Behind the Scenes: Alien Worlds – Jumpship over a tidally locked planet

It's so great to see this:

> I took my first baby steps in Blender back in 2017

I believe I took mine in 2001-2002. Coincidentally, this was my introduction to the concept of "open source" software. The idea that such a powerful tool could be completely and irrevocably free was just absolutely mind blowing. And it allowed me to create the sort of precise, intricate things that were inaccessible in any other way as I, as an 8th-grader, had not yet accumulated any machine tools.

Glad to see this program is still going strong.

Hey everyone, Samuel here. As I mentioned in the article, I started rewriting the shader math from scratch with proper projection math in mind. You can follow the progress here: https://blenderartists.org/t/procedural-planet-shader-on-a-p...

Cool to see the whole process behind it. Some sneaky tricks there, and much knowledge. Unfortunately, I find the picture doesn't show the tidally-lockedness very well. If it wasn't for the title, I would never have noticed. The haze on the sun side makes it look like clouds.

Neat how-to, very glad to see experts sharing their insights.

The ship is masterful. Macro and micro scale, it has visual interest and convincing detail.

The planet is pretty, but not so much effort there - it's just backdrop. Room for more visual interest, it's been suggested a tidally locked planet would have perpetual storms at the terminator due to the thermocline. Perhaps a desiccated sun-side because of the water being sequestered in ice over millions of years. Lots you could do with that.

Anyway, beautiful and instructional - like a zen master.

This looks fantastic. I particularly love how cool things look at the different perspectives -- presumably this is because you did the hard work of making the planet at realistic scale? Thanks for sharing the process. It was fascinating!

Just want to say this is so cool! Many concepts seem much more accessible in visual form.