I’m trying to create a rendition that looks as close as possible to this, and I’m intrested in hearing your thoughts on how to improve it. I’ve included a .blend file along with the render.
Attachments
Gallifrey.blend (322 KB)
Gallifrey.blend (322 KB)
I recall seeing a nodes texture for lava that looked similar to that. I think cekuhnen created it.
Well, what I’m trying to do is make the ‘cracks’ on the crust look closer to the ones on the photo. I’ve ditched the clouds, however I kept the atmosphere effect. Some of the textures have been tweaked as well.
Attachments
Gallifrey.blend (601 KB)
ok, so this is just spam, but I did it!
Hint: I cheated big time.:o I can kill this post if you want.
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Oh, balls, for a moment I thought that you had found a way to fix it.
ok, so the last post was just because I noticed how easy it was to slap your reference picture on as a matcap, which is all i did. copyright infrigment and all. 
So I really need to practice texturing myself, so I took a real shot at it this time round.
First off is a disclaimer; I honestly know next to nothing in this area of CG. So I’ve basically just been banging around till something looked nice, and then trying to not mess that up later.
It’s been going ok, but not great so far. Here is where I’m at currently, still working on getting those nice… well they look like continent plates to me, but I’m not really sure what they are and don’t much care actually, just trying to reproduce something to that effect. 
I will post the blend once I get it, right now it’s a complete mess with various failed attempts, and I doubt that will change much as I continue to hack at it.
A question I have for others if they feel so inclined:
Is there a way to give better edges that fade out more smoothly? (the triangle in the atmosphere, two lamps causing that) The current effect is all based on specular, I’m trying to keep with one render layer.
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Wow, that is really good, a big improvement over mine, especially with the atmosphere.