Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Clouds
: A gray-scale map of the clouds
Note that, even if gray-scale, in Cycles all the image textures must be in RGB color
space.
Actually, Cycles can also pretty well handle very big textures, reaching a size of 16
K (that is, 16.000 pixels for the longest side of the image), so you can use them at
the best resolution you can find. In any case, be aware that the bigger the resolution
of the textures, the longer the Cycles' rendering times.
However, besides the texture images, we also have to follow these steps:
1. Start Blender and switch to the
Cycles Render
engine.
2. Delete the default cube and add a UV Sphere (with the mouse cursor in
the 3D view, press
Shift
+
A
and go to
Mesh
|
UV Sphere
). Rename it as
Earth_Surface
.
3. With the mouse cursor in the
Camera
view, press
1
from the numpad to
go in orthogonal front view. Now, go in edit mode, select all the vertexes,
and press
U
. In the
UV Mapping
pop-up menu, select
Sphere Projec-
tion
. Go out of edit mode and press
0
from the numpad to go back again
to the
Camera
view.
4. Press
Shift
+
D
and hit
Enter
to duplicate the sphere. In the
Transform
panel to the right (press
N
if not already activated), set the
Scale
value
for
X
,
Y
, and
Z
to
1.001
. Rename it as
Earth_Clouds
.
5. Duplicate it again, set the scale to
1.002
, and rename it as
Earth_Atmosphere
.
6. Add an
Empty
(press
Shift
+
A
and go to
Empty
|
Plain Axes
) and
rename it as
Empty_Earth
. In the
Object Data
window, set its size to
2.00
. Select the three UV spheres and then the
Empty
and press
Crtl
+
P
to parent them to the
Empty
.