Fourth Edition

Building Earth in Blender

This tutorial demonstrates how a very realistic Earth may be built and rendered using the Blender 2.48a software. Well be making two fully-functional versions of Earth: a photographic model and a Blue Marble model. Along the way, well learn how to achieve details like ray-traced cloud shadows, masked specular shading, and city lights. All the textures used in these models are free. They come from NASAs Visible Earth project, and are no-nonsense, high resolution textures. The models well be building are designed to look good from any angle, and at reasonably close distances; however, with a few modications they should work for ultra-close renders as well. Its important to keep in mind that there are many different ways to represent our little globe. Photographs taken from space look nothing like NASAs computer-generated Blue Marble images, and the Blue Marble images look nothing like other renders by 3D artists. Im just giving you my two favorite models Ive come up with. Dont let yourself be limited by this tutorial; if you dont like how some of the details turn out, dont hesitate to change them! In fact, this tutorial compiles what Ive learned from several other Earth tutorials with what Ive discovered on my own. I want to express thanks to Enrico Valenza, Kevin Whiteld, and Soenke Maeter for their work in creating the tutorials which inuenced this project. In this tutorial, Im assuming that you know the basics of the Blender software; however, Im also assuming that youve never built a 3D planet before. Are you ready to get to work? Well start on page 4.

Contents
Part I: photorealistic model Overview Map downloads Building the model Texturing the model Node setup Troubleshooting Part II: the Blue Marble Map downloads Texturing the model Node setup Rendering close-ups Credit information 3 4 4 5 7 13 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Part 1

Heres an overview of how were going to build our Earth model: well build the planet using icospheres, divided into a day section and a night section. Each section will be composed of ve spheres: a land surface, a cloud sphere, an atmosphere, a cloud shadow-casting sphere, and an atmosphere fall-off sphere. In addition, the night section will contain a city lights sphere and a half-sphere acting as a shield (more about all of that later). Well download and apply some spherical maps to the spheres, and use the node editor to put everything together. * * *

Ground Map

The rst step is to download the maps well be needing. Well be using six textures for our rst model. Two of them I edited myself with the aid of Photoshop, and two of them I scaled down from larger versions, so well be downloading those from my own server. Before we go any further, let me say that if you have any questions or run into any difculties concerning this tutorial, you may e-mail me at the contact link on my website: http://www.chamberlinproductions.org/contact.html

Topo Map Mask Map

Here we go. I wont be giving direct links for the maps on NASAs server, since they are subject to change. Five of the maps I used in this project came from this collection: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_set.php?categoryID=2363 Map 1. Download the day ground map here:1

Cloud Map

http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/land_ocean_ice_ 8192%20(modied).tif The day ground map is a modied version of one of the Visible Earth land maps, found under Blue Marble: Land Surface, Ocean Color and Sea Ice on page 1 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection given above. I made use of the replace color tool in Photoshop to edit the land and water colors. Map 2. The topography map came from page 3 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection given above. I used the 5400 x 2700 JPEG (645KB) map. Map 3. Well next need the clouds map, which can be found on page 1 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection given above. I used the 8192 x 4096 TIFF (34.2MB) map. Map 4. Download the night ground map here: http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/land_ocean_ice_8192%2 0(modied%202).tif This is another Photoshopped version of the same map from which I derived the day ground map. NASA offers a night map similar to this one, but its full of city lights. Map 5. Download the city lights map here:
1

If your PDF reader has trouble with any of these larger links, see the Earth project page of my website for clickable links to all the maps: http://www.chamberlinproductions.org/earth.html

Night Ground Map City Lights Map

http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/nightearth%208192.jpg The city lights map is a scaled-down copy of the nightearth.gif map found under Earths City Lights on page 1 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection. Map 6. Finally, download the mask map here: http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/world.watermask%2081 92.png The mask map is a scaled-down copy of the world.waterma sk.21600x10800.png map found at this directory: http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/landmask/ Youll want to check the copyrights and terms of use of these maps. I provide the necessary credits for all of them at the end of this tutorial. Now that weve got the maps, lets make a directory in which to store them. Make a new Blender le and place it in the same directory as the maps (this will make linking to the maps a little easier). Lets move to the next step: building the planet model. * * *

Open the Blender project and delete everything but the camera. Press [n] key to open the Transform Properties, and give the camera these settings: LocX: 0 LocY: -325 LocZ: 21.1 RotX: 86.25 RotY: 5.6 RotZ: 0 Move the camera to layer 11 (press [Alt + 1] to enter). Well be using this layer for our various cameras. For now, well want to show layers 1-5 as well as layer 11, in the 3D Viewport. Give the camera a Clipping End value of 5000 (leave the Clipping Start value alone). Add an empty to layer 1, give it a size of 10, and center it at the origin (the center of the 3D space). Well be using this empty to animate/control our planet. Now its time for the planet itself. In layer 1, add in an icosphere with subdivision 5 and radius 100. Make sure the sphere is centered at the origin. Set it smooth, and give it a level 2 subsurf. This will be the day land surface sphere. Duplicate the icosphere, and set the scale x, y, and z of the new sphere to 1.002. Move the sphere to layer 2. This will be our day cloud layer. Still in layer 2, duplicate the cloud sphere, and move the new sphere to layer 3 - this will be our day atmosphere. Next,

duplicate that sphere, set the scale x, y, and z of the new sphere to 1.007, and move it to layer 4 - this will be our day atmosphere falloff. Finally, go back and duplicate the cloud sphere again. Move the new sphere to layer 5. This will be our day cloud shadowcasting sphere. It would now be wise to asign names to the sphere objects, so you wont forget which is which. Parent the four outer spheres to the day land surface sphere, and parent the day land surface sphere to the empty. Give the empty a RotX of 23.44 (the actual tilt of the Earths axis). From now on, we can rotate the Earth about its local z axis (by rotating the day land surface sphere) to simulate the planets spin, or about the global z axis (by animating the empty) to simulate its orbit position. Set the RotZ of the day land surface sphere to -80. Our camera and Earth model are now in position for a goodlooking image when render time comes. Lets add some lamps for our planet. Add a sun lamp into layers 1 and 5 (yes, the same object can be in more than one layer at a time!). Use these rotation settings: RotX: 90 RotY: 0 RotZ: -40 Give the lamp an energy of 1.3, with a distance of 5000. Turn on the lamps Layer button. Make sure Ray Shadows are enabled. Duplicate the lamp (using [Alt + D] to make a linked duplicate), and move the new lamp to layers 2 and 4. Duplicate that lamp (again, using [Alt + D]), and move the new lamp to layer 3. These three lamps represent the sun. (Ill explain why we need three separate lamps a little later.) You can constrain two of the lamps to copy the rotation of the third lamp, to avoid any confusion. We have now completed the day section of our model, which is contained in layers 1-5. Next, show layers 6-10 in the 3D Viewport, as well as layer 16. These layers will contain the night section of our Earth. Duplicate the day cloud sphere weve already inserted, and move the new sphere to layer 7. This is our night cloud sphere. Duplicate the day atmosphere weve already inserted, and move the new sphere to layer 8. This is our night atmosphere. Likewise, duplicate the day falloff sphere, and move the new sphere to layer 9. Duplicate the day shadow sphere, and move the new sphere to layer 10. You may have noticed that were missing a night land surface sphere. Go back to our day cloud sphere, and duplicate it again. Scale the new sphere down to 1.000, and move it to layer 6. This is the night ground sphere (the reason for this strange method of duplication is to cause the original day ground sphere to remain the parent of all the other spheres). Duplicate this new night ground sphere, and move the new sphere to layer 16. This will be our city lights sphere. By using

two different spheres for night land surface and city lights, well be able to control these features separately. Lets add some lamps to represent the moon. Add a sun lamp into layers 6 and 10, with these rotation settings: RotX: 90 RotY: 0 RotZ: 90 Give the lamp an energy of .75, with a distance of 5000. Turn on the lamps Layer button. Make sure Ray Shadows are enabled. Turn on the No Specular button. Using [Alt + D], duplicate the lamp, and move the new lamp to layers 7 and 9. Finally, duplicate again, and move the new lamp to layer 8. These moon lamps are set up just like the day sun lamps we inserted earlier; you can constrain two of the moon lamps to copy the rotation of the third lamp, to avoid confusion. We have one more item to add before our model is complete: the shield. This will keep the night section of our model from interfering with the day section when were rendering. Add in a new icosphere with subdivision 5 and radius 100. Set it smooth, and give it a level 2 subsurf. Set the scale x, y, and z to 1.05. Finally, add two constraints to the sphere; one to copy the location of the empty back in layer 1, and another to copy the rotation of one of the day sun lamps. Now the shield will follow our Earth wherever it travels, while pointing in the exact opposite direction of the day sun beams. It might seem odd to use a sphere as a shield, but youll see how this works later, once we add in the materials and textures. Move the shield to layers 6-10 plus layer 16. Is this all making sense? Dont worry, it will by the time were nished. Our model is complete; let me summarize the objects we have in each 3D Viewport layer: Layer 1: day land surface Layer 2: day clouds Layer 3: day atmosphere Layer 4: day falloff Layer 5: day cloud shadows Layer 6: night land surface + shield Layer 7: night clouds + shield Layer 8: night atmosphere + shield Layer 9: night falloff + shield Layer 10: night cloud shadows + shield Layer 16: city lights + shield Layer 11: camera Now its time to give Earth some textures. * * * Well start with the day land surface sphere. Add a new material, and name it appropriately. Give the material a color of

R .122 G .145 B .200 Set the specular color to R .791 G .821 B .889 Under Ramps tab, add a colorband as follows:

Why the colorband? Well, by toning down the edges of this sphere, the edges of the planet will look much softer in the nal render. The colorband also gives the illusion of an atmospheric color fade. For the shaders, use a Minnaert diffuse shader with a Reection value of .6 and a Dark value of .325, with a Blinn specular shader with these values: Spec: 1 Hard: 50 Refr: 2.7 Turn the TraShadow button on (this is important when it comes to the shadows from the clouds). We need three textures for our day land surface sphere - the day ground map, the topo map, and the mask map. Add an image texture to the land surface sphere, and load the day ground map. Give it a lter size of .1, and turn on the Min button. Well do this for every image texture in our Earth models from now on; it will allow us to render the textures with maximum detail, yet without getting an overly sharp image. Turn the Use Alpha button off (I found that using the alpha channel produces some distracting outlines on the edges of the land masses). Under the Map Input tab, choose the Spherical mapping option. This will map the image correctly onto our sphere. Add a second image texture to the land surface sphere, and load the topo map. (Dont forget to set the lter size to .1 and turn on the Min button. Youll also want to turn the Use Alpha button off again, on this texture as well as all subsequent textures.) Use the Spherical mapping option, of course. Under the Map To tab, turn off the Color button, and turn on the Normal button (hit it twice to turn it yellow). Set the Normal value to .3. This map will give the mountain ranges an appearance of being 3-dimensional. The Normal value is probably exaggerated, since Earth is actually quite smooth when evaluated from a distance,

but I wanted a Normal value that would make a visible (though slight) difference. Add a third image texture to the sphere, and load the mask map. I hope by now I dont need to specify that Spherical mapping must be used, the Filter value should be brought down, and the Min button should be turned on. Under Map To tab, turn off the Col button and turn on the Spec button (yellow). Change the Texture Blending Mode to Multiply. This map allows the suns specular effect to show on Earths water, but keeps it from showing on the land masses (this is an important effect). Next comes the day cloud sphere. Add a new material, and give it a color of R .8 G .8 B .8 Set the specular color to white (actually the default). Add the exact same color band we used for the day land surface sphere. For the shaders, use a Minnaert diffuse shader with a Reection value of 1 and a Dark value of .8, with a Cooktorr specular shader with these values: Spec: 0 Hard: 1 Set Alpha to 0, and turn off the ShadowBuf button. We dont need to enable any transparency, as well see a little later. Add an image texture, and load the cloud map. (Again, make sure the Use Alpha button is off.) Under the Map To tab, turn on Normal (yellow), and Alpha (the Color should already be turned on by default). Set the Normal value to .30. Turn the No RGB button on (this is really just personal preference; I like the fuller look the No RGB option gives the clouds), and set the default pink color to white. Were now ready for the day atmosphere. Add a new material to the day atmosphere, and give it a color of R .551 G .702 B .838 Set the specular color to white. Set a colorband as follows:

Use a Minnaert diffuse shader with a Reection value of .6 and a Dark value of .805, with a Cooktorr specular shader with these values:

Spec: 0 Hard: 1 Set Alpha to .5 and turn on Z Transparency. Turn off the Shadowbuf button. Here are the fresnel settings that need to be adjusted from the defaults: Fresnel: .9 Fac: 2.3 We dont need any image textures for this sphere. Now for the day atmosphere falloff sphere. Add a new material to the sphere, and give it a color of black with a specular color of white. Well be using a color ramp for this sphere; Ill provide screenshots of the settings:

Use a Minnaert diffuse shader with a Reection value of .6 and a Dark value of 1, with a Cooktorr specular shader with these values: Spec: 0 Hard: 1 Turn off the Traceable and Shadowbuf buttons. For the day cloud shadow sphere, apply the day cloud material weve already made to the day cloud shadow sphere, then make a single-user copy of the material. Turn on the ShadowBuf button, and enable Z Transparency. Turn off the Shadow button and turn on the OnlyShadow button. Now, the sphere will cast the cloud shadows, without being visible itself. Under the Map To tab, change the Var value to .7 - now the shadows wont be quite so dark. Finally, turn the No RGB button off. * * *

Click the number to make a single-user copy.

At this point, the textures for the day section of our model are complete. Now lets add the night textures. Well start with the night land surface sphere. Apply the day land surface material to the night land sphere, then make a single-user copy of the material. We need to alter some of the settings. First, replace the day ground map with the night ground map (be sure to make a single-user copy of the image texture rst). Next come the material settings. For the sake of brevity, Ill start inserting screenshots here, circling every item that requires adjustment:

Set the specular color to R .292 G .440 B .646 Next comes the night cloud sphere. Apply the day cloud sphere material to the night cloud sphere, then make a singleuser copy of the material. Here are the settings that require alteration:

Turn the No RGB texture button off. Next comes the night atmosphere. Apply the day atmosphere material to the night atmosphere, then make a single-user copy of the material. Here are the necessary changes:

Next comes the night atmosphere falloff. Apply the day falloff material to the night falloff sphere, then make a single-user copy of the material. The required changes are as follows:

Colorband changes:

The night cloud shadow sphere is easy. Just apply the day cloud shadow material to it; no changes are necessary. Next comes the city lights sphere. Apply the night land surface material to the city lights sphere, and make a single-user copy. Under Texture tab, delete the bump map and specular map image textures. Make a single-user copy of the ground image texture, and replace the night ground map with the city lights map. Under Map To tab, turn No RGB button on. Set the color in Map To tab to R: 1.000 G: .974 B: .695 This gives our city lights a nice yellow shade. Make the following changes to the material settings:

We have only one more material to make - the shield material. Add a new material to the shield sphere, and set the color to black. Turn on Z transparency, and set the Alpha value to 0. Turn on the Shadeless button, and turn off the Traceable and ShadowBuf buttons. Add a blend texture (using the default linear progression) with the following colorband:

Day Land

Day Clouds

Day Atmosphere

Of course, you can come back later and tweak this colorband to suit your taste. Set the Map Input tab as follows:

Day Falloff

Day Shadows

In Map To tab, turn off Col button and turn on Alpha button. We should now have a nice shield effect which fades at the edges. Congratulations! Were done with the textures. At right, you can see what the preview of each texture should look like. The only thing that remains now is the node setup. * * *

Night Land

Night Clouds

Night Atmosphere

Well build our nodes in two parts. For now, well forget about the night side of Earth, and only render the day section. Well start by showing all layers in the 3D Viewport. Hitting the [`] key will show all layers. We need to divide our Earth scene into four render layers. Under the Render Layers tab, name the current layer Day Ground, and set the layer according to the screenshot at right. Then add three new layers and set them according to the screenshots at right. Notice that although layer 5 must be visible in the 3D Viewport, it need not be included in the render layers, because the shadow sphere itself is not actually visible. Next come the nodes. Ill just give a screenshot of the Node Editor:

Night Falloff

Night Shadows

City Lights

Shield

Heres what happens with the nodes. First, the ground and visible cloud spheres are rendered. The RGB curve nodes alter the colors a little, and give the clouds a slight fuzzy glow. The sharpen nodes sharpen the land and clouds. The cloud layer is screened over the ground layer. Next, the atmosphere is rendered, blurred, and screened over the land and clouds. Finally, the atmosphere falloff is rendered, blurred, and screened overtop everything else. None of the night section is rendered, because we didnt include the night spheres in the render layers. Notice that there is a separate render layer for each sphere. This keeps the spheres from interfering with each other during the render process (Blender sometimes has a little trouble with tightly nested spheres like this). Using three separate sun lamps also guards against interference. If we were using only one lamp for all the layers, Blender would run into trouble rendering all the spheres accurately, since several of them are of the exact same scale in the exact same place. By using separate lamps so Blender can calculate the lighting for each set of spheres separately, we wont be getting those ugly black polygons in the clouds and atmosphere we might get otherwise! By screening the cloud layer over the ground layer without using Z transparency, we wont have any stray light rays hitting the side of the cloud sphere that is supposed to be in shadow. Under the Scene panel, turn on the Do Composite button and set the Sampling Filter to Mitch (for a sharper render). Set the World color to black. Set the Dither value to 1 or so (under the Output tab). Were ready to render! You should get an image of North America like the one at right. (Hint: a 2560x1920 render at this angle looks really good!) If your render does not match the one shown, see the section at the end of Part 1. You can get an eastern hemisphere render by setting the

RotZ of the day ground sphere to +100. You can get some good close-ups with this Earth as well. Try adding a second camera, with these settings: LocX: 77 LocY: -155 LocZ: 38 RotX: 90 RotY: 18 RotZ: 38 Set the RotZ of the day ground sphere to 180, and youll get a close-up of Europe with this camera. Lets add in the night section now. Under the Render Layers tab, add ve new layers and set them according to the screenshots at right. Then add the following nodes to the Node Editor (the minimized nodes are the day section nodes we added previously):

The night nodes work very similar to the day ones. The main difference is that a separate layer for the city lights is added. To see how our night and day sections interact with each other, go back to our rst camera, set the RotZ of the day ground sphere back to -80, and set the RotZ of our day sun lamps to -90. Render, and you should get an image like the one at right. * * *

Now, if youre a perfectionist (like me), theres one more detail we need to add to our model, to enhance the realism. Right now, our city lights have no atmosphere effect of their own. The lights are just as bright on the edge of the planet as they are in the middle of the planet. In real life, there should be a fading effect toward the edges of the planet, due to the atmosphere. Lets add that in. First, duplicate the night atmosphere, and move the new sphere to layer 17 (note: contrary to what you might think, we do not need to include the night shield sphere in layer 17). Make a single-user copy of the material, and change the color to black. Under Render Layers tab, add one more layer according to the screenshot at right. In the Node Editor, add in the two nodes circled in the screenshot below. We should now have a nice atmosphere fading effect for the city lights.

Our model is nished! Now that its all put together, you can start playing around with the different render options:

 To render only the day section, disable the night layers under the Render Layers tab. To render only the night section, disable the day layers under the Render Layers tab, and disable the night shield texture. (Hint: when Im rendering the night section on its own, I like to turn the moon lamps No Specular buttons off.) The night section can be rendered with or without the city lights feature. To turn off the city lights, disable the city lights layers under Render Layers tab. To render the model without the cloud shadows, just hide layers 5 and/or 10 in the 3D Viewport. I generally prefer to render the night section without the cloud shadows. There are two main drawbacks with this model. First, the values of the blur nodes have to be changed if Earth is rendered from a (very) long distance. Second, to render Earth on any background other than perfect black, youll have to use the Video Sequence Editor to alpha the Earth scene over the background scene. (When doing this, make sure that the Premul button is turned on instead of the Sky button, under the Render tab.) Otherwise, youll get some unwanted transparency effects when you render Earth over stars or anything else. Ive noticed that in animations, there sometimes occurs a slight rippling effect over the whole model, when the camera is approaching or leaving the model. As far as I know, this is a fault of the Blender software, and not of the model itself. Hint: the larger the resolution of the animation, the less the ripple effect shows. * * * If your model is not rendering correctly, and you cant gure out what in the world (pun intended) is going wrong, heres what to do: 1. Make sure you followed this tutorial exactly. A single mistake in the render layers or layer positions of the spheres and lamps can throw everything off. 2. Make sure you didnt add any details of your own. Dont try to insert your own fancy features unless you know what youre doing. 3. If you still cant discover the problem, try rendering each layer individually, so you can see which layer is causing the problem. Try rendering combinations of layers as well; sometimes, a layer may render ne by itself, but when combined with another layer, it renders improperly. 4. You can also download the ofcial .blend le from my site (follow the link at the end of this tutorial). Something in there might reveal where youre going wrong. My .blend les should exactly t this tutorial, but it might help to see them anyway. 5. Finally, you can email me at the contact link I gave earlier in this tutorial. Ill try to help. Coming up in Part II: the Blue Marble!

Click the check mark to disable/ enable the layer.

Click the check mark to disable/enable the texture.

Part 2

Weve taken care of the hard part of our Earth project - from here on out well just be modifying what weve already produced. For our Blue Marble model, well be upgrading our standard map size to 21600x10800 pixels (which will allow for some pretty amazing render options). Day Ground Map. Well need to download a new day ground map, found at the same Blue Marble collection we visited earlier: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_set.php?categoryID=2363 I used one of the Blue Marble Next Generation w/ Topography maps. NASA offers 12 of these maps, one for each month of the year. I used the July map, found on page 3 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection. Youll have to go to Details and More Imagery to see the world.topo.200407.3x21600x108 00.jpg map I used. In the Details and More Imagery page, you might have noticed the 21600x21600 maps labeled A1-D2. In case youre wondering what those are, Ill explain. Put all eight of these maps together, and youve got a really huge Earth map! We wont be using this option. . . Topo Map. Download the 21600x10800 topo map at the same page from which we downloaded the smaller version for our photographic model. Night Ground Map. Download the new night ground map here: http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/land_shallow_topo_ 21600%20(modied).jpg The large night ground map is a modied version of one of the Visible Earth land maps, found under Blue Marble: Land Surface, Shallow Water, and Shaded Topography on page 1 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection. I again used Photoshop to edit the colors. City Lights Map. Download the large city lights map here: http://web.olp.net/wildernesslodge/nightearth%2021600.jpg This map is another scaled-down copy of the nightearth.gif map found under Earths City Lights on page 1 of the visibleearth.nasa.gov collection. Specular Map. Next, download the world.watermask.2160 0x10800.png map found at this directory: http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/landmask/ Unfortunately, the cloud map is not available in higher resolution, so we cant upgrade it. However, we can work around its resolution by using some techniques discussed later. * * *

Ground Map Night Ground Map

Open the photographic model .blend le, and save it as a new project. Load the new maps youve downloaded. At this point, congratulations if your computer can handle loading all these high-res maps at once. I was forced to scale down several of them for myself! Set the energy of the day sun lamps to 1.5. Next well edit the materials. * * *

Make the following changes to the day ground sphere (specularity color remains the same):

Make the following changes to the day cloud sphere (turn No RGB texture button off):

Make the following changes to the atmosphere:

Adjust the colorband as follows:

Make the following changes to the falloff sphere:

No changes are necessary to the day shadow sphere material, or any of the night materials. * * *

Well make a few minor adjustments to the day nodes. The changes are circled in the screenshot below.

Our blue marble is ready to render! The model looks good at very close range, except for the cloud map. Ill next explain how to work around that, at least for still shots. Well rst add a new camera, for our close-range render. Use the following settings: LocX: 50 LocY: -109 LocZ: 40 RotX: 90 RotY: -60 RotZ: 62 Select the day cloud sphere. Under Map Image tab (in the Texture Buttons panel), change the Xrepeat and Yrepeat values of the cloud texture to 3. This makes our texture repeat several times over the surface of the cloud sphere, increasing the resolution of the cloud layer. However, if we render now, well be able to see a seam in the cloud layer, which is quite unrealistic. Therefore, under Map Input tab, offset the Y value of the texture by .35 (the value depends completely on the location of your camera; a .35 value works well for the camera we just inserted). Youll also need to offset the cloud textures Y value for the shadow sphere, to match the day sphere. (Of course, if youre rendering the night section, youll need to do this for the night cloud sphere as well.) Next, try bumping up the value of all the subsurf modiers. At close range, a value of 4 or so looks good. Render, and enjoy the sharp quality of the huge maps! Heres an alternate solution for rendering the clouds at close range. A 43200x21600 cloud map (in two parts) may be found in this directory:

http://mirrors.arsc.edu/nasa/Blue_Marble_2002/ However, this map lacks data around the poles, and I am sorry to say that the two halves of the map do not t together well at all! Still, you can use this map with success, as long as you offset the texture so the seams between the halves of the map arent visible from the camera. And thats it! Building a planet in 3D is probably a lot more complicated than you once thought, isnt it? Now you can mess around with all the details of the models, changing colors, alpha values, screen nodes, and whatever else doesnt look right to you. * * *

Here is the link to my Blender Earth home page, where you can nd clickable map links and download all the .blend les and example renders used in this tutorial: http://www.chamberlinproductions.org/earth.html Last of all, here is the credit information for the maps weve used:
NASA Terms of Use: For all non-private uses, NASAs Terms Of Use are as follows: 1. The imagery is free of licensing fees 2. NASA requires that they be provided a credit as the owners of the imagery Visible Earth Addendum Beyond the NASA Terms, the Visible Earth team requests, but does not require: 1. The Visible Earth be provided a credit as the location that the imagery was found at 2. A URL be provided, either to the Visible Earth (http:// visibleearth.nasa.gov/) or to the page providing the link to the used image.

Im assuming that the mask map is governed by the same terms of use as the other maps (since it was found in a location separate from the others). If you use the giant cloud map I mentioned, check the readme le in the same directory; additional credit information is given near the bottom of the le. Also, please credit me for my work in editing the photo-realistic day map and the night maps. Thanks! * * *

I hope this tutorial has been helpful. It has taken me many hours of work to develop these projects and tutorial, so I hope someone can get some good out of them! William Chamberlin