Hi folks!
I’m a big fan of Dune and, as an astrophysicist, was really intrigued by the spectacular shot of a double solar eclipse on Arrakis in Dune 2. Here’s my render:
Here’s the original shot from the movie:
If you’re curious, double eclipses like this are really possible! We haven’t seen them just due to chance, but there are many planets with multiple moons where this could happen.
It ended up being way easier than I thought; it’s a great project for beginners. The sand dunes were made with gentle Voronoi displacement, a great trick for quick and easy dunes that look surprisingly realistic. The star and eclipsing moons were just spheres; but the star had a gradient texture to help accentuate the atmospheric fade. The actual haze was done using volumetric scatter.
I made a follow-along tutorial for the scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T10kBBRJxZs