implementing this as a texture node as well and would make this possible providing that all the parameters that give a noticeable effect have their own float input.
I think it would help, but more parameters to affect the structural features of the texture wouldn’t hurt.
@ Kai Kostack
SiteAdvisor warns of a trojan on a download on this site. Proceed with caution.
I found this interesting when I found it:
http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articl…/morenoise.htm
these kids the say the darnedest things, the other developers you put down tend to finish what they start and get them included into trunk.
whether this looks like a planet texture or not another procedural texture is awesome news!
This would work great for bump mapping on any number of surfaces and could work with for water displacement as well.
thanks Farsthary!
I see this as being a great way to generate the contours of a planet. Of course localised fractal noise would be needed for mountains and a more subtle bubbling (Perlin?) would be needed for hilly terrain, but I really see this as being a very nice addition to the procedual toolset of Blender.
Now… Tileable procedurals, anyone?
this would be great for adding fast procedural dirtyness to objects and stay away from too procedural look
good job Farsthary
Hm, that doesn’t surprise me much. This is the website of a guy from the demo scene. Demos are often packet with exe packers to make it as small as possible, and such are used by viruses too. Many demos will be reported as infected by todays antivirus programs and usually immediately deleted, but in fact there aren’t infected they’re only using an exe packer. That’s pretty lame by all those AV companys but you can’t do much about it except disabling their software if you want to watch demos or visit demo scene related websites.
If you don’t trust a site, then just don’t download anything. Only viewing shouldn’t be too dangerous.
He’s talking about using derivatives of the perlin noise to create more realistic landscapes.