My Survey of 3D assets for Space Art for users of Poser 9 / Poser Pro 2014 / and DAZ Studio.
Part One: planets and planet surfaces.
1. Planetary bodies:
Landing Zone’s Mophing Terrains will quite easily get you a unique rugged planetoid or moon, although it’s showing its age and the textures look a little soupy today…
One could, with a few tweaks and a new sky, double for Mars or Tatooine or similar…
Planet X for Poser. Spheres specially UV mapped for the various planet textures available for free…
“Textures are no problem for this model. UV mapped to accommodate the wealth of 2:1 textures available from the likes of NASA, content providers, and enthusiasts across the web, a simple search will begin to yield a galaxy of planets”
You can find a really nice 2:1 texture set for alien planets via MyClone…
Planet Suite for Poser (doesn’t work in DAZ)…
“is a collection of medium and high polygon 3D planets and celestial bodies. There is an Earth-like layered planet with separate surface, clouds and atmosphere, a sun, a moon, a generic planet with no atmosphere, a ringed planet, an asteroid, an asteroid field and a star field.The planets are surfaced entirely with Poser’s shader nodes so they can be rendered at virtually any size, without fear of pixellation.”
Over on the DAZ Store, there’s the ‘Strange Worlds: Planet Pack’…
Lucky DAZ Carrara users have the Home Planet pack…
2. Photoshop plugins:
Photoshop users can make their own 2D backdrops for Poser and DAZ by using the Gitterator starfield and nebulae plugin, and the LunarCell planet making plugin. SolarCell can also make flare effects, as can Star Spikes. And if you need quick efficient water, they also have Flood.
3. Space Panorama Systems:
The DAZ Store has The Heart of Space, and Heart of Space 2: Nebulas, both addon packs for the Millennium Environment pack. Although the ME pack backdrops have started to look increasingly low-res as the years have gone by, and possibly these Space packs have suffered the same fate? Please comment if you know different.
4. Special Effects:
Space Explosions for Poser is a set of animated explosions.
5. Atmospheres:
Horizons with the Atmospheres Pack…
“Bring your Poser spacecraft into close orbit around strange new worlds, with the Horizons morphing scenery pack. Horizons is a terrain set complete with morphing water, clouds and land layers, as well as two separate cloud and land figures to allow you to create different effects by merging using extra layers. With morphs to curve it into a planetary horizon and seven different terrain morphs, you can achieve a wide range of scenes with as much or as little horizon curve as you need.”
There’s also a special SF version of Atmospheres/Weird Weather…
Spaceport scenes and the like would benefit from Fog Tool Deluxe III for DAZ and Poser, which is available on the DAZ Store…
There’s a quick tutorial for Fog Tool Deluxe here. And a Poser Pro free materials upgrade for Fog Tool.
There’s also a useful short volumetric “light cone” tutorial for Poser, at 3D Artist, perhaps useful for Sparth-like spaceport scenes…
Spaceport scenes could also benefit from the use of various greebles packs, intended for use in the middle and far distance, of which Stonemason’s is perhaps the best known…
