Thinking About Making a Planet Pack...Where to Begin?

[Thomas988]

So, a little while back I had an interesting idea for a planet pack. Since then I've been wondering on how to get started, and whether a beginner like me (no coding or modelling skills, some-what advanced image making skills) could do create a pack. I'm willing to give it ago, but I have one question: how do I even start? I've searched the forums for "creating planets," "how to make planets," and such, but to no avail. I was thinking about using PlanetFactory CE, but it does not seem to be updated to 0.25.

What I have in mind is a gas giant, with a smaller gas giant orbiting around it. So, nothing complex. Terrestrial moons would be nice, but sound complicated to create. Then again, I have no clue on difficulty.

In short, I'm wondering where to start creating my planet pack, and what I can use to make them appear in-game.

[PoorYorick]

The hardest part is probably the textures. For gas giants and the like, you can make really nice textures in GIMP or photoshop with some practice and since you have advanced image skills, this shouldn't really be a problem. For terrestrial moons, I've been looking into libnoise, which is what squad used for the stock planets AFAIK and gets really good results, but requires some coding knowledge to set up and use. And for getting them in-game, I'd use Kopernicus, which right now can create new planets and set their orbits and textures. It can't do terrain yet, but that's not needed for gas planets anyway.