Making an alien planet using Video Copilot Orb

Making an alien planet using Video Copilot Orb

Graham Quince September 27, 2022

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In this video, I show my preferred way of creating a texture for a new world. Rather than get stuck trying to force Fractal Noise to create randomness, I simply take a photo of a paving slab and once cropped show how to use masks and the Colorama effect to quickly make a cool, natural looking surface. Then using Turbulent Displace, I create oceans which are pretty random but still under my control.

Once it's applied to Video Copilot's free Orb plugin, I then use the same texture to make a normal map and specular map. I cover illumination options too and then add clouds and an atmosphere.

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In this video, I'm making a M-Class world, but the techniques I cover could be applied to any type of rocky planet. Along the way, I drop loads of useful shortcuts and tips for using After Effects. Hopefully you'll be inspired by how easy it is to make a complex looking, realistic planet.

How I made the rivers can be found on my YouTube community post:

I used the Advanced Lightning effect to create rivers on my texture maps. The effect is really useful for creating branching streams and forks. Then I just copied over the layer to the specular and normal maps.

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