Had to have another go after looking at the “Simple Sphere” thread at Scifi-meshes…
Used blender, and photoshop for text/glow
Veeery nice 
I can’t se my house though 
Stefano
That’s in fact pretty impressive… And a good excuse not to model anything 
Seriously, I am impressed. You’ve got it to look really huge, which is sort of an important property here…
Definitely very nice! Great renders.
That’s odd. I found mine right away. 
BgDM
looks impressive, :o
are the underwater mountains bump-mapped? if so, i think i would get rid of them. other then that, great!
Amazing! :o :o
What textures did you use (I mean, what size)?
What lightning setting?
How much bump on the clouds?
And you come from planet?..
Env
I modified the NASA Blue Marble maps, they are all 8000x4000, and I want to use a higher res cloud map. (I have one on my drive that is 20,000 x 10,000, Problem is blender crashes at texture res somewhere between 8000 and 10,000. oh well).
A single (BIG) spotlight
two cloud maps, very little bump
Earth, Illinois.
the main color map has Color, Bump, Spec, Ocean spec, cloud shadow1 and cloud shadow 2. So a total of 6 layers on the planet. (Needed emit, I know)
then there are two cloud layers (Seperate spheres)
and over it all, the freshnel effect.
all rendered at 11x OSA, takes about 4 minutes to render then.
still need to play with the clouds and ocean spec map (Just a noise filter, you can’t really notice it now)
I’llpost more pics as I continue to play with settings…
Thats very interesting. Hugenastically big looking if you axe me. I thinks it looks good. Though, one crit. They just look too “bumpy”. Maybe lower the bumpiness of it and it could look better.
Love the site design. Only thing I don’t like is how you used “3” for the "E"s…i think that looks kinda stupid.
umm…huh? "3"s ?
I never used 3’s in place of “E’s”…
I modified the NASA Blue Marble maps, they are all 8000x4000, and I want to use a higher res cloud map. (I have one on my drive that is 20,000 x 10,000, Problem is blender crashes at texture res somewhere between 8000 and 10,000. oh well).
Yes, looks like Blender cannot handle images bigger than 10,000. But I think it can be enough.
NASA Blue Marble maps? Can you post the link, please? 
A single (BIG) spotlight
two cloud maps, very little bump
I think the bump is all right, IMHO.
Earth, Illinois.
Are you sure?
the main color map has Color, Bump, Spec, Ocean spec, cloud shadow1 and cloud shadow 2. So a total of 6 layers on the planet. (Needed emit, I know)
then there are two cloud layers (Seperate spheres)
and over it all, the freshnel effect.
The freshnel effect? Ok, I admit, I don’t know: what is it?
all rendered at 11x OSA, takes about 4 minutes to render then.
still need to play with the clouds and ocean spec map (Just a noise filter, you can’t really notice it now)
I’llpost more pics as I continue to play with settings…
Mm… you mean you tried to use an image map (ocean spec with noise filter) as a stencil texture, isn’t it? I tried this before, but found that stencil materials works only with procedurals…
Env
Stencils work with anything as long as there’s some alpha to use. Either add a real alpha channel to the image map, or calcAlpha in Blender.
Stencils work with anything as long as there’s some alpha to use. Either add a real alpha channel to the image map, or calcAlpha in Blender.
Gh! 
Thank you for the tip… anyway, it never worked for me with just calcAlpha (Blender 2.23).
Env
2001 Space Oddysey
One thong: The light blue glow around the planet ends cca 10 pixels from the border of an image. Crop images or make them bigger, apply the glow and crop them to their original size.
Realy nice job. And, for those of you who are looking for the NASA Blue Marble project, the link is http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
- Atariman -
Hey very nice renders, me likes the atmosphere in the first
pic very much, congratulations well done…
Is that atmosphere glowing done with Blender or is it a
Photoshop effect and how did you do it ?
For your explanation/tutorial another very good Planetmap Link i’ve found:
http://www.space-graphics.com/.
(the Mars Planetary Maps a very interesting!!!)
Have a nice day, Olaf.