Mars

Ive had a lot of uni work to do lately, so not much time has been spent on blender projects.

This morning however I thought Id do one of the new tutorials over at Blender Cookie, just as a break from the uni work. The tutorial was the planet/space scene one found here: http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/08/24/creating-a-scene-from-space/

Heres the result after following the tutorial:


And the current node setup:


Considering the amount of time it took to setup, its not too bad. Theres still elements Id like to improve on however. Mars itself looks too clean, it needs some kind of subtle atmosphere. Also the lens flare needs obvious work. Im also trying to find a higher resolution texture map, the one I used here was 2K but it doesnt seem to be enough. A normal map would also help...

It was good fun to set up though and I learnt several new tricks with the node editor, I'll be trying to do more BlenderCookie tutorials in the near future I think.