How to…

Adjust lighting

Settings Workspace/Planet_Preview

Select the Sun_Setup Light in the outliner

  • Open the N-Panel in the 3D Viewport (Item Tab)

  • Adjust rotation XYZ to preference

  • Reselect the Planet_Setup Object

  • Hide the 3D Viewport N-Panel if it’s in the way.

Additional light settings are found in the properties/object data panel.

Settings Workspace/Map_Preview

Select the Sun_Map_Setup Light in the outliner

  • Open the N-Panel in the 3D Viewport (Item Tab)

  • Adjust rotation XYZ to preference

  • Reselect the Map_Setup Object

  • Hide the 3D Viewport N-Panel if it’s in the way.

Additional light settings are found in the Properties/Data panel, take care to adjust only Color, and strength. Do not tick the cast shadow option as this will cause problems in how the system interprets object ayers in this workspace.

Layout Workspace

Select the Sun Light in the outliner

  • Open the N-Panel in the 3D Viewport (Item Tab)

  • Adjust rotation XYZ to preference

  • Hide the 3D Viewport N-Panel if it’s in the way.

Additional light settings are found in the Properties/Data panel.

PBR Preview Workspace

Select the Sun_PBR_Preview Light in the outliner

  • Open the N-Panel in the 3D Viewport (Item Tab)

  • Adjust rotation XYZ to preference

  • Hide the 3D Viewport N-Panel if it’s in the way.

Additional light settings are found in the Properties/Data panel.

Export to another platform

Once all planet settings are adjusted to preference in the Settings Workspace, navigate to the Bake PBR Workspace. In the Properties/Output panel, adjust preferred render size. Keep the ratio 2:1. In other words, The X resolution should be exactly double than the Y resolution. Default render size is 8192 px by 4096 px. Its recommended to test render at 25% first.

In the Properties/Render panel, make sure that the Cycles render engine is selected. Sampling and denoising settings may also be adjusted to preference. Note that it can take a while to render this stage. The Bake PBR workspace renders 15 view layers. Animated textures can take even longer, rendering animated textures renders 15 view layers per frame! Because most of these layers render only an emission channel, less samples should be fine. A sufficient result could be rendered with as low as 5 samples. 25 – 50 samples recommended for a good quality render. Off course resolution also plays a large role here.

Experiment with the render settings to get a good balance between quality and speed. Also keep storage space in mind. All rendered images are uncompressed jpg, rendering animated textures can quickly become very large in combined file sizes.

Rendering a single frame

In the timeline make sure you are on the same frame as in the Settings and Layout Workspaces. For example, if your scene in the Settings Workspace is on frame 3 then select frame 3 in the Bake PBR workspace also. Ensure you are in the Bake PBR Workspace. In the main menu, select Render * Render Image. Or Press F12 on your keyboard. Exported textures may be previewed by changing the view layer in the Image editor, after rendering has completed. Once rendering is complete, go to the Timeline in the PBR Preview workspace and select the correct frame to preview. In this case it’s frame 3.

Rendering a series of frames (animation)

In the timeline make sure your frame range is the same as in the Settings and Layout Workspaces. For example, if your animation in the Settings or Layout Workspace starts on frame 1 and ends on frame 250 then adjust the Bake PBR workspace frame range to match.

Ensure you are in the Bake PBR Workspace. In the main menu, select Render * Render Animation. Or Press CTRL+F12 on your keyboard.

Exported animated textures may be previewed by changing the view layer in the Image editor, after rendering has completed.

Once rendering is complete, go to the Timeline in the PBR Preview workspace and adjust the frame range to match the other workspaces. In this example, start frame = 1 and end frame = 250. Scrub through the frames to preview your exported animated textures.

Exporting the Planet

Stay in the PBR Preview Workspace. Go to the main menu and select File/Export (Your choice of format). Now adjust the appropriate settings for your export and click Export.

Finding textures after export

Though all necessary PBR textures are exported, not all files are relinked successfully after import into other 3D software. Bump and displacement maps, for example, need to be manually added after importing the model into other software. This only needs to be done once, if the software this is imported into can access textures from relative paths, it should automatically update when re-rendering.

Below follows an explanation of how textures are exported from Planet Blender.

After rendering in the Bake PBR Workspace, all 15 texture maps are automatically saved in the same directory that your Blender file is saved in, under the textures directory. The directory structure is as follows:

Textures\Object\Texture type\TXTR_Type_Frame.jpg.

For example, in a 3-frame animation the animated displacement maps for the planet base object will be found as:

  • …\textures\base\DM\TXTR_DM_0001.jpg

  • …\textures\base\DM\TXTR_DM_0002.jpg

  • …\textures\base\DM\TXTR_DM_0003.jpg

Build your own presets

User presets may be created by accessing the Settings Workspace and expanding the Presets (Text Editor) window. By default, the loaded file will be 00_Default_Planet.

  1. Click inside the text editor and select all by pressing CTRL+A, then copy by pressing CTRL+C.

  2. Now click on the new text icon and rename “Text” to something more descriptive.

  3. Click inside the text editor again and paste CTRL+V the copied data into your new preset file.

  4. Comparing the lines in the script to the sliders on the left will make obvious that they are mirrored.

  5. Values that may be edited are at the end of each line and are called default_value.

  6. Most values are floating point values 0 – 1, however there are some other values such as RGB and XYZ that use a slightly different format. See the other preset scripts for examples.

  7. Test the script regularly by pressing the run script button in the Text Editor. Changes are reflected immediately.

  8. You can export and import your own script files by using the Text editor Save As and Open commands.