Building Earth in Blender

This tutorial is the result of many hours of designing, test rendering, and spell checking. Students build two different Earth models, and learn how to achieve details such as masked specular shading, cloud shadows, and city lights. All the maps used in the tutorial are free, and instructions on how to find and download them are provided.

For more example renders and clickable links to the various maps, see the Earth page of my planets library.

Note: I have achieved several improvements over the models demonstrated in this tutorial; when Blender version 2.5 is released, I plan to write a 5th tutorial edition to reflect those improvements.

Example render of Earth Example render of Earth Example render of Earth

Tutorial: PDF File, 4th Edition (46.9MB)

Photo-Realistic Model .blend File

Blue Marble Model .blend File

The .blend files may be used in your own productions, but please provide credit according to the specifications given within the .blend files.