The Kerbal Solar System -- In Blender! [VERY WIP]

[Starwhip]

The Objective:

Create every planet and moon in the KSP solar system in Blender3D, mainly with procedural noise-based texture generation. Planets like Kerbin and Laythe will be done with textures, since they have more recognizable terrain. I'm going to try one planet per day, so far I've been able to do it.

 

I'll keep this album updated as I go.

 

Status:

Sol - To Do

Moho - Done! (Download .blend file)

Eve - Done!
--Gilly - To Do

Kerbin - Done!
--Mun - To Do
--Minmus - To Do

Duna - Done! (Download .blend file)
--Ike - Done!

Dres - To Do, but it doesn't exist.

Jool - To Do
--Laythe - To Do
--Pol - To Do
--Bop - To Do
--Tylo - To Do
--Vall - To Do

Eeloo - To Do

Edited January 15, 2016 by Starwhip

[Starwhip]

Moho completed. The album here is not updating for some reason. :/

[livefree75]

Nice job!  I've always wanted to learn Blender but found it to be very difficult.

[Starwhip]

Ike and Duna!

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/YZVFB02.png

[Drew Kerman]

I would love to be able to use these for renders when KSA reboots. Not sure if I'll have time to get around to learning to use Blender but if I can I will, they look great!

[Starwhip]

5 hours ago, Gaiiden said:

I would love to be able to use these for renders when KSA reboots. Not sure if I'll have time to get around to learning to use Blender but if I can I will, they look great!

If you want, just let me know what you have in mind for a scene and I'll see what I can do.

[Drew Kerman]

thx. I'll do that if I have to

[Starwhip]

Kerbin completed. Mun and Minmus next.

[Drew Kerman]

soooo.... how's it going? You're missing files for Kerbin, Eve and Ike also in the OP

[Drew Kerman]

any more work planned on this? Kerbin, Eve and Ike files made available? It's looking like I will have sometime to play with blender before I have to get back to KSA ops and I'd like to see about some orbital renders.

Just downloaded 2.77a and would like a benchmark - how long does it take you to render the Duna/Ike file if you just open it and hit F12? It took my machine 9:41.27 (i7 4790K 4.0Ghz)

Edited April 8, 2016 by Gaiiden

[Starwhip]

On 4/8/2016 at 4:09 AM, Gaiiden said:

any more work planned on this? Kerbin, Eve and Ike files made available? It's looking like I will have sometime to play with blender before I have to get back to KSA ops and I'd like to see about some orbital renders.

Just downloaded 2.77a and would like a benchmark - how long does it take you to render the Duna/Ike file if you just open it and hit F12? It took my machine 9:41.27 (i7 4790K 4.0Ghz)

Is that 9 minutes 41 seconds or 9 hours 41 minutes? I'm closer to the latter.

[Drew Kerman]

9min 41s (you may have missed the .27 and read it as :27)

You think these setups would be good for including a craft model if I scale it way down?

[Starwhip]

2 hours ago, Gaiiden said:

9min 41s (you may have missed the .27 and read it as :27)

You think these setups would be good for including a craft model if I scale it way down?

Yes. In theory you could scale the planets up, but that changes the volumetrics for the atmosphere. You have to get the camera pretty close though.

If I'm not mistaken, the .blend for Duna in the OP contains Ike as well, in about the right orbit and size.

[Drew Kerman]

actually I was considering scaling the craft model down, not messing with the planets. It seems like you have everything set up nice already as far as scaling is concerned I would just have to try to match it with the craft I import. Speaking of which - any ideas on this?

 

[Drew Kerman]

here's the stock ion probe around Duna. I just imported it to the scene, angled it a bit, scaled it down to 5%, set the camera and then hit the render button. Still have to get around to learning more about the ins and outs of... well everything related to rendering/lighting/effects/environment but just wanted to do a proof of concept to see how it looked. 32min 45sec rendering time at 1920x1080.

Any advice on how to scale craft models properly? I just chose a scale that looked reasonable, would like to be more accurate. I know I can use the Grease Pencil as a ruler to place models a proper distance from Duna, and with Ike I can get a good idea of the scale for distance, but I'm not sure how to go about determining the scale for size

Also are the other models you finished able to be released? Mainly Kerbin/Mun

Edited April 16, 2016 by Gaiiden

[Starwhip]

21 hours ago, Gaiiden said:

32min 45sec rendering time at 1920x1080.

What sample quality?

21 hours ago, Gaiiden said:

Any advice on how to scale craft models properly? I just chose a scale that looked reasonable, would like to be more accurate. I know I can use the Grease Pencil as a ruler to place models a proper distance from Duna, and with Ike I can get a good idea of the scale for distance, but I'm not sure how to go about determining the scale for size

Well, I also go for something that just looks reasonable. It is art, after all!

21 hours ago, Gaiiden said:

Also are the other models you finished able to be released? Mainly Kerbin/Mun

I need a better atmospheric setup first. I do not have the Mun complete either, though I have a good idea as to how I'd do it.

Edited April 17, 2016 by Starwhip

[Drew Kerman]

6 hours ago, Starwhip said:

What sample quality?

Uhhh... dunno. Default I guess. Anti-aliasing is checked and set to 8 with Full Sample unchecked

6 hours ago, Starwhip said:

Well, I also go for something that just looks reasonable. It is art, after all!

That's a good point... I'm kinda OCD and would be extremely satisfied knowing that I've scaled things properly but I can make myself accept approximations

[Starwhip]

@GaiidenAs you can see, my render times are significantly higher than yours. (This is with a new, lower-CPU-intensive atmosphere setup.)

Edited April 19, 2016 by Starwhip

[Drew Kerman]

yea I just upgraded my CPU this year

[Starwhip]

23 minutes ago, Gaiiden said:

yea I just upgraded my CPU this year

Believe it or not, all my work is done on one of these. I really need an upgrade. :/
EDIT: Yes, that model, and unfortunately that OS too.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Starwhip

[chabad360]

If you go on the Kerbal Maps OP, there is a link to a mega repo, that has a lot of planet textures (but their from 0.21) in 8k, my laptop didn't like that so i scaled it down to 4k, but it should work perfectly, he also provides heightmaps, but their format is a special type of tiff(not sure what, but he explains how to view them in to OP). There is also this, but I haven't looked in to it much, Ill test those ones out later. <-- these are not very high quality.

Edited June 27, 2016 by chabad360

[chabad360]

@Gaiiden Just scale it proportionally to the planet.

Edited June 27, 2016 by chabad360