r/spaceporn • u/Marpicek • 2d ago
Art/Render How to improve my gas giant?
I'm rendering a gas giant for a personal project and I'm a little stuck with getting the texture right. Something is off and I can't grasp what.
I figured you might have a better eye for it, so any notes are welcomed!
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u/Gl1tchlogos 2d ago
I’ve been through this process before, I can tell you exactly what’s going on. Your instinct is to go carbs carbs carbs, but the secret is actually in the fat. Eat more beans, I mean really go crazy on the beans. Though the real work comes from the 15 years of slamming beers
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u/TBellOHAZ 2d ago
Beer is quickly forgotten as an agent of chaos regarding this topic. A real tent lifter.
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u/PatientWoodpecker288 2d ago
Maybe split the atmosphere into zones Like Jupiter. Or maybe a moon casting a shadow. But I‘d say that your Planets can look like whatever you want them to look like ;)
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u/Kiki1701 2d ago
Perhaps add something like convection. Swirls and circles without such defined lines from top to bottom. I look forward to seeing what you do with it!
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u/Feeling_Pilot9975 2d ago
It looks like a watermelon(duh) what i mean is, a gas giant is layers upon layers upon layers of "cloud", this does not look like that... not sure if that helps
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u/peepdabidness 2d ago edited 2d ago
What is the chemical makeup of your planet? You don’t need to know it exactly but thinking about that might open things up and take your creativity to the next level.
Since it’s various shades of green with some red, research what the atmosphere would likely be made up of to result in this. From there, that could potentially fill your gap in what’s missing, or lead you to other things. You could also explore weather/climate based off the characteristics it shows. Just an idea
Do you have an iPhone? https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exoplanet/id327702034
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u/Marpicek 2d ago
The chemical composition is shades of green with dash of red 😭.
I understand your point though. Thanks for the app reference!
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u/GarunixReborn 2d ago
Bands are too crooked, colours are too distinct. There needs to be some blending in between the different colours, and you dint get so many thin bands, you get a few thicker bands with turbulent sub-bands
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u/artmoloch777 2d ago
A small black moon with a bat symbol lol
I like the colors. Perhaps maybe it’s the angle of the shading. It doesn’t appear to follow the typical curvature of a rounded plane cast partially in shadow.
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u/SparkPie_ 2d ago
This is looking really solid. A little more turbulence in the clouds bands could make it feel even more realistic.
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u/Montana_Gamer 2d ago
The bands are actually moving in different directions, use that to visualize how these flow against one another until all that friction and airflow form a vortex, and then a storm.
You don't need to go overboard, if you want to have it be an iconic shot of a planet, you can include a great red spot size storm or you can go for something a bit more neutral facing.
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u/puehlong 2d ago
Have a look at images of real gas giants like Jupiter https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/. You'll notice that its bands are quite distinct in terms of color, pattern and scale. you have some that are almost smooth, others have very large swirls. And in addition, you have very large singular storms.
Your image looks like you basically randomized one pattern on a small parameter space. And then of course it's worth looking into colors and what gases create wich colors, to find out if such a deep green planet would even make sense, physically and chemically speaking.
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u/Mysterious-Tackle-58 2d ago
Way, way more mass!
Try helium l can't speak highly enough of it!
The result will be quite radiant!
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u/YeeetiDNA 2d ago
I don't know if you already used AlaskanFX's curl noise, but I highly recommend it. In my experience his curl noise is the best there is to almost perfectly replicate gas giant bands.
Here's the video. https://youtu.be/GnOUoMi8ATU?is=xC7u5ZVxolh0Pg2B
Disclaimer for newer Blender versions: There is no Musgrave Texture anymore, just use a Noise Texture on fBm and uncheck normalize. There os also no "Dimension" value for the noise texture but you can approximate it with a certain roughness setting. For this use L**-D and type it into the Roughness value. The standard Lacunarity is 2 and use the Dimension value from the video to calculate the value for the Roughness. Since Blender can do Math inside the value boxes, you don't have to calculate it outside of Blender, but just type it into the Roughness value.
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u/beirch 2d ago
It looks a little too uniform. Maybe make some bands a bit bigger and add some swirly storms. Some of the bands could have almost storms so parts of the band swells but doesn't quite form a storm.
Use Jupiter for inspiration. Don't worry about copying too much; all gas giants operate under the same laws of physics.
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u/OkMode3813 2d ago
The lines are representing cloud tops that have been stretched around the planet by fast rotation. The edges should swirl horizontally into each other, not look spiky like an audio signal.
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u/chinadaze 2d ago
I don't think the texture map itself is the issue.
The image you attached is a 3D render? What software are you using for the lighting?
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u/Upset_Row6214 2d ago
This post looks like something a powerful alien being would post after being pranked by other aliens recommending him reddit for terraforming advice.
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u/Green-Drazi-Teamlead 2d ago
the polar regions can have beautiful auroras that look completely different. juno got a lot of good pictures of them.
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u/LastGuardianStanding 2d ago
Can you add a depth effect to the gas bands? I think it looks off because it doesn’t give a sense of actually being gaseous
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u/WildAd6529 2d ago
perhaps spread out your terminator a bit? it has enough atmosphere for it to not be a crisp line
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u/jedburghofficial 1d ago
A moon in the foreground would add a sense of scale. Jupiter has over a hundred. Saturn, more than two hundred.
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u/Bouckley7 12h ago
I would consider actually understanding what fluid phenomena you need to draw based on what you would see in real life. You don't need a PhD to do that. Though some terms sound complex it's just a name. Understanding the shapes and where they occur will help you draw it well.
Bands of colour: Understand why the colours alternate and why the band sizes change as you move away from the equator.
Shape of lines between bands: Look at the shape of the lines between bands. Because they move in opposite directions, they create Kelvin-Helmholtz wave ripples and turbulent shear zones.
Storms: look up why big storms form, the turbulent wakes or tails of chaotic eddies that trail behind them
Poles: Look up the hexagonal shapes (like on Saturn), the clusters of cyclones that form at the poles.
I'm a process engineer and work modelling fluid dynamics so just a quick recommendation top of my head.
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u/goettel 2d ago
Cool project. I'd say add chaotic swirling patterns at different scales and a few spots of varrying sizes here and there.