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…