The Solar System: September, AD 15605

[altasilvapuer]

That is one amazing sun, Töff!

You should consider a brief tutorial on how you created some of these celestial bodies, sometime.

Repped!
-asp

[töff]

That is one amazing sun ... a brief tutorial

For the sun, I just layed 2 or 3 different pictures of the sun over each other, fiddled with the modes (like Screen or HardLight), and masked them up.

For the rays, I made a layer, added a boatload of noise, did a radial zoom blur, then masked its edges ... then used it as a mask for a pure red layer.

For the middle glow, I just bumped the levels way up (and masked the levels adjustment layer).

Here's the PSCS4 file if anybody wants to dig into it and see: http://www.adrive.com/public/a72806b...95eaad6e8.html

Basically, it's just the approach of "lemme dick around with this awesome tool and see if I can make something that looks half decent."

[töff]

Thanks.

Didn't I include how I made the planets, earlier?

Basically I jsut got surface textures (most of them easily found thru Google) and wrapped them around spheres in a 3D app (in my case, 3DS max 2010). I gave the spheres some specularity to make them look more kinda like painted wooden balls.

Pretty soon I need to start dropping them into the map and rotating them into position.

But I gotta get the stinkin' orbital tracks regimanted first. Sheesh. Devil's in the details, ya know?

[altasilvapuer]

D'oh! You did already cover it; I had completely forgotten.

Can't wait to see the planets in their tracks.

-asp

[töff]

So, the new orbital tracks ...

1. I finally got them spaced equally. I know, there's some gaps. But those are for the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, and the Heliopause. I think. I don't remember. Anyway, they were intentional. The Asteroid Belt and the gas giants all have double-wide tracks.
2. I used those tracks to mask that awesome pancake texture. I had taken that texture into Photoshop and thrashed it for a while, trying to disguise it -- turned it blue, did funky shading -- but honestly, it's just too cool a texture not to use as is. I know, it's kinda obviously a pancake here, but by the time everything else gets layered in, it won't be so obvious.
3. Then I want to give the inner edge of each track a highlight, and the outer edge a shadow -- the idea being that the sun in the middle is gonna light their inner edges -- get it? I couldn't find an easy way to do that in PS. I'm all about doing things the easy way. I could done it one track at a time, through some clever slection & deselection and masking etc., but I wanted an easier method. I went back to Illustrator and just made a gradient fill with a buncha whites & blacks, their points aligned to the tracks. It's not perfect, and I might fiddle some more ... or I might not.
4. So, my funny gradient as HardLight on top of the pancake, and it looks like I wanted it to, kinda 3D.
5. Then for kicks I ran black & white lines around the middles of the tracks, and blurred them, to make it look like slots where the planets roll or slide or whatever. I might fiddle more with the slots, too.

[töff]

The zodiac shading is gonna help disguise the pancake around the outer edges.

Here's a rough view.

[töff]

I threw a few planets on there.

It almost starts to look kinda cool.

[Coyotemax]

Oooh that's pretty!

[Steel General]

Really neat stuff...but Holy Gradients Batman!

[töff]

I am moving onto the Moon Ribbons.

They have such a cool name, I just hadda post it here!