I used a sperate sphere for the clouds. At first it was mostly because i wanted the clouds to cast ray shadows onto the earth surface but its actually quite useful to control colors and lightstuff seperatly.
I changed the colors for the oceans and land (after looking through several nasa earth images) by editing the earth texture in Photoshop (eg. to get Australia that nice brown-red look in contrast to the blue atmo-ocean-gradient). To edit the oceans color without changing the land colors (and the other way around) i used a land-ocean mask.
I couldn’t find the link so i uploaded it. Just change the levels in Photoshop until the oceans are totally white and you have your mask 
And the bill hmm you know i can fly and lift a car with my left little finger so don’t bother with a bill. That’s just nothing for me :eyebrowlift2:
I hate to ask five million questions but how did you do your clouds and ray shadows? The cloud map I have (the one from bluemarble with the black background aka no transparency found here) looks great with the earthmap when I combine it in photoshop using screen. But if I try to use your method with the second sphere (which is what I used in my original) I have to take out the black areas which means that I end up cutting all the fine contrails and such and it looks like a mess and not nearly as good. What do you recommend?
And when I set up the clouds (using the crappy cloudmap I had in the previous earth) to make shadows, it ends up the entire earth map is put under a shadow since the cloud is a sphere. I have two lights; a Hemi as the primary light and a normal lamp with rayshadow and onlyshadow enabled. Ugh… what do I do?
I’ll ship the check tomorrow 
~jace
>cutting all the fine contrails
Muuuu[…]uuuch easier 
- turn on “use alpha” and “calc alpha” in texture panel (F6)
- turn off “shadbuf” in materials
- turn on “tracable”
- turn on “trashad” in “shaders” panel
- turn on “ray transp” in mirror panel
- turn off “col” in “map to” panel of the cloud texture
- turn on “alpha” and “no RGB” in “map to” panel
- and switch the texture blending mode to multiply
that should do the trick.
Thanks for your help. Here’s my new one (quite drastically different from the original) though not near as good as yours. I can’t seem to get the clouds to cast shadows–and my edited oceans and landmass is a bit different and not as realistic in my opinion–but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. What do you think?
~jace
Attachments
I’m working on an animation now… we’ll see how that turns out. No really, I’m shipping the money tomorrow
~jace
Oiii big difference
Some tipps:
Your land is very illumiated at the dark side. I’m using one sun lamp with “ray shadow” and “layer” turned on (of course the lamp needs to be on the same layer for that). I have also darken the oceans relativly strong in Photshop.
To get the clouds to cast shadow i can only think of some more points to check:
- Ambient Occlusion is killing them (my planet isn’t receving any AO)
- cloud sphere must be on the same layer as land sphere
- cloud sphere needs to be a bit bigger
- a non ray shadow lamp is killing the shadows
When those points don’t help i don’t know what it could be.
I think you still need more contrast between your day and night side. I don’t mean via post pro or nodes, i mean to make the day side brighter (for both: clouds and land) and make the night side darker (also for both).
I also played a bit with the emitting settings for the cloud sphere and try to turn on “norm” for the cloud texture.
When something else comes into my mind i’ll write that later.
I like the sun halos 
You can send me a blank check, i’ll fill in the amount.
When I just use one sun lamp with ray shadow, I get this: (see attachment) It seems like the entire earth is covered by the clouds’ shadow, thus making it all black. I’m not using AO and the clouds are using nor a little. I’ll darken my ocean texture (I’ve been brightening it to be like yours but yours is BETTER :D). To get light on the earth, I’ve had to use a Hemi light (I discovered it by accident) to illuminate the earth’s face but I don’t like it at all. The second attachment is the same light minus the cloud sphere (I like that :-)) Do you know why it is doing this? Thanks!
Check sent.
~jace
Attachments
Update: I darkened the oceans (ooh, I like that!) and worked a bit on the Fresnel, including not letting it emit so it wouldn’t surround the earth when I did a wide shot. I setup a layer-only lamp for the Fresnel effect. I compared it with a bluemarble earth… nice 
But still struggling with the clouds. You were right–there was another ray shadow lamp interfering with the shadows, but that still doesn’t explain the problem with the sun lamp and it darkening the earth. Thanks!
EDIT: If I turn off ray shadow on the sun lamp I can get the clouds fine. (no picture needed… aside from the texture and fresnel changes the clouds don’t look any different) but I don’t get the cool shadows like yours. It’s like the ray shadow isn’t calculating for the clouds but rather the sphere that holds the cloud texture, and since the sphere has no “gaps” for the shadow to go through, it renders the entire earth dark. Hmm…
~jace
Attachments
I think i have recreated your problem with the clouds. Is “TraShad” also turned on in the shader settings of your land sphere? if not it needs to be turned on.
Woot!!! You are a genius… a pure genius I promise I’ll find a way to make it up to you. Check out the pics of this beautiful earth!!! You’ve been such a great help… sorry for turning your project forum into mine 
Fantastic job on your earth. I might write a tutorial on this to compliment yours 
ever grateful,
~jace
Attachments
Sweeet
Yeah would be cool when you write the tutorial as i will be some days away from tomorrow on. So have fun with your planet and the best thing is, once you know how to do it, a new planet is just some clicks away
Earth down… All the rest of the planets to go Thank you so much for your help–good luck with your project! Thanks.
~jace
Any crits?
update:
- background
- planet lights
- color / brightness of mars
- ship lighning
- other stuff
Everything looks awesome except for the moon and the ship in the foreground. Don’t get me wrong, those look very good as well, but they just don’t seem to fit into the picture as well. Maybe it’s the textures and materials or something. The orange on the ship seems a little to plasticy. I can’t put my finger on why the moon looks a little bit off. I can’t wait until you make the tutorial on this, it looks awesome.
I agree about the starship. It looks a little too much like it’s small, and made out of plastic. If it were bigger, there would be noticeable imperfections unlike the smooth subsurf I do like the asteroid though… a lot My only deal is the starship. Maybe if it were smaller or moved that might help. Or else it could be “dirtied” up a little bit
Good job regardless,
~jace
OMG that is awesome, I love the stars and all the colors in the back, is that 2d or 3d?
Thx all
I will do work on the ship and the moon. I’m actually trying to set up some UV textures for the ship (some dirty textures ).
I think the problem with the moon is that it’s to dark in comparison to the background.
>Borgleader
The background is photoshoped so the answer is 2d.
Wow that looks great man! Love how half of the earth is dark and that has ligths around the major cities. Great job man! I bet this could be the blendernation header if you tried.
Wow…thats great!
blendernation header? What for?
update:
- textures
- passenger ship
- little astronauts
- spaceship turned into a tanker
