Planet creation in Maya

<:K.I.S:>

OK so this subject has been bugging me for abouta month now ad ive een constantley searchiing for a good tutorial on ho to make a planet in maya now i did find a video on a site but the guy had removed it unfortunately so i couldnt do anything. If anyone has an knowledge on this matter please help me out.

Thanks Liam

D.M.J.

What sort of planet? For what sort of scene? Can you provide links to pictures of what you hope to achieve?

<:K.I.S:>

Well i was wanting to achieve a planet like earth as i plan to do a space scene. But ive found images to use but i have know idea how to use them.

D.M.J.

http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/info/maya/manual/UserGuide/Rendering/RenderingTask/Look_Backgrounds.fm1.html#997938

What you want is an image plane background, I believe.

D.M.J.

Or perhaps just a lightweight poly or NURBS plane in the right place, with the background image texture outputted to a Lambert shader through its Incandescence input and color set to black and transparency set to 100? That has the least faffing about that I can think of!

<:K.I.S:>

Thanks for the links DMJ i played around and this is what i got. Its not perfect but it still needs work.

aszazeroth

this should help you along a bit... Applies to a more general public, not specifically to Maya, but I have used the techniques described successfully in Maya too.

http://pc213.astro.lu.se/~stefan/drd/tut01_v1_0.pdf

On the one above, you should invert your specular map, to have the specular part appear in the ocean instead

Cheers
Dr.Asz