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Description

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i recommend downloading to see all detail. also, large file size, sorry if it takes long.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

i did this about two weeks ago, but wasn't sure if to post it yet. i decided to anyways as i might get some constructive feedback on how i can improve the realism a bit more.
before anyone says it, yes i know that an alien planet won't have the same atmosphere, plants or water colour as earth. the goal was to make it as earth-like as possible while still noticing that it is a different planet from earth in terms of continents and atmospheric patterns.

the planet i went for is more of a land planet, and i showed the hemisphere where it's two major oceans are mostly showing. i used an equatorial view with a low phase angle on the shadow so that we are observing the planet almost from about a million kilometers away with the parent star almost behind us. the sub-stellar point would be slightly to the left of center.

for the sake of being earth-like, i assumed the star is also a G-type star like our sun and that most of the light emitted is white.

all land textures were made from scratch by compounding smaller textures from nasa's image database, and then sculpting deserts, mountains and polar regions onto the planet on different layers by slowly brushing them in via a layer mask to obtain geologic features akin to earth. i also coloured each texture the same way as those on earth; so same earth colours for forest, ocean, mountains (to an extent for the sake of time), polar region and desert.

unfortunately, due to the angle of the planet, you can't really see any desert or polar region. you can see somewhat of a desert near the top right and barely to the top left, but it isn't that great as this was the first test so their brushing wasn't that well done as compared to the next planet i'm working on.

the clouds are probably the newest thing i have experimented on with regards to making terrestrial planets. i attempted something in my proxima centauri b planet by making the clouds somewhat interact with the land formations, but it was a bosh job. here i actually took a global cloud map of earth and through the clone tool, i molded the cloud patterns around the land mass, and with an understanding of fluid dynamics (yes, atmospheres are fluids) and atmosphere-land interaction, i attempted to create a cloud map that was somewhat unique to the planet, but still retained some earth-like features such as cyclones, and areas of cloud patches (albeit, i need to study more cloud patterns and their movements still). also i think i went a little overboard on some features as some parts of the atmosphere especially the northern one over the ocean have too many cloned patterns and looks unnatural. but i took that into account in the next planet i'm working on.

biggest pain was the atmosphere itself, i think i spent the most time tweaking it and adding layers just to get it somewhat earth-like. this was the best i could do, and yes, again i went for the same colour scheme and haze as earth for the sake of the test. i added an upper atmosphere glow that you commonly see in whole planet images of the earth and a gradient to simulate looking through more atmosphere as you look closer to the edge. and the most import layer in the atmosphere is probably the depth layer; which is just a solid colour layer set to screen with the opacity altered to change the atmospheric density, and a hue/saturation layer clipped to it to alter colour.

there is also a highlight on the sub-stellar point to simulate the intensity of the star at that point, but due to their being land at said point, it isn't vary noticeable.

and i think finally to help the planet not look so "plastic and artificial" i added a noise layer over the whole image and set blend mode to subtract with low opacity just to add some "grittiness" to the planet and textures. somewhat like what you would see in a satelite photo of earth due to noise in the signal. you may have to download the whole image to see this though, because it may not be noticable at lower resolutions.

just a little side note: i noticed when watching a whole planet gif of the earth's rotation from the japenese geostationary weather satellite; himawari-8, that as the phase angle changes, so do the colours of the planet's atmosphere and it's oceans and land. also, closer to the crescent shape, the sun highlight tends to become the more dominant feature on the oceans washing out the natural colour. so that's just something i'll keep in mind as i experiment further with this.

reference image from DSCOVR satellite ----------------> www.nesdis.noaa.gov/sites/defa…
__________________________________________________________________________________________

This Artwork is © 2017 Alpha-Element. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT USE THIS ARTWORK!

Description

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

i recommend downloading to see all detail. also, large file size, sorry if it takes long.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

i did this about two weeks ago, but wasn't sure if to post it yet. i decided to anyways as i might get some constructive feedback on how i can improve the realism a bit more.
before anyone says it, yes i know that an alien planet won't have the same atmosphere, plants or water colour as earth. the goal was to make it as earth-like as possible while still noticing that it is a different planet from earth in terms of continents and atmospheric patterns.

the planet i went for is more of a land planet, and i showed the hemisphere where it's two major oceans are mostly showing. i used an equatorial view with a low phase angle on the shadow so that we are observing the planet almost from about a million kilometers away with the parent star almost behind us. the sub-stellar point would be slightly to the left of center.

for the sake of being earth-like, i assumed the star is also a G-type star like our sun and that most of the light emitted is white.

all land textures were made from scratch by compounding smaller textures from nasa's image database, and then sculpting deserts, mountains and polar regions onto the planet on different layers by slowly brushing them in via a layer mask to obtain geologic features akin to earth. i also coloured each texture the same way as those on earth; so same earth colours for forest, ocean, mountains (to an extent for the sake of time), polar region and desert.

unfortunately, due to the angle of the planet, you can't really see any desert or polar region. you can see somewhat of a desert near the top right and barely to the top left, but it isn't that great as this was the first test so their brushing wasn't that well done as compared to the next planet i'm working on.

the clouds are probably the newest thing i have experimented on with regards to making terrestrial planets. i attempted something in my proxima centauri b planet by making the clouds somewhat interact with the land formations, but it was a bosh job. here i actually took a global cloud map of earth and through the clone tool, i molded the cloud patterns around the land mass, and with an understanding of fluid dynamics (yes, atmospheres are fluids) and atmosphere-land interaction, i attempted to create a cloud map that was somewhat unique to the planet, but still retained some earth-like features such as cyclones, and areas of cloud patches (albeit, i need to study more cloud patterns and their movements still). also i think i went a little overboard on some features as some parts of the atmosphere especially the northern one over the ocean have too many cloned patterns and looks unnatural. but i took that into account in the next planet i'm working on.

biggest pain was the atmosphere itself, i think i spent the most time tweaking it and adding layers just to get it somewhat earth-like. this was the best i could do, and yes, again i went for the same colour scheme and haze as earth for the sake of the test. i added an upper atmosphere glow that you commonly see in whole planet images of the earth and a gradient to simulate looking through more atmosphere as you look closer to the edge. and the most import layer in the atmosphere is probably the depth layer; which is just a solid colour layer set to screen with the opacity altered to change the atmospheric density, and a hue/saturation layer clipped to it to alter colour.

there is also a highlight on the sub-stellar point to simulate the intensity of the star at that point, but due to their being land at said point, it isn't vary noticeable.

and i think finally to help the planet not look so "plastic and artificial" i added a noise layer over the whole image and set blend mode to subtract with low opacity just to add some "grittiness" to the planet and textures. somewhat like what you would see in a satelite photo of earth due to noise in the signal. you may have to download the whole image to see this though, because it may not be noticable at lower resolutions.

just a little side note: i noticed when watching a whole planet gif of the earth's rotation from the japenese geostationary weather satellite; himawari-8, that as the phase angle changes, so do the colours of the planet's atmosphere and it's oceans and land. also, closer to the crescent shape, the sun highlight tends to become the more dominant feature on the oceans washing out the natural colour. so that's just something i'll keep in mind as i experiment further with this.

reference image from DSCOVR satellite ----------------> www.nesdis.noaa.gov/sites/defa…
__________________________________________________________________________________________

This Artwork is © 2017 Alpha-Element. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT USE THIS ARTWORK!