Planet Texturing

#1

I am new to CG society so forgive me for most likely asking this question in the wrong place. I recently watched the short film Wanders (https://vimeo.com/108650530), and fell in love with the planets. I would love to attempt to recreate some, I was wondering if you guys new of any good tutorials or techniques? I was imagining just doing a custom shader with displacement maps on a sphere in houdini… Thoughts?
Thanks in advance