If you don’t get the option to “Make surroundings transparent” when you use Apply Lens, you first need to add an alpha channel to the image. To do that simply click on Layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel.
The most important thing to remember when creating planets is to experiment! Experiment with textures, colors, brightness and contrast, layer modes, and the opacity of the “shadow” layer.
Especially layers and layer modes are worth experimenting with, as these can easily change the appearance of your planet, look at these examples:
In this one the “texture” layer has been duplicated, and the “clouds” layer is invisible:
Here the “texture” layer has been duplicated and the opacity set to 50, the opacity of the “emboss” layer is set to 60, there is no layer with Grain extract in this one:
Here the layer with the Grain extract layer mode has been duplicated, the “clouds” layer is invisible, and the “shadow” layer has been duplicated to make the shadow larger:
Note that not all textures are suited for making clouds, if you for example create a very rocky planet texture it may look very good on the planet, but not necessarily that good if you try to make clouds out of it. What you can do is to make a separate texture for clouds.
Also remember that you have to practice, it takes some practice to create a texture you like, and it takes some practice knowing how it will turn out when you’re done. While you are in the middle of building the texture you could merge the layers and Apply Lens to see what it would look like and what you need to improve. (take a backup of your texture first though, and save as xcf not jpg ).
This one is more like the moon than a planet, it’s made using a ground texture from Texturez.com.
I used the Clone tool to remove some of the rocks, other than that I didn’t do anything special with the texture. (only the regular desaturate, crop the image, Apply Lens and scale the image just like we did in the tutorial.)
The planet colors are a bit different in this one though, the Outer atmosphere color is white, and the planet color is 828282, the “line large” and “line small” layers are also white.
Here are the layer modes and opacity settings:
This is the same planet we made in the tutorial only I used brown/red colors in part1, and I didn’t use any clouds.
This planet is really simple, a lot more could have been done with it, but it’s only an example. It’s made using this texture from Texturez.com.
Just use some yellow/orange colors when you create the planet in part1.
This time the texture wasn’t desaturated because I wanted to keep those colors, the only special thing I did with it was to motion blur it and rotate it.
So to create that planet texture first download it and open it in Gimp.
If Gimp asks you if you want to rotate the image when you open it just choose “Keep orientation”.
Next, go to Filters->Blur->Motion Blur
Set the angle to 20, and the Length to 200.
Also, rotate the layer 180 degrees. (Layer->Transform->Rotate 180).
It turns out like this afterwards:
Put that texture on the planet (remember to crop, apply lens and scale first of course).
After you put it on the planet all that is left is to adjust Brightness and Contrast, set brightness to -80 and contrast to 15.
The layer modes on this one are really simple, in fact, it’s just one layer with layer mode Normal (and opacity is 100%):
Alright, that’s it, the end of the tutorial, tell me what you think in the comments.
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Mr Gimpmaster
August 4th, 2010
Awesome tutorial. did EXACTLY what i needed. 10 other “best planet tuts” and not one of the noobs knew how to use the layer masks trick. great insight, and well written. VERY nicely done.
yay
August 4th, 2010
Thanks Gimpmaster, I’m glad you like it
Mr Gimpmaster
August 4th, 2010
[IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/2h5jhjc.jpg[/IMG]
heres a copy and paste link:
http://i35.tinypic.com/2h5jhjc.jpg
I used a picture of water in place of the default texture. All I did was apply a lens warp to it and then used colorize to adjust it to blue. For the contents I simply found a picture of a mountain and use the free select tool to crop out various areas ad paste them right into the planet drawing and moved them around. This procedure was done just like the texture step, only I put it right into the main planet file. Once I had that accomplished I colorized it to greenish then duplicated the layer and scaled the duplicated layer up by 120% and colorized it to yellowish and moved it behind the main cotenant layer to give it a shore line appearance. Note, if you have more than 1 continent, its best to work with them individually for this purpose. The polar cap at the South Pole was simply a free select of some snowy mountains done just like the continents. U just have to remember to alpha select your base planet layer and invert your selection and delete the parts of the continents that go beyond the planet. I’m still not satisfied with the clouds. Finding a good blend is a bit tough due to the fact that most clouds will make the planet look more hazy than realistic.
Mr Gimpmaster
August 4th, 2010
any tips or ideas on creating a sun? i was thinking something along the lines of using the planet script and just tossing the shadow layer and then maybe painting a layer with the sparks brush and blurring it a bit and overlaying that onto the planet outline. that’s about the only thing i can think of off the top of my head.
Mr Gimpmaster
August 4th, 2010
http://i38.tinypic.com/dr8t1x.jpg
Here is my go at a sun. I set planet color to yellow and made sure to check add planet glow. Once created I deleted the planet atmosphere and shadow layers and deleted the layer mask on the planet glow layer. The I painted a layer with the sparks brush and blurred it a bit. Then I just duplicated the planet glow layer 2 times and the sparks layer 2 times and topped it off with an image of fire as an overlay with a scaled down opacity. Would love your feed back on it.
cheatsguy777
August 13th, 2010
Thanks for this great tutorial. I used the tutorial and tested some tecniques with multiple stars and shadows. I have been pretty sucessful so far! thanks for the great tutorial!
Phil
August 14th, 2010
This is an awesome tutorial. I am now making realistic space shots of planets. I had a friend who liked a red planet I made but asked that I add some surface lava cracks to the shaded part of the planet. What worked out really well for me, was to download some crack brushes and then scale them down to the right size and randomly paint the lower part with a center point to give the volcano effect. Then I use the IWARP filter and made it look like the cracks were following the surface of the planet. With a little tweaking and some duplicate layers set to overlay and burn it worked out great. Now my cool red planet looks like it might just break apart in a few years.
John Foster
August 16th, 2010
I will have to do this tutorial ten times to really get it. I did it 4 times before I got it right.I think you did a good job its just I am learning a lot at once.Thanks for the time you put in .
Muhammad Anas
August 22nd, 2010
Very nice tutorial … a bit complex for a beginner like me though…
I think I will have to come back to this tutorial for some steps for first few times I try to make some customized planets, however their was no ambiguity in your written tut. I followed each and every step very carefully and was able to create almost exactly the same thing as you have shown!!!!!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!
My Outcome of the Ultimate GIMP Planet Tutorial
August 22nd, 2010
[...] few minutes ago, I was doing the Ultimate GIMP Planet Tutorial on mygimptutorial.com. It was a bit complex and time consuming for me because I am a very new and [...]
Dave
August 24th, 2010
Thanks for this great tutorial, now to make a realistic background to match the planets
Planets I have thanks to this tutorial:
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/8688/myfirstplanet.jpg
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7996/planet2a.jpg
Luna
August 29th, 2010
GIMP never made any sense to me, until now
This is a great tutorial, thanks.
drewski58
September 2nd, 2010
Really, really great tutorial! I had a bit of trouble in the first part when trying to copy into the layer mask, but that’s because I hadn’t ever really learned the whole “anchor layer” aspect that well. Now I’m churning out planets in minutes… Thanks guys, this is a tremendous gift and is really appreciated!
-drewski58
drewski58
September 2nd, 2010
Oh, one more thing… Has anyone found any decent GIMP tutorials for making realistic (not stylized) galaxies? I’ve seen some for Photoshop but still haven’t tracked down a good one for GIMP.
http://mail.colonial.net/~hkaiter/astronomyimagesB/spiral-galaxy.jpg
Seems like something like this could be done with GIMP tricks, Any help here would be greatly appreciated…
David M.S.
September 17th, 2010
Awesome Tutorial. I never really used Gimp before. Here are two planets I made with this.
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2590/myplanet003.png
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/7963/myplanet001.png
Apos
September 20th, 2010
Pretty nice tutorial, with a little practice, I managed to get this:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7190/2560×1600.png
Patryk
September 23rd, 2010
Great tutorial, i made three planets:
1st http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/7716/planeta.jpg
2nd http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/1526/planetaniebieskaatm.png
3rd (and best in my opinion) http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/4958/planetatlo3.png
jim
September 26th, 2010
Thank you so much for the tutorial. Very much appreciated!!!! I made this image http://montana82.deviantart.com/#/d2zhx1z
Pedro
September 30th, 2010
Wonderfull, this is exactly what I needed to get me more results from Gimp.
Tx a million. This tutorial rocks.
Rogue
October 26th, 2010
I have a quick question, What version of gimp did you use in this tutorial?
demon-absol
October 29th, 2010
okay im totally lost on step six could some one tell me step six more clearly cause its not working for me thank you
Mayvie
October 30th, 2010
This is an amazing tutorial, you can learn soo much from just reading it, I know I have! xD Script won’t work for me for whatever reason, but I’ll make it up as I go along. :L:L
Flamin Flareos
November 7th, 2010
Dude this was a great tutorial. Got lost a bit from later version but still made final master piece which looks great TY.
Alana
November 9th, 2010
This is a wonderful tutorial! In the beta version of Gimp, it’s starting to give me problems, but nothing that affects the outcome of the picture.
Here’s my attempt at a sun:
http://abluescarab.deviantart.com/art/Sun-185558255
I’ll say how I did it on that page.
And I made two other planets:
http://abluescarab.deviantart.com/art/Blue-Planet-185455373
http://abluescarab.deviantart.com/art/Red-Planet-185552615
The tut was a big help — thanks a lot.
Redgmystr
November 11th, 2010
Thank you so much! I’m doing a solar system in GIMP 2.6 for a school project and this helped me SO much. Thank you again
Evelie
November 20th, 2010
This is a wonderful tutorial. I learned more about how to operate Gimp from this tutorial than anything else I’ve read. It’s beautifully written for even beginners like myself to operate properly and make stunning images.
Thank you so very much for this. I’m really looking forward to experimenting with the settings and making my own planets ^_^
cal
November 22nd, 2010
Fantastic tutorial, thank you!
First background draft:
http://weedytumble.deviantart.com/art/Fleet-draft01-187100519
Now for the rest of the solar system/space ships/debris… (I always did think a little on the large side!)
And so the update begins | Jeffrey's World
December 21st, 2010
[...] shout-out to http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial for showing me how to do those. They look incredible 22 mins [...]
Jeffrey
December 21st, 2010
This was a phenomenal tutorial and exactly what I needed. I’m working on a redesign of my web site, http://jeffreysworld.net and wanted a specific scene involving planets for the logo image (to fit the “my world” theme). The logo I created is live on the site, and can also be viewed without the logo elements at http://jharlan.deviantart.com/art/Planets-190341725
Stormy
December 22nd, 2010
on step 5 you tell us to “Select the “shadow mask” layer, and press Ctrl-C to copy it, then select the layer mask and press Ctrl-V to paste the layer into the layer mask, and then click on the anchor. ” can you please explain how to do this because I’m completely confused on how to do this.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-12-25 | Jeffrey's World
December 25th, 2010
[...] shout-out to http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial for showing me how to do those. They look incredible [...]
Me
January 6th, 2011
Mr. Gimpmaster is right. I was looking trough Photoshop tutorials, planets images and this is the best.
P.S. are your operation system and GIMP legal?
ONI-Defense
January 7th, 2011
This is an amazing tutorial, although for some it may seem confusing, I found the steps to have great detail and helped me with making two planets. Thank you for making this tutorial and the planet render script. I hope many more find this tutorial and check this site out for many other tutorials.
I made these two planets
http://oni-defense.deviantart.com/#/d36kni3
http://oni-defense.deviantart.com/#/d36ldgt
Paul
January 7th, 2011
Great tutorial, Thanks.
IfNotTrueThenFalse
January 17th, 2011
Really awesome tutorial. I was just looking tutorial, howto create planet with gimp and found this. Really nice work!
Nathan
January 30th, 2011
Nice work, it really was a great tutorial. It also gave me something to do for a while. Here are some of the planets I made:
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/9194/planet4.jpg
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/5332/planet3w.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2987/planet2.jpg
Erste Gehversuche in GIMP
January 31st, 2011
[...] der Suche nach weiteren Anleitungen zur Erstellung von Planeten bin ich dann endlich auf dieses Tutorial gestoßen. Das Ergebnis war zufriedenstellend und ich bin – ausnahmsweise einmal – [...]
BarelyTrainedChimp
February 10th, 2011
Excellent tut’. Well made and is actually pretty darn spectacular.
Got me back into using GIMP.
Kudos!
tutorials can be useful « A Conversation With Myself
February 14th, 2011
[...] for long distance shots. Artistic me: Now, though, there’s a new trick, and he found it here: http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial Normal me: It worked pretty well for him, as evidenced by this image, his first piece of pure Space [...]
Euan Smith
February 15th, 2011
How would you put one of the planet images into a larger background, to make a kind of solar system w/ more planets etc ??????
hanciong
February 22nd, 2011
hai, could you do tutorial about how to make a ring? Like saturn’s ring
. Thanx in advance
FrostPheonix
March 1st, 2011
this is an awesome tutorial! I managed to make something that looked like Earth, but it doesn’t look that good as the blue planet:
http://skullguardian.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=118561646
and here is the one I made while doing your tut:
http://skullguardian.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=118476676
Your tutorial is awesome!
Kitty
March 9th, 2011
I loooooooove this tutorial. It’s helped me so much, not just by showing me how to make a planet, but each step in itself is a learning experience. Heeey I don’t suppose you know how to make rings do you? Like Saturn’s rings?
nosherpiers
March 16th, 2011
best tut i’ve found yet.
Raj
March 23rd, 2011
Amazing Tutorial. I am a GIMP noob and this was the perfect introduction! Thank you!!
Matt
March 30th, 2011
Great tutorial, thanks for sharing.
Tom
April 22nd, 2011
Brillian tutorial – one of the best I’ve ever seen
Sam
May 26th, 2011
This is awesome.
Firezar
May 28th, 2011
Best planet-tutorial ever! Just… perfect
Cosmin
June 5th, 2011
nice ttorial … here are some of my results
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/861/blueplanet2.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/41/redcracked.jpg/
J-Lo
June 9th, 2011
Thank you for the tutorial, I follow it all the time!
IconoKlasm
June 22nd, 2011
Very detailed tutorial. Keep up the good work
http://iconoklasm.deviantart.com/#/d3joski
http://iconoklasm.deviantart.com/#/d3jorm5
http://iconoklasm.deviantart.com/#/d3jorxj
http://iconoklasm.deviantart.com/#/d3joszv
anifoke
July 4th, 2011
woww…I like this tut. thank’s
Regan
July 12th, 2011
Great tutorial, thanks a lot.
Alex
July 16th, 2011
Wow this was one of the best tutorials I’ve ever been through, great job. Keep em’ coming. I especially enjoyed the attention to detail and the following through on instructions.
Heres my result: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/221/planet22desktop.jpg/
Click to zoom for full effect.
reynum
July 22nd, 2011
Thanks a lot for this tutoriel ;-D
Kyle
July 30th, 2011
Ive tried everything but I cant seem to get Gimp to accept your .scm file?
yay
July 31st, 2011
Kyle what version of Gimp are you running?
Kyle
July 31st, 2011
Im using 2.6
yay
July 31st, 2011
And what operating system? I’ve noticed in Windows 7 the path to the script folder is actually: C:\Users\yourusername\.gimp-2.6\scripts
Kyle
August 1st, 2011
Windows Vista and IE 9
yay
August 3rd, 2011
Kyle: Try using a different browser when downloading the script, sometimes IE messes up and automatically changes the filetype of scm files.
Also, have you tried other scripts from other websites and confirmed that they work? That way we’ll know if it’s a problem with all scripts or just this one.
Also try updating your Gimp to the latest version, I believe it’s 2.6.10.
I don’t have access to Vista unfortunately, so I can’t test it on Vista.
Erwin
August 13th, 2011
Amazing tutorial, thanks so much. Never knew I could get something like the image I have in front of me now out of the GIMP.
Exonvsdeath
August 18th, 2011
Hi guys
I was trying to add rings to a planet but failed so badly at it. Did anyone got it right to do this. my email is exonvsdeath@hotmail.com if anyone can help me that would be nice. Thanks
JoeTurtle
September 22nd, 2011
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/405/planet2finished.png/
I had finished that yesterday, and I think it looks pretty cool. xD This tutorials rocks.
Kate
September 28th, 2011
I LOVE PLANETS
BunkyBear
October 12th, 2011
You should charge people for this. Its too good for free. You should make a Gimp book or something.
Thanks Yay
ElPouchkine
October 16th, 2011
Awesome tutorial!! Nicely written, and also, very easy to understand for “frenchies” like me, or other foreign people. Thank you very much!
Bye =)
Rafael
October 23rd, 2011
Thanks a lot for the tutorial, helped me a lot^^
jose
February 2nd, 2012
This was AWESOMEEEE. Thanks a lot, not many tutorials take you step by step, and for people like me that are just starting to get to know gimp with no previous experience it was very helpful. Thanks
Jen
February 25th, 2012
Very good tutorial! always wanted to be able to do this
thanks
Strider Raccoon
April 13th, 2012
This tutorial is exactly what I’ve been looking for! But when I try to set create the planet, an error message keeps popping up. It says, ” Error while executing (script-fu-planet-render-gtuts-edition 600 ‘(10 70 100) ‘(227 245 255) 315 1 FALSE) ERROR: unbound variable (errobj gimp-layer-set-lock-alpha) Can someone help?
ShadowWolf
May 30th, 2012
Thx this is a very nice and cool Tutorial and easy to understand
Craig
June 6th, 2012
Very great, thorough tutorial! I found I had to shift the clouds layer a little to the left due to a little bit of a line on the shadow side. Thank you.
For anyone else that’s wondering about rings. Here’s some basic steps you can experiment with: Filter>Render>Clouds>Solid Noise, Filter>Distort>Whirl and Pinch, make a circular selection, Invert, Delete, Perspective tool to get an egg like shape, right click on layer>Alpha to Selection, Select>Shrink however much you want, Delete the inner part, Rotate tool, Blur>Gaussian Blur, select Planet Base layer, Alpha to Selection, select rings layer and make a subtractive selection to get rid of the part that should be behind the planet, Delete. Of course, you’ll have to play around a little but that’s the basic idea. You can always Colorize the rings to match the planet. You’ll probably want to lower the opacity. This is just one way but it works.
imadoofus
June 25th, 2012
What exactly is the layer mask and how do you select it?
Ol' Moldy
June 30th, 2012
Thanks for this tut man. Spectacular results for me! :3
Planet Building 101 | Rewind: A Brand new Sci-Fi epic for 2012
August 2nd, 2012
[...] or just mess with your friend’s heads, there’s a brilliant planet drawing tutorial at http://mygimptutorial.com/the-ultimate-gimp-planet-tutorial. Having spent quite some time looking around for something to produce the look I was after, this [...]
Terro
August 9th, 2012
Thank you so much very amazing tutorial, i learned many things i can use in other forms of art aswell thank you very much!
Antoine
August 31st, 2012
Thank you so much man, this tut is awesome !!
Arthur
September 30th, 2012
Very nice tut, I tried a version with islands,, much harder to get the islands texture to look good as blurring the edges does not look as nice,
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/keahicheveyo/planet1.png
Elle Gee
October 24th, 2012
Super sweet tutorial! It’s exactly what I was looking for! Weeee! Time to head on over to parts 2 and 3!
Elle Gee
October 24th, 2012
My planet turned out just like you said it would! Beautiful! Awesome tutorial! Now on to part 3 for some more tips! Thanks so much for sharing this GIMP how to!
Tanya
November 25th, 2012
Thanks! Im a complete noob and this worked awesomely for me! Very good writing.
testhero
December 3rd, 2012
wow all you are making some simply great planets I look forward to flying over and landing on them while playing NAEV .org THanks Phil for the tip on creating cracked planets The most repeated planet in NAEV is the dead world planet 24x as nothing happens there and you cant land on them at the moment. I have prevailed upon my Girlfriend to use Her gimp skills to do another busted world. I am going to flog some Cassini photos from NASA for her to use as textures. should see little bits of Saturn’s moons poping up all over.
I am blown away by all the cool suns and planets you guys have made!
Dave nice worlds.
Yay awesome tutorial thanks for all the time you lavished on this project.
The guy who questions stuff
January 9th, 2013
Wait a second, I thought using a photo instead of just making EVERY part of it on GIMP was cheating.
Captain Heauxbeaux
January 10th, 2013
It worked!!! Now my planets can be spectacular instead of just sort of okay.