Hey everyone, I’ve been working on this image for a couple of days. I’m at the point where I need some other peoples opinions on the scene. I’ve spent the most time on the planet, trying to make it look realistic and make all the textures work together properly. So tell me what’s good, what’s bad and what I can do to make it better.
The full scene:
Just the planet:
Thanks for viewing!
Quite good for just a couple of days work.
A few things, though:
The starfield looks good, but the large, bright colored stars stand out too much, I think. Reducing their size and brightness would help blend them in better.
The nebula’s shape and translucency look good too, but the actual texture itself looks more like just an overlaid cloud texture. Try using a noise texture to modulate its… well… texture, and experiment with that.
The planet’s pretty nice, but the voronoi cells in its material shouldn’t be there. There also doesn’t seem to be any significant land masses or bodies of water. Try modulating a color ramp with a combination of musgrave and noise textures to get distinct areas of both water and land.
I’m working on a space scene myself, so its cool to see other peoples space scenes for inspiration and encouragement.
i normally do not use blender to create planetary textures
but 4 or 5 or 6 different tools in the process
Most software will produce a good Starting Point for a DEM for a “Earth like” planet , then it is a matter of colorizing a version of it for a texture to drape over a dem
the clouds are not bad , they look like they are the visible earth cloud map
or the 2k map made by the “X-globe” people
Nice planet to bad it will be a melting pot after that asteroid hits it ! 
Not much to say but im unsure about the color of the asteroid but found an image from nasa for how taken of how they can look:
Thank you all for the helpful feedback!
Zokk: The star field in the background was created using a combination of Blender and Gimp. The nebula looks like an overlaid cloud texture because it is. its just an image of some clouds made visible with a layer mask and then colorized. I agree that it looks too much like a bunch of clouds and will definitely play around with some noise textures. As for the voronoi texture on the planet, I was aiming for an exposed tectonic plates kind of look or something. I’ll have to work on some ground textures like you said though.
JohnVV: Thanks for the input. I definitely agree with you that Blender alone is probably not the best tool for planet texture creation. I’ll poke around some other programs and see what kind of textures I can create.
Osares: Thanks for pointing out the asteroid color. It’s fixed now and you’ll be able to see it in the next update post.
Once again, thanks for your opinions I’ll post an update soon! 
i run on OpenSUSE 13.2
a list of things i use -you will need to build some code
to erode mountains and rivers i use the erode tool in Wilbur ( in WINE , it is a closed source MS windows program )
wilbur is also good for making mountain ranges and such , even full planets .
the 2014 fix of the 2001’ish program “planet” from Torben Æ. Mogensen
http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Planet/
– it is so-so and this one will output a 16 bit ASCII height map in CSV format
( They NEED the erode cycle in wilbur )
planetGenesis - a bit old but works
http://planetgenesis.sourceforge.net/
a java node based tool , works fairly well to make the beginning of a height map
( i use this to make masks for adding craters to moon like maps )
also old but good for a earth like starting point
Fracplanet
http://www.bottlenose.net/share/fracplanet/index.htm
this code is in need of help ,it builds but the “normalmap” is ALL WRONG , it is not a “tangent” map
and the olde but goodie that somewhat started things
“libNoise”
http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/index.html
examples
http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/examples/complexplanet/index.html
for gas giants and clouds "gaseous-giganticus.c "
https://smcameron.github.io/space-nerds-in-space/gaseous-giganticus-slides/slideshow.html#1
( do a Google image search for “gaseous-giganticus” )
and Blender
the random rock is a good starting point for an asteroid
and so is the ANT ( sphere)
the ant plugin is what i used for the base of a Earth like Kepler 452/b
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=775
The normal map ( in the above link )was made using a custom tool for Celestia that FIXES!!! the issues near the poles on a normal map so that it CAN be wrapped AROUND a Sphere and NOT on a flat plain like the photoshop and gimp plugin or crazy bump
also
Gimp
Gmic
Nip2/vips
GDAL
Most Asteroids are almost BLACK and most do have some color , a slight red tint .
Even The Moon has a SMALL bit of color and is not 100% GRAY only
most nasa images ARE in Black and White BUT in the UV range of the spectrum
color images tend to use
UV for Blue
the green filter for green - they DO have a real GREEN filter on the spacecraft
IR for red
Seeing that there are clouds and water on your planet, it needs an atmosphere. Use Fresnel so that you see a slight atmospheric glow just on the rim. Also, it needs a bit more light in the dark spots. Maybe not necessarily on the night side, but definitely needs more light in the shadow of the asteroid. The night side does however look a bit weird being so black, while the “black” in space seems to have a blue tint to it. They don’t really match up, and thus don’t feel like they are together.
Changes:
Lightened asteroid shadow
changed asteroid color
added more distinguished land and water (and different terrain types)
added an atmosphere
reduced brightness of stars
New/already existing things to work on:
texture of the nebula
blue atmospheric ring around the planet seems to bright (a problem that appeared during compositing)
Planet “night” side is not dark enough
