make art...
Learn about 'Art Head Start'
The web site where i found these textures no longer exists. A Google search on "earth textures" should find them or similar. NASA is one obvious possibility:
Nasa Earth images.
The spheres details:
Surface sphere:
Color texture map (no clouds). Object Standard, Mapping Automatic.
City Lights sphere:
Object Standard, Mapping Automatic, 100% transparent. I didn't, but you can make this material luminous and/or glowing.
Cloud sphere:
Object Standard, Mapping Automatic. I applied it with 50% transparency to "Underlying Object" (the surface map). Used cloud map also as a bump map.
Air sphere:
Used a Volumetric Material, Uniform Lighting, Object Parametric. It uses a density function which is driven by the angle of incidence, giving a "halo effect", where only a thin ring at the extreme outside edge of the air sphere is visible.
It also looks good when rim-lighted. Note the glowing atmosphere and city lights.
~ End ~
Wishing you a creative future!
