3-D Moon.docx

3D MOON & PLANETS Photoshop tutorial

TYPE: Text tutorial
LEVEL: Intermediate
COMPATIBILITY: Requires Photoshop Extended

Astronomy is an awesome science. Backyard astronomy & astrophotography are very fascinating subjects as well. Personally I can spend hours gazing the beauty of the Cosmos through my telescope.

Don't you have a telescope? Don't worry: In this tutorial I'll show you how to use Photoshop Extended to create some amazing photos and animations of the Moon and the planets. And you won't have to stay out in the cold to create these. I am going to use Photoshop CS5 Extended but you will be able to follow these steps with older Photoshop Extended versions.

For the purposes of this tutorial we need to start with a panoramic image which is called a 'planetary map'. You can find many excellent hi-res maps on this page:

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html

I would like to thank Steve Albers from noaa.gov for granting us the permission to use these maps. Thanks also goes to German photographer Pit Hermann for giving me the idea to create this tutorial.




Example 1: Creating a 3-D Moon.

Click on the NOAA link above and scroll down till you find the link to the Moon map. Click on that link and wait till the image loads on your screen. Right-click on the image and save it in your hard disk.

Load the image in Photoshop. Since it is very large (32 Mpx) we will downsize it for the purposes of this tutorial. Press Ctrl-Alt-I (PC) or Cmd-Opt-I (Mac), enter 3000 (pixels) in the width field and hit OK:




Now we will sharpen the image to emphasize the surface details. Use the Smart Sharpen filter with the following settings:




Double click the Background layer and rename it to "Moon map". Create a new blank layer below, name it "Space" and fill with black color (to fill with black color press D, then Ctrl-Backspace or Cmd-Backspace):




Click on the "Moon map" layer. From the main menu select 3D > New Shape from Layer > Sphere. This will map the "Moon map" image layer inside a 3D sphere. We have just created a digital full moon on the screen:




Switch to the 3D workspace (select Window > Workspace > 3D from the menu). In the 3D panel click on the "Filter by Lights" icon (arrow 1) and then turn off Infinite Light 2, by clicking on the eyeball to the left (arrow 2):




Click on Infinite Light 1. Right click on the "Light Rotate" icon and then select the "3D Light Rotate Tool":



Now move the light so that the moon is illuminated from the right side (Waxing Gibbous):



You can also change the Intensity for this light from 1 to 1,5.

When you look at the moon through a telescope what you observe is not a flat terrain but a rough surface full of craters and mountain ranges. It doesn't look like the flat moon you are currently looking at on your screen. Let's give some texture to our digital Moon's surface:

Go to the Layers panel and double click the "Moon map" texture:


This will open a new document with the original moon map. Press Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-C (PC) or Cmd-A and then Cmd-C (Mac) to copy the layer content into the clipboard. We will use this image to create a texture for the 3D object. Close this document.

Go to the 3D panel. Click the "Filter by Whole Scene" icon (arrow 1). Click on "Sphere Material" (arrow 2). Then click the little folder icon to the right of "Bump" (arrow 3) and finally select "New Texture" (arrow 4):


Click again the icon to the right of "Bump" and select "Open texture":




This will open a new document. Press Ctrl-V (PC) or Cmd-V (Mac) to paste the moon map. Flatten the image. Press Ctrl-S (PC) or Cmd-S (Mac) to save the changes and close the document.

Presto! You can now see the Moon's mountain ranges and crater rims standing out. Depending on the size of the original image map, you may need to amend the bump value which is 1 by default. In our example I decreased it to 0,6.




We are ready to render the 3D object. On the 3D panel click on "Scene" (arrow 1) and then select  "Ray Traced Final" in the "Quality" drop down list (arrow 2).

The scene will be rendered in a few minutes. Flatten the image, adjust the levels to preference and sharpen slightly. You have just created a beautiful shot of the moon:




Example 2: Create an animated (rotating) planet.

Similarly you can use the other planetary maps available on Steve Albert's article to create similar images or even animations of rotating planets. In the example below I used the map of Jupiter to create this animation:

Note: Jupiter is not a rocky planet hence there is no point in creating a bump map in this case.

You can follow the same approach and create a rotating Earth, etc. If you are not familiar with Photoshop's new animation panel, you can watch this tutorial that shows you how to animate my 3D Cubes. The principles are the same.