by Bryan "Grand Admiral" Carvajal
The Star Wars Animation Center
You will need a picture of a sky in order to do
this. This can be done in many ways including through the use of
programs like Bryce 2/3D. If you don't have access to Bryce,
that's not a problem so don't worry about it. What you can do is
look for pictures of the sky on the net or on some image cd's you
can get for really cheap in some computer stores. If you are
really good you can make the the sky in photoshop with no
problems.
Step I: Color Adjustment: (Optional)
Once you have acquired a sky image, bring it into
Photoshop and press Ctrl+B and adjust the colors to create the
planet of your choice.
Step II: Creating the planet.
Use the marquee circle tool to get the outline
shape of your planet. Open up the Marquee Options tab (Windows,
show options, click Marquee Options) and set the Feather between
4-7(play around with it for the desired effect). Also make sure
that the Anti-Alias option is on. Once that is completed, open up
a starfield background or the space background of your choice or
create your own(which is very easy to do). In the starfield
background, paste the planet into the desired position. You
should now see the planet with a haze or atmosphere around it.
Step III: Making the planet more realistic.
Once your planet is in position, go to the
Filters options, Render, Lighting effects and adjust the lighting
to give the planet a more realistic look with a dark sided and a
light side. It's up to you on how much of the planet will be
lighted and how much won't be. Play with it until it looks
satisfying to you.
Well that is it. I don't know if this technique
works for other programs like Photopaint, or another paint
program, but you are welcome to try. This is only to create
planetary backgrounds for still images only. It is not recommend
that you map this method to a surrounding sphere in your animated
scene, but you can try anyway. I will continue to play around
with this and if I come up with more realistic stuff, I will
update this section.
Bryan
"Grand Admiral" Carvajal
