Planets. How did you do that?

Hello! I wasn't sure where exactly to post this. I wanted to ask developers how did they made planets?
I hope i'm not being too intrusive or something... Maybe it's a secret they'd like to keep - i don't know.
The thing is - I graduated as game graphics designer last year. And I'm very curious how planets in Everspace were made.
Specifically - the surface and the atmosphere fog.
The surface does not look like simple texture - the resolution of it must be insane in that case. I suspect it was made with substance designer maybe? In that case your technical artist must be REALLY good.
And for the atmosphere - I don't have a clue even... Last time I checked there were no localized fog volumes in ue4 (I was working on a project in unity for the last months), so I assume it may be some other visual effect that I'm probably not aware of.
I don't want to get a full step-by-step guide or anything like that... Just a general information, if that's at all possible?
Thank you in advance!
I hope i'm not being too intrusive or something... Maybe it's a secret they'd like to keep - i don't know.
The thing is - I graduated as game graphics designer last year. And I'm very curious how planets in Everspace were made.
Specifically - the surface and the atmosphere fog.
The surface does not look like simple texture - the resolution of it must be insane in that case. I suspect it was made with substance designer maybe? In that case your technical artist must be REALLY good.
And for the atmosphere - I don't have a clue even... Last time I checked there were no localized fog volumes in ue4 (I was working on a project in unity for the last months), so I assume it may be some other visual effect that I'm probably not aware of.
I don't want to get a full step-by-step guide or anything like that... Just a general information, if that's at all possible?
Thank you in advance!
2
Best Answer
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ROCKFISH_Marco Posts: 38
Hi,
The planet surfaces are pretty complex layered material networks using multiple seamless textures and masks (e.g. for water/land masses).
The atmosphere is a second sphere placed around the planets with a lot of vertex shader fresnel computations going on to create the volumetric appearance.
No generators involved7
Answers
Oh, well! Thanks anyway!
As a graphic designer and aspiring game developer, I'm curious about this, as well. @ROCKFISH_Marco is the lead 3D artist, I wonder if there's any details regarding this process he may be able to share?
This way the black holes in Everspace are the result of too many generated planets.
As for using fresnel shader... It's a shame i didn't think of it myself. Although, one can't know all, i suppose.
Thanks a lot!