This is Earth with Blender Cycles materials. In fact, it is a conversion of Blender Guru's famous "Realistic Earth" tutorial to Cycles. Everything from the tutorial is there, including the atmosphere, the night lights/color map switch, etc. All textures are packed in the blend file. All of them are free for use (from NASA). One texture, clouds, was modified to give it alpha values (which made the conversion to Cycles easier). All textures were resized to be smaller.
The color ramp needs to be slightly adjusted to make the night lights appear at the correct time.
There is 250 frames of animation. The Earth spins 15 degrees. It spins correctly (opposite the Blender Guru tutorial).
The compositor has a glow effect in place, as well as adding an image in the background. Previously, the background image was applied as a texture to the world material. Also, the number of samples is set low (20), so you may want to set it higher.
If you have any suggestions, let me know, and I will make corrections to this blend.
Irokrhus, This is the link:
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-a-realistic-earth
Now, remember that the tutorial is for Blender Internal. That's why I submitted this blend. north.star
Does this blend file have the right compositor effects like the glow and such? It doesn't appear to have it...
No, it doesn't have them. I will add them as soon as I can (probably tonight or early tomorrow). north.star
Now it has them. Well, just the glow effect. I also edited the blend to put the background image in the compositor and not as a texture on the world nodes. north.star
Trying to unzip it gives me an error first time I downloaded it (also the file was 2 Mb to big). Anyway I downloaded it again
Now when render it, all i get is a big blue marble with milky-way background.
I'll try to fix it. I don't know weather it is related to my blender version or not, all the textures show up in the materials tab.
with build r49015 https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19023009/r49015.png with build r46461 https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19023009/r46461.png
very curious
Faust, Sorry I haven't gotten back to you in a long time. Thanks for sticking with it. Actually, when I was rigging someone else's P-51 Mustang, I had the same problem, so you actually helped me. Thanks! God Bless, north.star
Hi, I just found this cycles version of earth right now and I am wondering how to do the day/night switch... as you said in the description, it's there - but somehow the lights seem to shine on the day side as well. How do I achieve the the switching from one to another?
tk1214, If you look at the original Blender Guru tutorial (http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-a-realistic-earth), he explains how it works. I used a Color Ramp, just like he did. The lights do tend to shine on the day side, but that's only in the transition to dark. I tried to eliminate it at much as possible. You can tweak the Color Ramp node in the material for the Ground object.
Hey can you provide me with a tutorial on how to make the earth animate using the original blender render engine?
josh4406, Use the original Blender Guru tutorial at http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-a-realistic-earth God Bless, north.star
Thanks Blender Guru, I hope this will work in my scene if I can get it to work for me.
I'd like to inquire if this model is or isn't copyrighted. Thanks.
could you send me a link to this tutorial, thx