Planet Tutorial in Gimp (Ilanthar's Method)

[Ilanthar]

Here's my method for doing planets & moons. I'm sure it is quite close as other planet tutorials.
It's my first tutorial, so please, be gentle with my poor english!

Here's the result of my examples


Here's the tutorial


Enjoy!

[Abu Lafia]

Thanks a lot Ilanthar, that looks very cool. I'll try it out very soon to give a feedback how it went.

[johnvanvliet]

a few things
( my personal pet peeves so ....)

the image in the top dose not map to a sphere

as in it currently is NOT in simple cylindrical mapping projection
you can tell by the lack of distorts at +- 45 north/south to +-90 north/south

-- after years of checking maps and working with planetary maps this is really the first thing i see in a map
1) Dose it map correctly to a sphere ?

a seem

north and south poles



the second is a old red colored mars map with the even older Mariner 10 mercury map overlaid on it ( the MESSENGER MDIS 2013 map has been out for 2 years)


and it looks like the map i put together in 2003 using the lunar far side ( from the Apollo moon map) to fill in the missing Mariner 10 data
man how that old / antique map dose get around

[El_Phantasmo]

Ilanthar - Nice tutorial. It'll work nicely for my sci-fi settings where I've been looking for something just like this.

[Ilanthar]

y Abu Lafia
I'll try it out very soon to give a feedback how it went.

Great! That will help to correct/precise things and improve the tuto.

By Johnvanvliet
the image in the top dose not map to a sphere

You're right, I wanted to do the tuto quickly, so I didn't correct the connection between east and west. That can be corrected with the clone tool. For the poles, I know it doesn't work and seems distorted, but It's more a method to get views from sides and not from the poles (assuming that the planet hasn't an axial tilt too important).

the second is a old red colored mars map with the even older Mariner 10 mercury map overlaid on it ( the MESSENGER MDIS 2013 map has been out for 2 years)

You're right again and I can see your expert's eyes here . Again, I've done that quickly and just wanted to show something different of a rearranged earth satellite view (and not much work).

By El_Phantasmo
It'll work nicely for my sci-fi settings where I've been looking for something just like this.

Glad to read that, I made it to be used . And I'll be very curious to see your sci-fi maps!

[Korash]

Thanks Ilanthar
I will try this out soon. I have been looking for a decent way to do the atmosphere for a few weeks now. Thanks again.