To do list:
-add stars
-fix textures
-decide whether the earth should be destroyed by a meteor or alien ship
-Animate camera
If you are going for realistic and this is a camera view then don’t add stars. The moons surface is highly reflective and stars are dim, they only appear bright to the human eye because of the black background.
If you were to set the camera exposure for the stars everything else would be way over exposed.
You should add a light almost as bright as your main light pointing back in the direction of your main light, if you look at photos from the moon landings you will see objects that seem as though they should be in shadow but they are not, thats because there is so much light being reflected back.
( This is one of the reasons the conspiracy nuts think the moon landings were faked, they think its because they had lights pointing in multiple directions.)
I think your right about the texture needing work but other than that it looks good.
How about an alien ship pushing a meteor into the earth 
LMAO 
you were right about the stars and lighting
Fixed texture but still not perfect
I’m not loving how the flag looks, i don’t know it might just be me
still haven’t decided meteor or aliens i’ll test out both
i’ll probably go with the one with the lowest polygons just because i have a pretty bad computer and I still have to animate stuff
Hey JHolbein, that was a good post. I didn’t realize that was one of the things that got the Conspiracy Theorists going about the Moon Landings. Very funny.
I’ve been wondering about stars. I’ve been trying to get a realistic starmap going all day, and I’m starting to get myself pissed off. Personally, I almost think outer space scenes look more realistic without stars at all. But that defies common sense.
From what you’re saying, though, an outer space scene (not on a lunar or planetary surface) should have stars (but sparse, if it’s supposed to be taken from a camera…) Is that right?
I’m trying to go with sparse and very small stars. But it becomes like splitting hairs at a certain point…
still days away from being done
i just wanted to do a test animation
this is the 2nd time I’m rendering this animation because the first time the textures were flickering
do you guys think the glow around the earth is a little too much?
The camera movement is way to abrupt. You need to smooth the camera movement a bit. I have found the best way is to use a curve, a cube (using the curve modifier) and a camera parented to 3 verticies of the cube to give me the best control.
YMMV.
I don’t know much about animation but it looks like the change in the glow around the earth is being effected by the camera movement because as it moves the glow changes.
As far as the flag goes I think the only problem is that you would expect it to be moving in an animation but in reality on the moon it wouldn’t.
@AdamEtheredge - and anyone else interested, yes if it’s a camera view then the only time you will see stars is if you exposing for the stars, even if the subject is a ship because it will reflect more light than the stars. I’m having the same problem with my project, you expect to see stars because thats what we all seen in every sci-fi movie and tv show but it’s just another example of hollywood getting it wrong so I guess it’s a matter of where you draw the line between realism and artistic license.
barely been working on it this week because of school
has to be done by Friday
your earth is shown as a sphere,
shouldn’t it should be a flat plane ? ( supported by 4 elephants facing out from each diagonal and they standing on a giant swimming turtle ) ?
i’ll fix it right away
thanks 