Earth Atmosphere Tutorial 
- Intermediate -
(Home Jewel : Created November 27, 2001)

To create the atmosphere for Earth, I tried to fake the Fresnel effect.  You can use the Refract plugin which has a Fresnel setting.  That plugin is available on the Blender.org resources page.  I haven't messed around with that much to see what kind of effect that produces.  I tried to get creative and fake the effect:

1. Create a sphere slightly larger than your Earth and Cloud spheres.

2. Press Alt+R to clear the rotation.

3. Track it to the camera.
           - Select the Atmos Sphere & hold the SHIFT key.
           - Select the Camera.
           - Hit CTRL-T and click 'Make Track'.  (choose 'Old Track' if using v2.3 or newer)

4. Use the following material and texture settings and tweak them until you get the desired effect!
           - CLICK HERE for more details on the Texture Colorband settings I used.

If you want to get fancy, you could render each sphere (Earth, Cloud, Atmos) in different layers and composite them later.  That would give you more post-processing control over each element.  Adding a slight glow to the atmosphere could greatly enhance the realism of your image.

BACK