Create amazing planets, like this one:



Note, I spent a lot of time over the one above. A lot more than the one I ended up with for the tutorial. So that's why the one at the end isn't all that great.


1. Make a new image, perfectly square. 400x400 is a good size, unless you're going for lots of details (which, for this tutorial, I'm not)

2. With the pixel brush, draw out the shape of your land. You could always use a map of the world, but then this whole tutorial would be completely pointless now, wouldn't it?


3. Fill in the land black


4. Duplicate the layer a few times to use later

5. Name the one at the top "land".
Make the white transparent.
Check the Keep Transparency box in the layers diologue.

6. Duplicate the land layer.
On the lower land layer, make a gradient like this one:


7. Mess around with the dodge and burn, and smudge tools, or any other ones you want.
I found the brush, "Galaxy, Small (AP)" came in very useful in this step.

8. on the upper land layer, render plasma with turbulance set to 7.
Desaturate the layer.
With the colour balance tool, make it a greeny-brown colour.


9. Set that layer's opacity to about 40.
Merge the two land layers.

10. Name one of your copied layers "water".
Fill the entire layer with a gradient like this:


11. Scatter HSV with settings like these:


12. Use a linear Motion Blur with length set to 20, and angle at 0

13. Bump Map the water layer with setting like these:


14. Apply Bump Map to the land layer with settings like so:


15. Create a new layer for clouds.
Render plasma (turbulance set to 7).
Desaturate the layer.
Set contrast to 110, brightness to -20.
IWARP the layer with lots of swirls.
Make the black transparent.


16. Make a new layer called "snow".
Draw fluffy stuff around the top and bottom with the Galaxy, Small (AP) brush (oh, so useful).
Smudge around the edges of it.


17. Merge all of the Layers together

18. File> Map> Map Object

19. These are good settings to use:


Play around with them yourself. Oh, and try to get the shine directly over water. It just looks better.

20. On the new image, create two new layers for the sky and stars underneath the layer with the planet.

21. Fill the lower one with black.

22. In the upper one, use a large brush in airbrush, set the mode to dissolve and opacity to 0.5
Draw around the planet on the stars layer


23. Duplicate the stars layer.
On the Lower layer apply a gaussian blur of 1.0 to give the stars a nice shine.

24. You may as well put in a supernova or two while your at it. Set the radius to no more than 3, and set the colour to pale gray.


Hope you enjoyed it!

That's actually pretty neat, and I can't say I'd thought of making a planet that way.

Thanks for sharing. =)

u should make the clouds somehow look like the are not touching with the planet like the are above it. nice tut btw

very nice tut. as stefcho said, a drop shadow under the cloud layer might add some depth. also, an atmosphere "halo" around the planet might aid the realism.

Might be interesting to see what a combination of your technique and Marvin X's might do.... Your ideas for how to create terrain present some interesting possibilities.

I didn't think of a drop shadow, that's a good idea. I'd give that another try if I hadn't merged all the layers :a:

If Marvin's tut didnt take several years, I would try combining these. Nice job.

Marvin's tute doesn't take that long.... and I have a PIII-800

Good tut, nice way of doing a planet.

Here is mine (custome stars and moon)

Combined with Marvin's tut and random shit from me. There are some white spots but those are just experimentalclouds, havent done the real ones yet

http://www.click2host.us/006/3103earthv2.0.png


P.S. Sorry but I forgot how I did the random stuff. I started at 3000x3000 and all the filters were taking forever so I improvised a LOT.

Vortagern, I like the idea of the flare in the background. :h:

Yeah thought i might need to throw that in there to make the shadow have a lil more effect but didn't know how to make the really good bright stars (maybe new layer and a supernova or somthing to each) but i just put white dots on a trans layer and did wind fliped and did again to get the cool effect :l:

Yeah, just a supernova with a radius does fine. If you do them in clusters, they look great. And I'd say if the shadow on your planet there was a bit more around te front, it would match up a bit better to the flare.

hmm not bad, try to have different globes @ different sizes, otherwise your planet looks "flat"

For example:

first globe is the water
then soil

both @ same size

now a cloudy globe but size should be a little larger now.

last globe should be an atmospheric glow, again a little larger than the clouds.

here is my pic:

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/6466 ... ts2ja1.jpg

ok call me a noob on this part aswell but how did you get the gradeint to go on just the land. And also how did you get the plasma layer just opn the land also .
as i said call me a noob if you want . i am not new to gimp but i only stick to serten parts of it .

thanks for help if given.

neptis

With this checked the transparent parts on the land layer won't be filled by anything.

I'm having trouble with this. I've duplicated the layer, and then I clicked "Keep Transparency". Nothing happens ... the white still gets "gradiented" when I do step 6 ... What gradient mode should I use?

wow : glad I found this lol

cool tut

what tool do you use for the IWARP? I'm using a diff water tecnique, but this looks really good, the land especially looks good

Here's my version with the halos and all those stuff(note that I don't have the land):



Not so good but lots of effort applied.

Here's mine.



Edit:

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Here's my second planet, Saturn(ish). Hope you like it. I used techniques from this tutorial and some from this one: http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/Photomanipulation-2-1405-1.html

Nice. I love the planetary ring. It's well done. :h:

oooooo.... :, how did you do those rings??

how do I do 11-16?lol
do you need special renders and stuff?
how do I get to Scatter HSV?