Planet tutorial #2
Planet at larger distance

This is how the planet have to look.
In this Tutorial an uninhabited planet was provided.
Colors and other attitudes can be adapted to your own conceptions.

First we need to generate a terrain. In this case the terrain size is 257x257.

Generate Terrain
I made this planet with the settings to the right.You can use any other terrain. Only the "Size of Features" have to be small.

Squash Terrain
The provided terrain is now probably too high. Click on Modify Terrain window first to (1) Sqash and as many times to (2) Scale Vertical until your terrain is very flat.

Set Camera
Since we like to see a round planet later, we must depart now from our terrain. Fixed Height Above Surface is increased to 3500m and the target position is set to -960m.

Change Planet Radius

Now we have to chage the terrain in such a way that the terrain looks like a ball. In addition the Landscape Settings window must be opened. (1) Click to the marked key on the Landscape screen. (2) Activate Render Curved Terrain . (3) Reduce the planet radius to 5 km.

Important! If you create a Planet from a larger distance (with very low planet radius), Terragen can´t render water!

Light and Shadow settings
Open the Lighting condition window. Raise the sun strength to 350%. (1) The Shadow Colour should be nearly black. (2) Shadow Lightness is adjusted to 25. (3) The Sun Altitude was set in this example to 6,864, in order to create shadows on the terrain.

Effects
Now you can add some effects like the Gloweffekt in the example picture or an atmosphere to the image. Gloweffect: Open the Atmosphere window and set the Density of the Atmospheric Blue (2) to 77% and the Half-height to 4,6m. (1) with the simple Haze you can simulate an Atmosphere.

Preview
The sky does not have to be rendert, since Terragen cannot show the sky with these settings. Therefore one can deactivate the Sky. Render Preview! If everything were adjusted correctly, the preview picture looks about as the screenshot to the right.

Simulate Atmosphere
As i already wrote, an atmosphere can be simulated with the fog (simple Haze). You should experiment with the red marked attitudes if you like to create an atmosphere for your planet.

If the preview looks good, you can start render the final image.
Have fun!!

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