Ok, I’m new to blender and have been trying for a while to figure out how to create a planetary haze. I have created a clip which a ship flies toward a planet and I want that planet to have a atmospheric haze.
Oh, how do I do it? Is there a tutorial out there somewhere?
I need help.
Is there anyone that can assist?
bfnpmsz
Try this (page 4 I believe):
http://www.enricovalenza.com/realplan.html
Hope that helps 
(I’m not sure how that would work on an animation though)
Use volumetric clouds:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ch24.html
You shouldn’t do the whole atmosphere, only the part the ship will go thru.
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For a game animation I don’t know, but for a movie animation one way to achieve this (cheaply) would be to use compositing.
Basically, you create the planet, the haze, and the space ship separately. And you create the illusion of the ship approaching the planet and flying through the haze by combining the three strips, two-dimensionally.
The trick is to make the ship look like it is being concealed by the mist. That is done by modifying the alpha, or transparency, of the ship… which you would do using a mask that is based on the mist texture. (Or you might get away with simply modifying the alpha-value with some kind of an IPO.) As the ship approaches the mist and is then seen to fade away, your eye tells you that the reason why this is happening is because the ship is disappearing behind the mist.
The advantage of this technique is that, although it takes more time to plan and to set up, it is very easy to adjust for “just the right” effect. You are, after all, working in two dimensions. Tweaking a parameter and re-running the composite can be done in a few moments.
Hey, thanks for the ideas!
The closest tutorial to what I am looking for is at http://www.enricovalenza.com/realplan.html. I want to be able to see a small “edge” of haze around my planet from space. The scene has the entire planet in view and I just want a small haze to be seen.
Any additional ideas?
bfnpmsz
Something like this? To get this effect, create a plane and delete 3 of the 4 vertices. Then make the remaining vertice a halo with whatever color (in this case it’s blue) . Place it dead center of your planet and bump up the halo size until you see the halo around your planet. Now play with the other halo settings until it looks right.
The beauty part about this effect is that the halo is mostly seen on the dark side (like reality). I’ve exagerated the halo here so you can see it better.
If you want to fly by and not through a planet haze: add a sphere and map the ground, add another sphere and map the clouds, add another sphere and give it a bluish (or whatever) color then set opacity to ZTransp and crank the fresnel up and Alpha down. Settings for blender internal of course.
Yes that works very well. In the pictures above, the clouds are a seperate sphere, but the more spheres that you add, the more of a “layered” effect you get. It’s great for distance shots but when getting closer it really shows up. Also the collisions of the spheres become tricky. There is not one right way of doing this so you must decide which is right for you. The atmosphere as a seperate sphere gives you more control over alot of things, but the halo is better to fly through. It all depends on what you plan to do with it. You can also add another white halo for a “haze” effect.
data65,
I think you hit the nail on the head. This is exactly what I want. Where did you get the map for the sphere? Could you help me out by sending me the link? This would really help my development.
Thanks for everyones help, I am much further down the road than before I sent the email.
bfnpmsz
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/
There’s your link. Now be careful on the larger resolution maps, as they tend to crash blender. This is a one-stop-shop for your color,bump,spectral,and cloud maps for not only earth, but all of the planets. Have fun! Oh yea. Try to use jpg or pny textures because everytime I tried to convert the larger dds files they crashed my conversion program. Good luck.
Here’s a pic of mars using a texture from the same place.
