Blender Cycles Atmospheric Shader

[tajampi]

After messing around with some atmospheric shaders in Unity, my artworker side turned on, and i wanted to "port" the shader to Blender.

It's really simple, Cycles volumetric shaders are really good!

Here is the result, rendered in few seconds, it's actually quite fast, but jittery (Could use more samples):

The only problem is the scale. On all those renders, the planet scale is only 1 unit wide, which results in a "fat" haze, i suppose bigger planets can get a better looking haze.

Here is the node setup, just in case anybody wants to use it (I know, it's confusing...):

Note: The clouds used in the render are KSPRC clouds! Check Proot's Pack

Feel free to use it on your renders!

Cheers!

[esinohio]

Maybe some compositing to generate the blur/haze your wanting? Just turn on the material index pass in the render layers, then in the material properties for the atmosphere go to the settings and give the material a pass index. Now in the compositing you can mask out individual materials for all kinds of fun. Below I'm giving just the sun a multi-layered blur effect. Makes it a ton easier to control the individual materials.

Something like this:

Not sure how it would look but maybe worth a try.

Edited July 12, 2015 by esinohio