Hello,
I’m currently trying to figure out how to give a planet a semi-realistic looking atmosphere from far away. For example, here is a “planet”:
This is what I want it to look like (or close to it):
(This is a painted-over image to show roughly what it should looks like)
I’m just not entirely sure how to go about making this. I tried to use a BillboardGui, I’ve tried using transparent spheres above my planet. I don’t really know what else I can do, and I’m definetly not an artist, so I’d love some help from people who actually are artistic!
I’ve done something like this before on my games, you could make a billboard gui like you did, or you could make the sphere, make some decor on to it, and then scale it and put it far from the baseplate. You could do other things with it but that how I would do it.
What would I do for the BillboardGui? I’ve tried a few solutions ranging from using UI gradient, to just leaving lightInfluence up. I also wouldn’t be able to get the red and greens that way (I don’t think). Unless there’s a way for me to put the Billboard in front of the Planet. The real problem brought up by that is that the planet can be viewed from any angle, So I’m not quite sure how I’d change the BillboardGui for every angle. Is there not a way to do it with a mesh. The free 3D atmosphere uses some kind of weird mesh-magic to make the atmosphere (I think).
You could do it with a mesh, but I’m not really sure since I barley use billboard gui anyways, but you could do something like I said such as scaling the planet model and put it far to give it as a planet effect.
Try using inverted faces on spheres. You can make these is blender.
You know faces on objects are usually visible facing outwards. By inverting these faces to face inwards, you should get that outline atmospheric effect. However it won’t fade into space, Unless you do that common fog effect people do with the transparency.
How would I invert the face in blender? I attempted a few different things, including what I thought was inverting a sphere (it didn’t work) and using the Force Field material. Currently I have this:
Which I feel looks ok, the red and green scattering looks good, but the blue atmosphere just looks kind of bad because it’s just 5 spheres of varying size with .9 transparency.
EDIT: Nevermind, I googled it and tried it, it still doesn’t work. (Atleast not the thing I’m trying, more explaination still might work how I want it to.
At first I didn’t think so, but it does work and look good. I had hoped there would be something better, but for right now this is what I’m going with. Here’s “Earth”:
You could get a particle (like a circle with that transparent edge thing. I suggest looking up particle pack and getting one that looks good for you, just make sure it doesnt have viruses) and set the ZIndex to -0.5 or -1 and set the attachment the particle is on onto the circle.
here’s how it looks for me, rushed but you can make it work
i did try something similar to that with BillboardGui’s, there are a few problems though. Most importantly, it doesn’t also cover the surface like others do. Secondly, it’d be much more difficult to make it only reflect where a light source is hitting the object (if that makes sense). And lastly, I’m using another sphere with a texture to get the red and green scatter right around the “edges” of the sunlight, the BillboardGui’s (and I have to assume particles too) don’t really work with the partially transparent texture and it was flashing in front of and behind the “planet”
Now, I know the last reply here was from February two years ago, but I want to see if I can prove you wrong—for the fun of it! I’ve made something very promising that addresses your first two concerns. However, you might notice there are no shadows or light scattering in the shadows yet. I’m seeking ways to solve that.
Demo footage testing how the current atmosphere looks with Neptune:
