Planets in UDK

[wonderwyrm]

So were working on a school project and doing a space kart racer. We want to do some planets, there is a spehere included in UDK which we could throw some random materials on BUT what are our other options?

I did a search and found someone had a planet shader however the download link is no longer available!

[lovindadonks]

Make your own materials and use a sphere, stretched to whatever size you want the planet to be?

[Haxzor]

1.) The model/mesh itself is pretty easy, a simple sphere should do it.

2.) The material however, is another thing. If you want to make a good looking planet material, you will need heightmaps (and normal maps), extended diffuse maps, detail maps, reflection maps (whether the planet has water or other reflective surfaces). I suggest you look around on the internet for resources and some reference images how earth or mars looks from space. Artwork is also a good resource to study the looks of stellar objects.