Planet help.

[Per-Anders]

if you're doing something massive something to remember is that the a massive object seems to have less falloff on the light (i.e. lights appear flatter accross them) so first step is to go to the "Illumination" channel and bring the difuse falloff up to at least 100% (for something the size of earth say). This way you will get a clear edge/border between the day and night time sides of the planet, and it will make smaller things (that don't have such a high falloff) appear smaller. For a sphere of the size you're looking at... it doesn't matter what size the sphere is, as you're faking the whole thing (i don't know if C4D would be able to handle stellar sizes/distances) so just use that image if you want to get a sphere that's curve sort of matches what's there (i.e. put it in a backdrop to one of the windows and try to match the edge of a sphere). Anything further away in the distance appears flatter (this is because of comparative distance... i.e. the distance between the front of the object and you is comparatively little, so in this image the surface of the earth looks quite flat and even just clouds giving definition). If you really want to make something look huge then use a wider angle camera to give the fisheye look, then composite an object in front that's using a more standard angle lens. If you really want to be accurate with the whole thing the earth is 12,756km accross (that's a radius of 6378000m) and i'm really not sure if c4d would handle that particually well... but you can always try. (oh and don't forget that earth isn't perfectly circular, it's ever so slightly wider than it is taller and of course it's axis isn't perfectly aligned to it's orbit (thus summer and winter)... don't forget to put some nice haze on your planet (make a larger sphere use a totally transparent material for the front and a fresnelled material for the back going into the haze colour... this way you can control teh colour of the planet nicely while still having decent ligth and dark which you wouldnt if you used fog. anyhow hope this is of some use to you.

[Erik Heyninck]

Being a beginner, I see with the eye of a beginner. And what I see is not a planet but a surface that has a texture on it that's seen in perspective, and that has a curved line at the top. So personally I would try with a texturised curved surface, or make the texture large enough so that it doesn't lose quality from close by.
If you are that close to a sphere, you will only see much difference in the clouds from left to right if the light is more dramatic ( raking light). You only/mainly see difference from front to back.

[nurv]

hey guys thanks for the help. It was very helpful advice.

[Kaiser_Sose]

Please use paragraphs

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