Not sure how easy it is to use, having never used it myself but here's the URL to the homepage; http://www.blender.org/
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
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Its powerful but I could not get the hang of the UI. I should spend more time with it tho. Torq said he used it a bit so maybe he can post a first time blender beginners guide tut for us noobs ? How do you create a sphere planet, texture it with a fractal terrains type image, render it with some basic lighting and then save the render result ? When I tried it - ok years ago.... - it was all custom key strokes and I lost the will to live. I hope its got more user friendly since then.
Wings 3d is also free and I found much easier to use, but not as much functionality as blender though (I found the UI on blender really hard to get to grips with).
I know its not much, just a basic skin stretched around a ball and a bit of a haze added around the edge.
But hay It Tattooine!
almost tatooine, but not quite
i should know, im like one of the biggest star wars geeks in a... um.... 2 foot radius
but yea, needs some slight brown, a little brighter color, and those weird circular things towards the end to disappear, and you have tatooine
I actually got really interested in making planets a while back, and so I amassed a lot of different tutlets that I found (although the 2 posted earlier make the ones I found look like junk ) and I also found some planet render scripts.
http://home.tele2.fr/auroreblender/gimp/planet_en.html
http://registry.gimp.org/node/8172
http://registry.gimp.org/node/9489
http://sglider12.blogspot.com/2008/0...n-in-gimp.html (used this link+ original ps tutorial+ some of my own techniques to create my avatar)
http://www.bartendavid.be/doc/howto/...olevortex.html
http://www.hardwareforums.com/planets-gimp-18707/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlKu_...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-kOvj11H8
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/...2-20283-1.html
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/s...-tutorial.html
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/...al-5221-1.html
and also maybe try finding a downloadable pdf tutorial by blend_roid (blend roid, blendroid, dont know exactly how to spell it) which i found helpful
sorry that most of these are for GIMP, but others are for PS
edit: google 'blendroid tutorials', and found the one i was talking about, http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=962601 and/or http://hellswinter.wdfiles.com/local...t_Tutorial.pdf
Last edited by bryguy; 10-22-2008 at 11:57 PM. Reason: found the blendroid stuff
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