Click here to go back to part 1 of this tutorial

Part 2

The texture is the most important part of the planet, it’s basically what makes the planet look like a planet instead of just a blue ball. So what every planet needs is a planet texture, there are many ways to create a planet texture, but I prefer putting together bits and pieces from several photos until I have a result I like.

I’m going to show you how such a planet texture can be made, by using textures from CGTextures and Image*After.

Step 1

First of all I need to find some good textures, a good texture looks like it could be a satellite photo of the ground, so a photo of a dog might not be that good, but a photo of snow, rock, sand, concrete walls and rust can be good.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you create a planet texture you should always use textures that are at least twice the size of your planet, this is because some of the work we do on the textures will make them loose quality, and therefore we need to scale them down afterwards to make them look good again. So in this case where the planet is 600×600, I had to use textures that were at least 1200×1200 in size.

After a quick look around the web I found four textures that I liked.
The following three textures are from Image*After, a website that has both free stock photos and free textures.

Click here to go to Image*After and get that image.

Click here to go to Image*After and get that image.

Click here to go to Image*After and get that image.

This one is from CGTextures, the world’s largest free texture site, I found it in the Soil -> Rough category, they have some pretty amazing textures over at CGTextures, many of which are good for planet creation.
(I used the medium size, 1600×1200)

Click here to go to CGTextures’ main page.

Step 2

Open all of the textures in Gimp.
Each texture has to be desaturated. Colors->Desaturate.

Also, choose one of the textures as the base texture, this will be the texture that is underneath all the bits and pieces from the other textures. I chose that third texture from Image*After, the one named “b5grounds057”.
The texture will also be our main image, the one we will do all the work on.

Now we need to crop the image so the height and length become the same.
The image is 2048×1536, so let’s make it 1536×1536, grab the Rectangle Select tool and create a selection that measures 1536 length-wise. (and at least 1536 height-wise).

Now click on Image->Crop to Selection. That should give us a square image.

Step 3

Create a new layer, I named mine “earth rough”.

Now select the Clone tool, set the brush to Circle Fuzzy (19), and the Scale to 10.

Select that image from CGTextures named SoliRough0056_M.
We’re going to set the clone source of the cloning, so hold in Ctrl and click a little left of the center of the image to use that area of the image as a clone source.

Let go of Ctrl if you’re still holding it, now find our base texture again, and select the layer called “earth rough”.

Now let’s paint on that layer, simply hold in your mouse button and move around until you have something like in the image below. Don’t worry if yours isn’t exactly like that, it doesn’t have to be exact.

Now repeat that whole cloning and painting process a couple times.
Set the clone source in different places on the soilrough0056_M image to get some variation. Be aware that the clone source moves around when you paint, so you don’t want to set the clone source too near the edges of the soilrough0056_M image, because then we could accidentally clone the edges, and that won’t look good.

Try to cover most of the image this way, leaving only a few spots here and there where our base texture can shine through. Don’t be afraid to paint over what you already painted, it really doesn’t matter. Try to avoid creating large dark areas or large bright areas.

Basically build up your texture by cloning and painting a lot:
(don’t worry if you can’t get your image to look exactly like mine, it doesn’t have to).

Then clone and paint some more until it looks like this:

Here is the same image with all the other layers invisible and with a black background so you can see more clearly what I did:

Step 4

Create a new layer, I named mine “cracks”.

Find the image named b17kinkyfriend049, this image is so large that I scaled it down so it matches the size of our other textures better.

To scale just go to Image->Scale image.
I set the size to 1357×1200.

Step 5

This time we want to copy specific pieces from the image, so we shouldn’t use the Clone tool, but rather the Free Select tool.

So grab the Free Select tool, enable Feather edges and set it to 25.
Then create a selection like shown in the image below:

Now copy that selection, and paste it inside the “cracks” layer. (press Ctrl-C to copy, select our main image and then select the “cracks” layer, press Ctrl-V to paste)

Use the Move tool to position it where it looks good, remember to anchor it afterwards (just click on the anchor in the layer dialog):

Now repeat that process a couple times, copy and paste different areas of the texture to the “cracks” layer.

Here is what my image looks like after some copying and pasting:

Here is the same image with all the other layers invisible and with a black background so you can see more clearly what I did:

Step 6

Same thing over again, create a new layer and name it “concrete wall”.

Find the image named b2walls034, and copy the parts you like over to the “concrete wall” layer. You can use the Free Select tool or the Clone tool or both, whatever you prefer.

I used the Free Select tool for some parts and the Clone tool for other parts, this is what I ended up with:

Here is the same image with all the other layers invisible so you can see more clearly what I did:

Step 7

The hardest part is over, now we need to get our texture on the planet.
First, right-click on one of the layers in the Layer Dialog and choose Merge Visible Layers.

Now go to Filters->Light and Shadow->Apply Lens
Select the “Make surroundings transparent” option.

That should give us this result:

You might notice that the texture looks a bit stretched in some places, we’re going to fix this by scaling down the texture. (this is the reason we work in so high resolution).

To scale the image, find Image->Scale Image.
Set the Width and Height to the same as the planet we made in part1, 600×600.

After the texture has been scaled down, press Ctrl-C to copy it.

Now find the planet we worked on in part 1, and create a layer named “texture” right above the “planet base” layer. Now press Ctrl-V and click on the anchor to paste our texture into that layer.

Step 8

We’re going to add some depth to the texture, so set the layer mode of the “texture” layer to Overlay, and then duplicate that layer.

Select the duplicate layer and rename it to “emboss”.

We’re going to emboss that layer, so find Filters->Distort->Emboss.
Set the Azimuth to 135, and the Depth to 2.
(Azimuth is basically the angle of the light in case you were wondering.)

Now you can control the depth of the planet by adjusting the opacity of that layer.
I want a very subtle effect so I set the opacity of the layer to 25.

Step 9

Duplicate the “texture” layer, and set the layer mode of the duplicate to grain extract.

We’re going to increase the contrast of that layer a little bit. So find Colors->Brightness and Contrast.

Set the contrast to 15.

Note that when you create your own planets you need to experiment with layer modes and contrast, this is very important since different textures need different layer modes to look good. The layer mode and contrast adjustments we just made will not necessarily work for all kinds of textures.

Step 10

Let’s add some clouds to this planet.
Duplicate the “texture” layer, rename the duplicate to “clouds”, and move it right underneath the “planet atmosphere” layers.

Set the layer mode to Screen.

Now adjust the brightness and contrast on that layer. Colors->Brightness and Contrast.

First adjust the contrast until the clouds look like clouds, and then control the amount of clouds you want by reducing the brightness.

In this case I set contrast to 90 and brightness to -90.

Now rotate our “clouds” layer 90 degrees. Layer->Transform->Rotate 90 Clockwise.
(or rotate it even more if you want to, always experiment and pick what looks best).

That’s it, our planet is finished:

Head over to part 3 to learn some planet making tips, and a quick look at how to create some other planets.

Part 1 | Part 3