In this video we will build a photorealistic planet earth shader. For this we will first set up a detailled base surface with displaced mountains and city lights which only appear in the dark areas of our planet. Additionally we will add a layer of clouds which cast realistic shadows on our surface. Finally, in order to blend everything nicely together, we will be creating a simple atmosphere shader.

We will discover how to use simple Falloffs to automate various parts of our shader and adapt to our overall scene lighting. Using those techniques you can easily setup similar planets by yourself or create variations.

I am using 3ds Max and V-Ray 6 in this demo but you can also use identical techniques for older versions such as V-Ray 5, V-Ray NEXT and V-Ray 3. A similar workflow can also be used in other software such as Cinema4d, Maya, Blender and different kind of render engine such as Corona, Octane, Redshift, Arnold, Cycles, CyclesX, Eevee and countless others.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
00:14 - Overview
01:32- Base Surface
09:15 - Clouds
13:03 - Atmosphere

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