New planet end scene

I decided the ending was not good enough so created a new space ending planet in Maya with cel shaders so it fit in with the rest of the animation. I wanted to add a planet to add to the story of the robot about to start an invasion.

In order to give this planet a lot of detail I gave it a large number or divisions so when I added a animated 3D texture it would have a lot of dynamic movement. And I could simply add keyframe animation differences to time to animate the animated textures.

I added a directional light to mimic the sun.. I used a directional light because they are easy to animate and don't light up too much of the object. They are also very easy to move around I feel they are the best light at mimicking the light of the sun in a galactic atmosphere but I a larger light would suit a scene within a planets atmosphere.

To add atmosphere to the planet I added a spherical shader and made it slightly bigger than the object so it would look like the planet had a glow

I made this shader a tint red and changed the colour levels so the atmosphere would only appear on one side with the other side (the side not being hit by the directional light) covered in shadow. I wanted the planet to appear red as it would feel like a alien planet and obviously the closest foreign planet to earth is Mars so instantly the colour red for me just springs to mind.

I then moved the spherical shader so it would be directly on the sunlight, I changed the transparency and contrast to give off the look it was coming off the planet itself.

To add a atmosphere closer to the surface I used a fluid shader attached to another spherical shader and gave it a animated 3D texture,

I made it closer to the objects surface and animated keys to the time differences so it would move along the timeline.

As you can see now the planet had more feel of depth and volume, plus the shading looked more realistic and attached to the object. The object seemed to have more life. Whilst changing the values I made it so that the part of the render around the planet would constantly update so I'd see what the change in values would look like in real time.

I added cel shading and a toon outline so it would fit with the rest of the animation, after adding the cel shading I realized the red atmosphere no longer was noticeable so I changed it to a dark purple, I felt this gave of a much nicer and clearer contrast, I was very happy with the result.