Creating a planet image (not model)

[Clay]

I'm working on some starscapes my first two versions turned out ok, but they need work.

This one needs less color:
http://www.idleengineer.net/images/starscape.jpg

This one needs more stars:
http://www.idleengineer.net/images/starscape2.jpg

Still working on getting it to look right. =)

Anywho, I wanted to add a planet to the image, sortof like the Examples/SpaceSkyBox material, but higher resolution. Are there any tools out there I could use to generate a planetoid object to put in an image? It doesn't have to be 3D render (though it could be).

Bryce is out of my price range...does anyone know of any free/cheap tools to do this with?

[monster]

There's the Perlin Device, here;
http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed/perlin/

I have run it before with some reasonable results, but it seems to not want to work on my rebuilt XP machine. For some reason.

[bana]

Try playing with the noise and levels function in Gimp (or whatever image program you are using) you can filter the noise to certain sizes/intensities of stars and combine multiple layers to acheive the variation seen in images such as these: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... an_big.jpg

For a good reference site, look at some of the images here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

And to extend monster's suggestion, check out libnoise http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/ look at some of the things it can do:

[Clay]

There's the Perlin Device, here;
http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed/perlin/

I have run it before with some reasonable results, but it seems to not want to work on my rebuilt XP machine. For some reason.

Hmm, yeah I seem to get errors too. C# file not found exception.

Try playing with the noise and levels function in Gimp (or whatever image program you are using) you can filter the noise to certain sizes/intensities of stars and combine multiple layers to acheive the variation seen in images such as these: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... an_big.jpg

This is similar to what I'm going for, minus the flares on some stars (they are very prominent in that picture.)

For a good reference site, look at some of the images here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

And to extend monster's suggestion, check out libnoise http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/ look at some of the things it can do:

<snip>

Wow, libnoise looks fantastic from the screenshots. However, their downloads are just a big bag of dlls and libs. Do they actually have a program I could use to generate images (which is all I'm looking for) in one of their samples, or do they just offer the library?

[bana]

Ahh, my bad, I thought you were looking to generate the planets yourself (rather than just get images of them), in that case, try Celestia http://celestia.sourceforge.net/ it can get you images like these (very easily) and its open source too!
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/images ... /earth.jpg
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/images ... saturn.jpg

[sphinkie]

The is a graphic tool to create starscapes and textured stars, it comes with a stand alone software, or a photoshop plugin.

The name: "universe 3D"

The free version make only starscapes (nice).
The cost version make also galaxies, nebuleuses, gaz, planets, moon and stars (but not so nice)

For the planets, galaxies, etc see: "gliterrado"