My attempt at making a planet

[someguy]

Using the terraformed Mars map from wormspeaker's thread her is my attempt at a planet.

In gimp i used "scale image" to make it squre. Then ran "Filters > Map > Map Object" selecting Sphere from the menu to make a globe. I played around with it until I had the view of the map i wanted.

Then I ran drop shadow twice with a blue color. I adjusted the dropshadow layers transparency till it looked like air.

For the clouds i made some light blue splotches an right side of a trans parent layer, then used the smudge tool liberally on the edges and made them all cloud like. Then once again ran the "Filters > Map > Map Object" tool to make it all spherical and then placed that layer on top of the planet and adjusted it opacity till it looked right.

Wa la'!

[someguy]

Well here is an attempt at making a really cool cover.

I feel so proud of myself.

[wormspeaker]

I think that the "Mars Terraformed" map is a texture designed to wrap around a sphere in some space game. (Since it's based off a height map of Mars.) So what you're doing with it is what it's intended to do. I like the result except the clouds, they just don't look right. Here is a reference image of Earth and a cloud map to make it better. (Oh, and you've blued the surface too much. Dial that back a bit.)

[someguy]

I'm use to making rock balls.

Like this?

[su_liam]

Considerably better, that.

[wormspeaker]

Yes, looking good there. Only quibble is that it's still hard to see the land under the atmosphere. As you can see in the reference image above, the North American continent stands out pretty well where it's not covered by clouds. Mars' atmosphere would be even thinner than Earth's so you might not want to obscure the land at all or only very slightly where there are no clouds. You might even want to make the clouds slightly transparent to show that the atmosphere is thinner and the air dryer than Earth. Though I don't think it would hurt to leave them opaque either.

[su_liam]

To be usefully terraformed, the atmosphere would have to have a surface pressure pretty close to our own. I'd say at least 450-600 millibars. Lets go with 500mb, about half an atmosphere. Surface pressure is the weight of atmosphere above a given area of the surface. With Mars having about a third of Earth's gravity this requires about three times as much mass of air for the same pressure. So for our example, this would be about 1.5 times as much air as Earth, with a commensurate increase in optical density. I'd expect a terraformed Mars to be a good deal hazier than Earth actually. Also clouds would tend to build up a lot higher, making them appear very opaque. A somewhat dry Mars wouldn't have thin clouds so much as infrequent clouds. That seems to be what someguy's image shows.

btw, The large optical thickness is beneficial for terraforming Mars as it also means the greenhouse effect will be large, warming the planet up.

All that hidden surface doesn't make a great map, but it is a good view of the planet from space. Sometimes in a space game you need a good planet map, sometimes you just need to know what you see out the cockpit window...

[someguy]

Ya I agree with su_liam.

[someguy]

Its a very cold world.

[Vorhees]

nice work Someguy, i like the Book Cover pic