planet matte

[plaf]

Hiya.

I was looking through some Star Wars behind the scenes books and got a sudden urge to paint some planets. Or. A planet, anyways.
[edit: also, by request I added a lil walkthrough of it. Not sure if that'd be of interest here, but who knows ]

walkthrough: http://www.skjoldbroder.dk/tutorials-13.html

http://www.skjoldbroder.dk/fisse/planet.jpg


All the best
/plaf

[brad]

good tips there..
thanks

[cvisco]

It occurs to me there isnt much fill light in space. If you're exposing for the dark side of the planet, then the daylight side would probably be close to blown out. Likewise, if you're exposing for the daylight side of the planet, the dark side would be nearly black. There are naturally a few cases where this wouldnt be as extreme, ofcourse. A google images search for "earth" turns up some interesting examples, like this one: http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/assets/wallpaper/earth.jpg

For example, based on my previously stated notion, I had created these a couple years ago, and recently found them on my hard drive:
http://fat-dog.net/pub/cdv_pl1_mat_prv_v_01_web.jpg
http://fat-dog.net/pub/cdv_pl2_mat_prv_v_07_web.jpg

Just my two cents. Excellent work so far though, and thanks for posting the walk-through!

[plaf]

those two look excellent, I like'em. the earth image has an almost unappealing look to it, doesn't it? funny how we're (I'm) so used to seeing made-up stuff that seeing the real article doesn't look right. I've written up a few words on this topic a while back if anyone's even remotely interested:
"real VS hyperreal art" - http://www.skjoldbroder.dk/thoughts-02.html

and yeah, I guess you're right. strictly speaking the dark side should really be almost completely black, unless there was a moon or something reflecting light back on there.

[cvisco]

There is no question the real earth shots can often be unappealing...I'll go out on a limb and say that its partly due to the relatively thin atmosphere the earth has. Whenever I do a painting of a planet, I tend to give it a nice thick atmosphere layer...it may not be grounded in reality, but to me it just looks better.

In the case of your planet, biasing the "exposure" for the daylight side might make for a better shot, as it would allow the artificial lights (ahh the signs of civilisation) on your night time side to pop more.