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The Omega Project - Artwork: Planets & Sector Maps
Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 8:14 am
by Rick Smith
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 12:38 am
by Nerroth
I'm trying out the Mæsra Prime pic as the wallpaper on my PSP. Looks good so far!
Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 8:35 pm
by dderidex
Out of curiosity - what are you doing these in?
Just pure Photoshop, or are you using something like the ProFantasy Terraformer or Fractal Terrains products?
Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 8:48 pm
by Rick Smith
Just Photoshop (CS3) and a handful of homemade and found texture brushes. Pretty simple and easy to make, technique wise. The hard part is making the planet convincing...and that's pretty simple by way of practice and research.
Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:22 pm
by Rick Smith
I also meant to say that I did check out those programs you mentioned. They're nice, but they're limited in what they provide, simply because you have to make due with what someone else (the programmers and artists) deemed is important to the image making process.
With building the planets yourself in Photoshop, you have complete control over the lighting, how the background may interact with the planet and many other variables.
I'm also not extremely keen on seeing so much raised detail on continents as many of these programs provide. Things tend to lose definition in the massiveness that is space. Something so crisp as a knife-edged mountain range doesn't make a whole lot of sense in my mind. But I think that comes down to personal preference and technique.
Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:58 pm
by dderidex
They seem like they have quite a bit of flexibility, though.
I've certainly done some of my own planets, in Photoshop, and they do come out alright...it just takes a
lot of time.
The reason I was wondering is that the post over
here on the Profantasty blog, showing the fractal generator with terraformer plugin looks a LOT like the type of planets I've seen done.
If it really did make that kind of thing fast to do...wow!
Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:07 pm
by Rick Smith
I'd like to try them...just to see what their capabilities are, but i don't have the extra cash to throw at them at the moment. And considering I already have Photoshop - which I use most of the time for my illustration work - I feel that the extra programs laying around would be wasted on me. Heh.
My planets take about a half hour (simpler ones) to an hour (lots of continents, etc.) max. That's minus the star fields or other space effects like nebula or system stars or moons.