Create Cinematic Procedural Planets (With Atmosphere) in Blender | Tutorial

[@Mash-NL]

For anyone wondering. in blender 3.4 and up. Mix rgb is now under color > mix color

[@mattsimons3212]

Not all heroes wear capes

[@WasifRBX]

Oh thanks

[@subscribetoanegg4035]

I Love you

[@umaiman7752]

I'm new to blender, so I apologize if I have dumb moment, but where is color?

[@umaiman7752]

nvm, found it

[@lekonua]

I've been looking for a good planet tutorial for forever, and I'm so glad to finally find one that's *actually* procedural and doesn't start with "first you steal picture of a planet surface from Google images." This is absolutely fantastic.

[@danmaster666]

I loved it. But the best of all has been the fluidity of the tutorial. We NEED more tutorials like this.

[@HandsomeDragon]

So, if you're working with Blender 4.1, even if you match the results via the values, they will be different. But if do this tut on an older blender version, then reopen it in blender 4.1, Blender 4.1 will recalculate the values so it will match the results. What I found is that the gain, and particularly the Roughness value on the noise Texture need to be set to a specific value, or, just don't max out the roughness. My Noise Texture Settings are... Node - Noise Texture: Rigid Multifractal Scale -- b/w 2 and 5 Detail -- 14 Roughness -- 0.871 (This is important, increasing the Roughness will give the result, but too much will blow out the whites & blacks. Blender 4.1 converted this to value 0.871 for a reason) Lacunarity -- N/A Offset -- N/A Gain -- 109 (but you can mess with this) Distortion -- N/A Hope this helps you.

[@SpiffyDuck15]

Hi, these values are for the texture of the Earth or of the Atmosphere? In blender 4.1 I struggle to recreate the atmosphere as he did in the video (the clouds don't appear)

[@HandsomeDragon]

@@SpiffyDuck15 this is for the planet not the atmosphere

[@le_cognito]

This worked for me thank you!

[@legendaryhero-kr5pq]

​@@HandsomeDragon bro btw there used to be a bloom option in old blender under render tab on blender if you select EEVEE but it's not there now. where is it now

[@jackr3878]

@@legendaryhero-kr5pq compositor tab

[@brycesmith5784]

I decided to try Blender for the first time last night, and I have to say, I'm hooked now. Your black hole tutorial is what got me interested (since I'm an aerospace engineer) and now I just can't stop

[@ager294]

Most underrated blender teacher, this guy deserves more recognition

[@dace.digital]

For anyone missing Control + T shortcut , you have to enable Node Wrangler in Addons

[@Datau03]

Thank you

[@explorewithgeoff]

Thanks for that. I thought I did have it enabled but somehow I didn't. :)

[@romeocodm]

@@explorewithgeoff its cause after an update it sometimes resets the preferences

[@kaibe5241]

Thank you SO MUCH! hahha

[@TheBreezus]

Very much appreciated.

[@arnauds2222]

Good tutorial despite blender breaking backwards compatibility with older tutorials. A few things I added: - Swirly clouds to create cyclone looking cloud formations. I even made it dependent on latitude. - Ice caps on both poles. - Made stars with slightly different colors ranging from blueish to red. - Tried making continents, but wasn't very successful in making the coastlines sharp. - I downloaded the ISS 3D model from the NASA website and added it in front of the camera. Tells an interesting story. I orginally wanted to do something like a view from the ISS cupola, but I'm not quite at that level yet. Next thing I want to to do is try modelling some more sci-fi looking ships to put in front of cool planets. I also want to try making moons or even rings. I think the most challenging thing with all that is that space looks a bit unreal in real life. Everything is very flat and colorless. The most interesting example being in my opinion the pictures taken by the DSCOVR satellite where the moon passes in front of the earth. Looks like badly photoshopped screenshots of google earth.

[@kubrickguy]

Total beginner. My first tutorial, I got stuck on how to resize 150? But managed to figure it out. Amazing, if I can follow this anyone can... bloody well done that man!

[@AlaskanFX]

Thank you so much!

[@ИринаРовнова-ц9щ]

How??

[@JungleMU]

Probably the best planet tutorial out there. Super easy and extremely versatile and powerful! Subbed!

[@ryanansen]

Bro, I've watched like a thousand atmospheric cloud tutorials, and this one is by far the easiest approach I've seen and the results are absolutley amazing on top of that. I was about to make a video on how to make an easy shader because I was so sick of overly convoluted approaches or results that were simply sub-par, but your method blows mine out of the water. Thank you so much for this video! Instant subscribe from me!

[@kwalletje99]

How did you do without musgrave texture? Because i cant find it anywhere, only noise texture. But the clouds don't generate anyways.

[@ryanansen]

@@kwalletje99 I used an older version of Blender, maybe 3.6 I think? The most recent versions of Blender reworked the shader nodes a bit and they combined the Musgrave into the Noise texture node. I'm not 100% sure what settings to use to achieve it using the new node, but if you're having issues, I'd recommend using an older version of Blender. I personally have like 6 different versions of Blender specifically for reasons such as this.

[@kwalletje99]

@@ryanansen Oh wow, makes sense. I just started yesterday and I'm trying to create planets etc. But I dont understand why the devs of Blender removed it. But it should work with the noise texture because the surface did generate.

[@ryanansen]

@@kwalletje99 Yeah, it's hard to keep up with the rate of changes somtimes. But yeah, they didn't remove it, they just consolidated it into one noise node. The new noise node has Musgrave in it, I'm just not sure if there's something you need to do to enable it or not. I haven't used the new versions of Blender that much lately.

[@kwalletje99]

@@ryanansen Allright, gonna research that. I kinda started animating in Autodesk, paid version. That was like 6 years ago at school on my video-editing training. And I worked in Cinema4D but I only downloaded templates with flashy 3D intro's for our gaming channel. But that doesn't really count, so I sort of wanted to experiment with Blender now.

[@meowyih1]

For people who want create the atmosphere using the same parameter as the video, make sure to increase the UV sphere scale to 150 times. All the volume parameters need such precondition to work properly.

[@SockManAnims]

This comment saved me a year later.

[@stengrus6486]

Wow, i'm impressed with how good this looks, you are super underrated I truly hope your channel grows! And thx!

[@AlaskanFX]

Thank you so much!

[@peterwall7365]

One of the best Tutorials that i've seen, the way you explain it is very professional !!

[@voyagerfilms]

this is by far the best planet tutorial I've come across. Way better than Blender Guru (he goes too fast). This is clear, concise, and easy to understand!

[@Subcoder]

Dope video dude! Getting enough relevant detail without being pedantic can be tricky af, and I feel like you hit the sweet spot. Hats off to you sir. 👍👍

[@cleverpete1]

This is by far the best blender tutorial ! You explain things so clearly

[@AlaskanFX]

Thank you so much!

[@HerrKlamauk]

Thank you for this detailed, but easy to follow tutorial! It made me understand procedural planets so much better.

[@awsmgmer]

This is actually such a good tutorial. I modified it a bit to make my sci-fi worldbuilding project's main planet, and it looks great. Thanks man!

[@tasora2619]

ah man this was really clear and concise! made my very first planet from this vid!

[@madof3d]

Wow, the render is insane, it’s just amazing, great job 👏

[@Theterrairian405]

i literally made my first blender animation test today and this is really easy to follow

[@wayrentmusic]

This is the most powerful tutorial on how to create procedural planets in blender☺

[@randomsaw]

This is the best planet tutorial I've used. Thank you.

[@XCA7IBUR]

4:25 If you work in Blender 4.1 the Musgrave Texture got replaced by the Noise Texture

[@CreativeAmazin]

There is not height on the Noise texture

[@qiutailai7321]

Sorry, I’m confused as isn’t Musgrave and Noise completely different Textures?

[@VoidAspect]

@@qiutailai7321 kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIuaZouVf8xrgLM

[@VoidAspect]

@@CreativeAmazin kzbin.info/www/bejne/aIuaZouVf8xrgLM

[@Yakssha]

@@CreativeAmazin turn off "normalize" and then connect the node fac to base color

[@uesleimenezes9489]

Cara isso é insano, eu simplesmente não sei como agradecer! Só posso clicar no botão de inscrição! Seu tutorial é perfeito!!

[@UnchartedWorlds]

Amazing tutorial, your voice is perfect and you explain everything so simply that it's easy to follow. I've subscribed, keep it up :) How about next tutorial for gas giant planets?

[@AlaskanFX]

I’ve been tinker with that idea 🪐 :)

[@UnchartedWorlds]

@@AlaskanFX looking forward to your next videos! :) Greetings from Scandinavia

[@nor_ame]

Your tutorials are exactly what I needed. Also they're high quality and straight to the point. Instant like and subscribe from me ❤

[@destinedtofail733]

for anyone looking for the musgrave texture its now called a noise texture, here are my values scale: 5 Detail: 14 roughness: 0.808 Lacunarity: 2 offset: 0 Gain: 109 Distortion: 0

[@paulbeeley6210]

This is THE best tutorial I have found in a long time!! Thanks :-)

[@michaelhearson1584]

This turned out so good, you're freaking wizard!

[@valerioharvey7289]

dude, you deserves more subscribers. Your metode work thee best among the others!

[@jeffreyspinner9720]

There's not alot of ppl in Alaska, and the US just prohibited anyone but native americans to even move there now. I think his stuff is great too...

[@valerioharvey7289]

@@jeffreyspinner9720 He really live in alaska? His stuff is really cool tho, just like sam krug

[@Laurin335]

Jo man saw your Black Holes tut and directly subscribed. Your tutorials are just amazing. Really Great work you deserve more attention.💪🏼💪🏼

[@aquaworld689]

Wow this is amazing. I littterally made a planet the other day and was not happy with my result this is perfect. Great video!

[@MilezAwxy]

possibly the best tutorial i've ever watched, thank you dude!

[@AlaskanFX]

Thank you so much!

[@ACloud6576]

Just adding onto what @xkalibvr2876 said "4:25 If you work in Blender 4.1 the Musgrave Texture got replaced by the Noise Texture", instead of dimension use rougness but crank it up.

[@12k_W]

thank you so much

[@miura_vs]

Thanks. Comments like these help a lot as things change with each Blender update.

[@petrnovy6196]

I am so happy that i subscribed to your chanel some time ago. Absolutely incredible work 👍

[@north7289]

Absolutely fantastic tutorial! super easy to follow even for someone (me) who has very little experience in blender/3d moddeling.

[@SkyLexin]

for those who might be having problems with "mixrgb" after a few blender updates, add a mix and set it to color

[@vivekr2597]

Wow! Cool tutorial. I love the world node, compositer, and the nodes you used to create a planet after creating the icosphere - this gives me lot of idea to create cool planets :) Thanks, and please create more tuts on planets.

[@vivekr2597]

also, with the new update on realtime compositer - I just can't wait what you'll bring :D

[@AlaskanFX]

Absolutely love the real-time compositor! 🎥

[@Goliath83]

great tutorial, seen some that just didnt explain the things they did, but you do and thats very nice :) liked it

[@TheAlamore]

Amazing tutorial with awesome results. Great work showcasing the compositing elements in Blender! Most tutorials I've seen disregard showing the viewer their compositing workflow and instead leave it up to the viewer to found out for themselves. Damn frustrating I say, especially for a beginner. Thanks for that.

[@TheCorruptedPrime]

This truely awakens my love for intersteller.

[@golemtabak1183]

Amazing, now i have such a own beautiful planet - thank you!

[@clouddefender1773]

Oh my god I'm going to have so much fun with this when I get off work ❤

[@sahilthakur3288]

The best planet tutorial out there. This tutorial easy to understand, thank you sir Sir one request can you make a video, how to animate this planet ,

[@oscaly8718]

Amazing tutorial. I'm very new to blender but I found this so easy to follow and the result is awesome! Thanks so much!!

[@jokybones]

love your profile pic :D

[@oscaly8718]

@@jokybones hey heeeeey

[@GillTony01]

Easy following tutorial, nice job man the final piece is really cool.

[@morphykg1503]

This is amazing. Thank you. My suggestions/questions: How would one make the atmosphere be visible in the "horizon"? Look up "earth from ISS" to see what I mean, where you see pictures of earth from just above the atmosphere showing the thin blue blanket over the planet. You can even see it in earth pictures where you're seeing the night/dark part of the earth (sometimes the blue at the edge will glow if the earth hits it on the right angle). With the renders here, the edge of the planet transitions to the dark of space without having the subtle thin glow of an atmosphere. Also how would one create an effect where the sun's light reflects on the ocean parts of our planet?

[@AlaskanFX]

The haze/halo you see from ISS images are from the atmosphere but only because the ISS is actually really close to Earth. For a lot of space photos of Earth the extreme glow is actually a camera artifact which you can replicate with more glare in the compositor if you like or you can add another volumetric sphere around your planet with a bluish color (at least for an Earth atmosphere) and a gradient texture set to “spherical” and color ramp that to look good. For adding oceans you’re gonna want to use a noise texture and plug that into a color ramp set to “constant” then you can use that as a mask for both the color and roughness values via a mixRGB node 👍

[@morphykg1503]

@@AlaskanFX thank you for the tips!!

[@fearless_earther]

Damn dude! Absolutely stunning!!! 🥰 Thx for this vid, appreciate your work! 🫀 Amazing exoplanets!

[@cfe.edits1]

for anyone who can't find mixRGB, due to the update it was changed to mix color in the color tab. hth

[@ericjeker]

This is awesome man! Loved it!

[@robburkett9791]

A great video, very well explained without making it insanely complicated. Great job, thanks so much.

[@MarkBTomlinson]

Very good tutorial, loved the double Musgrave trick I am really going to hit that one. Thanks!

[@gav1685]

This still works well, but I'm having a hard time getting the clouds to scatter and appear properly when using any sort of volume node. So I just made my own setup for the clouds, using the same general Musgrave/Noise texture for the formation. 👍

[@STARBOUNDST]

I love your tut and used it for a planet, I was wondering if you can show how to move the camera around and make a short clip aswell?

[@BrainStorm2-r6v]

bro dont rely on o ther people. you have to do it yourself to train your talent

[@peterdimitriou4686]

I just made a planet yesterday funny how yt recommendations work. Will definitely revisit after this considering I used some dodgy image textures. lost some quality because of that!

[@mitcheldownham4363]

dude insane tutorial. Great flow and easy to follow and understand thanks a bunchh

[@AlaskanFX]

Thanks so much!

[@Kamome163]

Awesome stuff

[@currentspw]

Great tutorial thanks. I can't seem to get the clouds right with the noise vs. musgrave texture though

[@DanielSeacrest]

Great tutorial! Though ive never been good with colours, so i was wondering what were some of the parameters you used for the first few planets you showcased at the start?

[@ZeNoNThErMaL]

This is crazy realistic! Can this be sent to UE with all the textures and everything and then be lit accordingly?

[@vizdotlife]

Great tutorial, thank you! I tried on Eevee instead of Cycles and it still looks great.

[@Mash-NL]

Liked and subbed :) Great tutorial! Oh and if i where you i would also make a tutorial just for the stars. I think a lot of people also just search for how to make stars

[@zepharephic5381]

"you're never gonna guess, a UV sphere" I know you were being sarcastic, but as someone new to Blender, yeah, I never would have guessed that in a million years

[@npogoo]

2 musgraves and you have a planet - great tutorial

[@BeyondConsoleBorders]

when the second sphere for the clouds are added I cannot seem to get it to work. when I delete Princ BSDF and add Princ Volume planet goes completely dark and even tried moving light source nothing seems to work. is their a work around for this issue that you know?

[@SibanandaPradhan762104]

Thanks for this tutorial, brother ❤

[@kitti1294]

Hi, I really like your tutorial videos, they helped me a lot! And I also have a question. How can I change the opacity of the haze, the musgrave texture? Because it really blur the stars.

[@Bioxidus85]

good stuff buddy, keep up the great work!

[@fiveoneecho]

Key takeaway for my work: use the friggin' ridged multifractal noise more often! It looks fantastic in so many applications!

[@AstroEarthly-e8e]

did the clouds work for you? if yes what node set up you used? im using blender 4.1

[@fiveoneecho]

@@AstroEarthly-e8e everything worked for me more or less. With the newer versions of blender, some of the values on the noise nodes are different since they are no longer distinct node types. I just copied his node tree structure exactly with slightly different values for the sake of personalizing. I did this in 4.2.

[@Utent-d3n]

​​@@fiveoneechoyeah I needed to change some values too, but doing it for the clouds didn't work at all, Im using noise texture ass well

[@spudster0566]

Amazing tutorial, an incredible balance between information and speed. I have however run into a few problems while following along, particularly with the clouds on the second sphere. - There is a grid pattern on larger patches of clouds, limiting what I can do with that. - The clouds have a darker grey, rather than the white I desire. Any solutions for these problems would be greatly appreciated, but other than that an extremely solid video with an awesome result.

[@AlaskanFX]

Thanks! The grid pattern is a result of the geometry of the sphere showing. To get rid of this you’ll wanna lower your cloud density a bit and maybe subdivide the sphere once or twice. To make the clouds whiter you can make sure the color of the clouds is pure white and increase the strength of the sun light (you can also slightly darken the surface of your planet to compensate for the sun intensity)

[@spudster0566]

Thank you

[@superkaboose1066]

bro this is so well done!!

[@AlaskanFX]

Thank you!

[@firebird1cool798]

I have a question. What changes can I make in the node tree to make an ocean planet/lava planet as you made an ice planet. It could be really helpful to my worldbuilding project. Anyways thanks in advance for this short but great tutorial.

[@AlaskanFX]

Thanks! For creating oceans you’ll wanna use a noise texture plugged into a color ramp node set to constant. You can then use this as a mask for the color, roughness, and bump textures (using a mix node set to color)

[@firebird1cool798]

@@AlaskanFX So do I need to create a new material for this or I will just edit the main planet material?

[@AlaskanFX]

@@firebird1cool798 no need for a new material, just mask the attributes I mentioned in the material from the video 👍

[@firebird1cool798]

Ty i managed to make quite a nice looking planet

[@firebird1cool798]

​@@AlaskanFX Just one more question. How can I add city lights to my planets?

[@T3NFOUR]

Hey dude, thank you for the tutorial, it's super useful! I was wondering, however, if there was a way to add indications of light/cities along the coastlines of each continent? I'm guessing it's got something to do with isolating the value of the coastline or the distance from the "ocean" values in the original musgrave texture but I can't seem to figure it out yet and I'm not sure where in the node tree I would have to plug that in and how. Thank you!

[@mangoseed273]

This is so helpful! I subscribed and made a desert planet for this 🤩🤩

[@alberttaruno]

Wow... This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing!

[@SynthAthena]

For some reason, when I have the principled volume BSDF, both in Cycles and Eevee, it ends up being forced into a cube instead of a sphere for the planet. Any idea why/a fix?

[@habukatu7866]

Absolutely great tutorial! The loud mouse clicks trigger me to hell tho xD

[@guido1362]

Brilliant thanks! But after exiting and restarting blender the sphere is just white again. Everything is fine when rendering but how can I apply the material to the sphere again so I can change colours and stuff?

[@guido1362]

Oh whoops already figured it out, clicked the wrong viewport shading.

[@itsewiz3387]

Great tutorial man I just followed it step by step and and it looks great...I have a question how do we add rings around the planet...I tried using geometry node..but it didn't work

[@aaravranka2161]

Thank you so much. It worked and i was able to create mars. Please keep making such videos

[@nikamednessa]

Very great tutorial, thanks so much!

[@DerexArchives]

how can i make other objects in space not cast shadows on the planet?

[@Selenehelion]

this is amazing. thank you for this tutorial!

[@federicoinfantino1762]

Thank you for the tutorial. I’m just starting with Blender since I would like to make these kinds of animations ( space animations), so I would like to ask you: for a beginner like me, how do you suggest to approach blender if I want to be good at space field modeling ? Maybe looking at this video and studying step by step what are the different things

[@mavokoro]

I love this tutorial so much! However I have a problem because I am fairly new and returning to blender... At 4:06 after you added the sun, your lighting on the planet has like a smooth gradient of the light curving around the planet, but on mine, it's just a bold cutoff, I'd rather have a fade of that darkness as you do? Any solutions?

[@mavokoro]

Nevermind! I fixed it, All I had to do is adjust the angle of the sun, idk why this fixed it but Ig it did.

[@FOXUNE_]

Great tutorial. The only thing missing is the addition of an hazy atmosphere layer that would turn red at the day/night line. I still don't know how to do such a thing correctly :(

[@AlaskanFX]

I’ve been working on that too. The best method out there is honestly Samuel Krug’s, though it’s a beast of a node setup

[@FOXUNE_]

@@AlaskanFX I'll combine your method and his method and maybe something will come out of it haha

[@jayrog868]

This tutorial has been great but i the Control T doesn’t work for me? Has there been an update that changes the controls?

[@AlaskanFX]

You may need to check on the “node wrangler” addon if you haven’t already. It comes with Blender by default and a quick search online should tell ya the steps to turn it on 👍

[@jayrog868]

@@AlaskanFX that worked thank you!

[@phantomgamerz69]

Thank you for this amazing tutorial

[@RAY-kh3ie]

Merci beaucoup pour votre tuto !!!

[@cosmicawakenings]

Amazing and brilliant tutorial, thanks, I've sub'ed and will watch more. great info!

[@metamesh1]

that was really cool, very simple yet very effective,!

[@Occultcg]

Very nice tutorial, thank you !

[@zayarniy]

Amazing lesson! Thank you very much!

[@ItzSimPvP]

Is it somehow possible to make the composition not affect the background? Because I use a strong glare affect on my planet and dont want the stars in the background to shine so much.

[@gndcxntry]

Nice! Hello from Russia!

[@SimSpacer]

Hi there, as a beginner I found your tutorial very useful! I'd like to ask you a question. I was thinking about learning how to add geometry to this planet so that I could give it a proper surface with mountains, hills, ice lakes, etc. What would this imply and how hard would it be? Should I use something like UE5 for this or can I still do it in Blender ( id love to walk around it in ue5 tho)? I'd love it if you could provide me with some details regarding this process. You could even use this as a video idea. Thanks!

[@AlaskanFX]

Thanks! Blender would definitely be better for a full detail planet if your goal is photorealism but be warned that in either software this is a massively difficult thing to do. If you want to literally walk around on your planet then Unreal is the only option that’ll let you do that in the end but it’ll be very difficult. As for resources to do this your best bet would probably to look into anything you can find about the game “No Man’s Sky” as it features some extremely detailed procedural planets

[@m-aronnax1277]

Great tutorial! One problem though, I copied your atmosphere material and doesn't even look close to what you had in your video. Its barely visible and doesn't render nearly as well. Any idea what the reason could be?

[@AlaskanFX]

Not sure, but if you want a way better (though more complex) atmosphere setup my Earth tutorial has one that’s a significant improvement on this

[@m-aronnax1277]

@@AlaskanFX Cool, I'll check that out

[@god_ozai828]

If for some reason someone's watching this in the future I.e. blender 4.1 currently it seems the Musgrave texture is part of the noise texture