Tutorial / Opinion : Blender vs After Effects: Planets

How to create a planet in Blender and how that compares to ones you can make in After Effects. This tutorial shows how to create a realistic 3D planet using Blender, starting from a simple sphere and adding textures and rings.

This Review / Tutorial is slightly different to my usual videos. After publishing many tutorials on how to create planets in After Effects, whether directly or using Video Copilot Orb or Maxon Cinema4D Lite, I thought it was time to tackle Blender.

In the main part of this video, I show how to create and texture a sphere, including how to use the Shading Node editor and how to change a Height or Bump map into a Normal map to add displacement. Then I go on to show how to create clouds and atmosphere. Once they are complete, I then add a rocky ring and then a "regular" thin ring band, like you might see on Saturn.

Once the tutorial part is done, I bring up similar planets made in each of the different ways. These are also shared below with some of my thoughts on the process.

I'll leave you to decide on which method works best for you as I think there's merits to all 4 approaches.

But if you want to see the final results up close and then vote, you can from these links:

• https://shiveringcactus.net/3d-planets
• https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxtK7i9Wf6u8wn52UV92EgKnewM8Aay16c