How to create your own Gas planet using Blender

and Photoshop

This tutorial consists of 3 main sections.

Section 1: How to create your own diffuse and bump map for the gas planet surface.
Section 2: How to set up a scene in blender for your gas planet
Section 3: How to create a transparency map for the rings, and render the final image.
All of the above sections require blender (I am using version 2.56) and Photoshop, or Gimp
For this tutorial you will need a general knowledge of both blender and Photoshop (or Gimp),
and hopefully a bit of common sense.

Contents

Create your own gas planet diffuse

and bump map in blender

Create the planet scene

Create your own Ring transparency map

Setting up the rings and final rendering

Photoshop:

Pg. 3

Gimp:

Pg. 9

Blender:

Pg. 13

Photoshop/Gimp:

Blender:

Pg. 17

pg. 19

How to create your own

Gas planet with rings in
blender

Before we start, heres a basic overview of the

tutorial. First of all we will be creating the main gas
planet diffuse and bump map in Photoshop, which
we will then apply to an icosphere and create the
render scene. After this we will create the ring
transparency map and then render our final image.

This is the Ring colour gradient

Source: http://i.imgur.com/JlfHV.jpg

But first of all you will need to save these 2

textures to your computer, for later use in this
tutorial.
-

Earth cloud map: Link

Ring colour gradient: Link

Note: The earth cloud texture plays an important

part in the creation of the gas planet diffuse.
When everythings downloaded, its time to start
the tutorial:
In the next phase (the planet body and then later
the rings texture creation) I will first do a
Photoshop guide, and then a Gimp guide. Gimp
unlike Photoshop can be downloaded for free

This is the Earth cloud map

Source:
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/ve/243
2/cloud_combined_2048.jpg
Credited to NASA Earth observatory

Photoshop: create a Gas planet diffuse and bump texture

First of all open up Photoshop and create a new
RGB colour canvas, 2048 wide by 1024 high.
1: Create a new layer above your background layer
and select the brush tool. In the brush selections
look for the brush shown to the right and select it.
The reason we will be using this brush is because it
uses/mixes both the foreground and background
colours that we will select later.

Heres the Photoshop Brush named

Grass

This is where you select the

foreground and background colours

Info: If you look at a gas planet you will see that

there is little change to the general colour, for
example Saturn is made up of many similar yellowy
hues with varying brightness. Therefore when
selecting the colours I will use colours all in the
same colour range (blue turquoise).

Foreground colour settings

2: First of all select the fore ground colour for your
brush, choose and select a fairly light blue (I chose
colour: 0860f2)
Then choose a background colour similar to the
one we just choose, but slightly more green and
lighter. (I chose colour: 0ac8ff)

3: Now set your brush to about size 130 and paint

horizontal linear lines across the top of the canvas;
as you paint you will notice the 2 colours mixing
slightly.

Background colour settings

Now you have painted this first stripe, try varying the
foreground and background colours to create more linear
horizontal stripes with small variations in the blue tones and
stripe thickness. any white spaces where you have painted

Though some of the shades I

have made, might to the eye
look very similar, they will still
show up in the final texture

4: After your canvas looks something like the

picture above, Add motion blur (from the filters
menu). Use the settings shown to the right.
When the blur has been applied you will see a
slight change, but its not looking right yet.
Therefore we need apply the motion blur 7 more
times.
Your texture should now look something like this:

5: Though our texture is starting to look like a gas

planet, it at the moment looks much too linear.
Therefore we are now going to add a little
variation to the texture.
Go to filters again and this time select Brush
strokes and then Spatter. When the menu comes
up experiment with the settings, or copy the
settings I chose:

Your texture should now look like this:

Motion blur is located in filters,

under blur

6: Now its time to fake some really high quality

detail, to imitate the clouds and storms that appear
on the surface of most gas planets.
For this part we need the earth cloud texture, so
open it up in Photoshop and select the area above
the red line and copy it:

The area below the red lines

doesnt give us any useful detail
that we could use

Now paste this in a new layer above the coloured

layer we created, and then stretch the cloud map
vertically to fit the whole canvas and set the layer
type to overlay (with opacity of 20%) It should now
look like the image to the right:

Duplicate this layer we have just created 2 times,

you should now have 3 cloud overlay layers.
To the top cloud overlay layer, add a motion blur
of 999 with the angle 0 (the same settings we used
earlier)

Middle and bottom cloud layer*

To the middle and bottom layer reduce the Opacity

to 15% and then arrange the image the way I have
below:
This is how the layers should look:

7: Your diffuse texture should now look pretty

good and hopefully something like this:

Save this texture as a .jpg, and save it as Gas

planet diffuse.
8: Finally to create your bump map, open the gas
planet diffuse. Jpg, then go to the image menu
then: adjustment /black and white. Then accept
the next menu to create a black and white version
of your texture. Save this as Gas planet Bump.jpg
The bump map should look like this:

We now have our gas planet diffuse and bump

map. Go to page 13 to start creating the planet
scene. OR look at the next page to see a little extra
tip to improve your texture even more.

Extra tip:
Just before stage 8, it is possible to add just a little
more detail to your texture, for example swirls and
slight turbulence (similar to Jupiters surface)

To do this we must first duplicate all of the layers

(including background) and then merge these into
one. When you have done this, go to Filter, and
then Liquify.
This should then open up this window:

Now use the turbulence brush, and the settings

shown on the screen above, to start building up
detail with side wise strokes. (Look at next picture
for example:
This is what I achieved with the brush:

Experiment with Turbulence and the Twirl brush

to achieve more unique and interesting looks.

Gimp: Create a Gas planet diffuse and bump texture

This part of the tutorial will be showing you how
to create a similar texture to the one I created in
Photoshop. The result should look pretty good, but
I warn you now that I have very rarely used Gimp,
so I will try and do my best, but the texture may
not look as good as the one created in Photoshop.

First of all open up Gimp and create a new RGB

colour canvas, 2048 wide by 1024 high.
1: Select the brush called Crayon (64) and set the
opacity to about 40%. By doing this we should be
able to slightly mix the colours together to create
more tones and hues.
Brush settings
Info: If you look at a gas planet you will see that
there is little change to the general colour, for
example Saturn is made up of many similar yellowy
hues with varying brightness. Therefore when
selecting the colours I will use colours all in the
same colour range (blue green).

2: First of all select the fore ground colour for your

brush, choose and select a fairly light blue (I chose
colour: 0860f2). Later when you add different
colours, try to keep them the same sort of colour,
but vary the brightness and hue slightly.
3: Now set your brush to about scale 1.3 and paint
horizontal linear lines across the top of the canvas,
because of the opacity you need to paint multiple
layers to build up the colour.

Now you have painted this first stripe, try varying

the foreground colours to create more linear
horizontal stripes with small variations in the blue
tones and stripe thickness.

Heres what I came up with in about a few minutes

of experimenting:

4: After your canvas looks something like the

picture above, Add motion blur (from the filters
menu). Use the settings shown to the right.

Repeat the motion blur about 5-6 times, however

unlike in Photoshop the blur will still not look
right...
So we need to take the current motion blurred
image, and use the box select to select the area I
have shown in red below.

Now use the scale tool to stretch that section to

the right and your texture will now look like this:

5: Though our texture is starting to look like a gas

planet, it at the moment looks much too linear.
Therefore we are now going to add a little
variation to the texture.
Go to filters again and this time select Brush
strokes and then Spatter. When the menu comes
up experiment with the settings, or copy the
settings I chose:
6: Now its time to fake some really high quality
detail, to imitate the clouds and storms that appear
on the surface of most gas planets.
For this part we need the earth cloud texture, so
open it up in Gimp and select the area above the
red line and copy it:

The area below the red line

doesnt give us any useful
detail that we could use

Now paste this in a new layer above the coloured

layer we created, and then stretch/scale the cloud
map vertically to fit the whole canvas and set the
layer type to overlay (with opacity of 20%) It
should now look like the image to the right:

Duplicate this layer we have just created 2 times,

you should now have 3 cloud overlay layers.
To the top cloud overlay layer, add motion blur
with the same settings we used earlier. Repeat this
once.
To the middle and bottom layer reduce the Opacity
to 15% and then arrange the image the way I have
below:

This is how the layers should look:

7: Your diffuse texture should now look pretty

good and hopefully something like this:

Save this texture as a .jpg, and save it as Gas

planet diffuse.
8: Finally to create your bump map, open the gas
planet diffuse. Jpg, then go to the image menu
then: colour /desaturate/lightness. Then accept
the next menu to create a black and white version
of your texture. Save this as Gas planet Bump.jpg
The bump map should look like this:

We now have our gas planet diffuse and bump

map. Go to page 13 to start creating the planet
scene.

Blender: Create the planet scene

Now that we have our diffuse and bump texture
ready. (The ring transparency will be made after
the scene is ready). We can start making the space
scene!
First open blender, and create a new scene. Delete
the central cube and the lamp.
1: move to front view, and make sure the curser is
at the centre of the grid. Now add a new mesh/
Icosphere. Set the subdivision level to 4 and then
set the shading to smooth.
Then finally add a subdivision modifier and set it to
level 3 subdivisions.
Name the Icosphere: Gas body
2: Now open up the materials, set the specular to
0 and set receive transparent shadows on.
Then open up the texture tab:
Add 2 new textures:
Diffuse texture (top texture)

Bump texture (bottom texture)

Open bump
Map

Open diffuse map

Mapping to
sphere
Mapping to
sphere

Influence
Normal 0.45
Influence
colour

Old bump
Mapping

3: The planet body is now pretty much completed,

so now we need to create the planet rings.
First of all set your cursor to the icospheres centre,
by pressing (shift S) and then choose cursor to
selected. Now add a curve circle, and scale it up 2
(press s and then 2)
4: Go to object mode and add a plane, scale this
down to 0.3 and then scale along the x axis 0.2
Add 2 loop cuts in line with the longest sides.
Your scene should now look like this:

5: At this point we are going to unwrap the

plane. So in edit mode with all the plane selected
press Unwrap
Now open up the UV/image editor and with the
whole UV polygon selected, press R (rotate) and
rotate 90 degrees (type 90 in).
We now need to open the ring diffuse map we
downloaded earlier; the UV/image editor should
now look like this:

6: Change back to 3d view, and move to top view.

Make sure you select you plane and then add a
curve modifier. In the modifier box, select Bezier
circle in the space below Object:
7: Add an Array modifier above the curve modifier
and increase the count up until the planes is
continued around the whole Bezier circle.

Dont worry if theres a small overlap, you can

make the ends join by scaling the plane very
slightly along the x axis, until they almost join up
From the top view I can see that my rings look a
little thin, so I can easily make them wider by
scaling the plane in object mode up on the Y
axis. On my model I scaled it up by 1.5 along the
Y -axis
8: The 3d modelling is pretty much complete, now
all we need to do is set up the final scene.
Select the camera and give it the position and
angles shown below.

9: Now that the camera is set up, we need to add

the lighting. For this part we want the sun/star
light to be passing through (and past) the rings of
the planet and then onto the planet surface.
Add a sun lamp, and arrange it in the orientation
shown in the pictures below. In the sun lamp
properties make sure Rayshadows is enabled.
Side view:

Top view:

Set selection to object

Add a curve circ, scale up 2
Add plane scale to 0.3
Scale x 0.2
Add two loop cuts
Unwrap, rotate map 90 add texture

10: Now do a fast test render of your scene, you

should see that the planet texture has mapped
well to the sphere and that the ring is ready to be
completed.
Note: If you get a texture seam moving down the
side of the planet, this is because either side of the
diffuse map dont match up completely. You can
either fix this in Photoshop/Gimp or you could
simply for a still image rotate the icosphere 90
degrees or so along the z-axis.

Now it is time to make the ring

texture transparency map in
Photoshop / Gimp (the next part is
pretty much the same in both.

Photoshop and Gimp : Ring transparency

map
1: Create a new Canvas 1024 pixels wide by 72
high.
2: In the new canvas add a new layer and then fill
it in completely black. Above this black layer
insert a new layer and name this transparency.
You should now have the layers arranged like this:

3: Select the transparency layer and then box

select the top of the canvas

Now select the brush tool, and choose soft round

brush change the brush foreground colour to
pure white.
4:
At this point we will now be painting the
transparency of the ring. As in the areas we paint
in white will be solid/opaque, and the areas we
wont paint will be completely transparent.
During this process we can vary how solid the
opaque areas of the rings are (basically how much
light they let through) by simply changing the
opaqueness of our brush as we paint our vertical
lines.
Just to show you how this works: Select the Brush
size to about 90px and opacity to about 40%. Now
paint a linear vertical stripe down the centre of the
canvas (in the area that has been box selected)

The right side is

the most outer
area of the ring

The left side is

the most inner
area of the ring

Make sure that the linear

stripes are exactly vertical

The black areas will means

that these areas wont
show up at all in the ring.

Continue creating strips of different opacity and

width (brush size). Until you get something like
this:

5: Now you need to stretch the areas you have

created down (and slightly up) to fit the whole
canvas:

6: Finally, make the background layer and black

layer not visible.

Save this final image as an interlaced .PNG

Blender: setting up the rings and final

render
1: Open up our scene with the textured planet,
and the untextured rings.
Select the ring plane and go to materials, click add
new and name it planet rings
In the material panel set the specular setting to
0.34 and then turn on: transparency (check the
box next to it) and select ray transparency. In this
box also set Alpha to 0.
2: Now open the texture settings, and add the ring
colour map as an image texture.
Use the settings shown below:

Make sure the image is

mapped to UVS

Make the image influence

only colour

We will now need to add the transparency map, so

again we will add a image texture, and open up
our custom made transparency map.
Simply set the image to UV mapping and make it
influence transparency and alpha:

Make sure the image is

mapped to UVS

Set the influence to Alpha

and translucency

3: Congratulations, everything should now be

correctly set up and ready to render.
Click F12 and see your final image:

Thank you for doing this tutorial, I hope you

found it useful and interesting.
If you need any help, or if you find any problems
with the tutorial, please feel free to post on this
thread where this tutorial is linked from.
At this point I would like to say big thank you to:

http://forums.blendernewbies.com/index.
php This forum has a great bunch of
guys, who are extremely friendly and

Jonathan Dawe 2011