A Photorealistic Earth

One of the most complicated shader types in cg are the earth shaders. Although there are only a few 3d spheres with textured surfaces and one sunlight you have to choose unlimited opportunities to design a performant, realistic and detailed scene of the earth, the moon and the sun. There are many different techniques and material properties to design an earth surface model – realistic or abstract. I’ve created a photorealistic earth & moon shader for V-Ray Renderer based on the NASA Blue Marble Earth Maps. You can download this modelsĀ here.

The Making of the “Santa Maria”

In May 2011 I was commissioned by the Film Academy Ludwigsburg and Korion GmbH for a computer game to visualize a high-rez model of an explorer’s ship. The first thing I thought of this was the “Santa Maria” of Christopher Columbus, who reached America in 1492. For a game trailer I’ve rendered a ship and a few additional models for four CG sequences.