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Planetary Environment

The Planetary environment type is a flexible Nishita sky model. It is most useful when rendering scenes as they are seen from outer space. For its effects to be visible, the camera has to have a very high Altitude value as it moves to outer space to view the expansive horizon of the planetary body. It takes into account the conditions within and beyond the atmosphere of a planetary body (like Earth) and its surroundings in space. Instead of a single ground color and a sky/sunset color, there is a planetary surface that reflects and emits light. This Node extends the Environment's Medium (volume rendering and subsurface scattering) with an atmospheric scattering through the planetary body's atmosphere. Here, the atmosphere is perceived as a layer of gas surrounding a planetary mass, and it is held in place because of gravity so as the light travels into atmosphere either from the outer layer to the ground or from a light source within the atmosphere, then the atmosphere's density is sampled along the ray at regular intervals, resulting in an amount of scattering based on the atmosphere's density.

Figure 1: A scene rendered using the Planetary environment, where the camera is set at a very high altitude

Planetary Environment Parameters

Visible Environment

• On/Off - Toggles this light type on and off.
• Kind - The main option is the default option, and it renders everything in the environment. The Visible option activates the Backplate, Reflections, and Refractions parameters. You can use this option to separate foreground and background elements for compositing.
• Backplate - Generates a cutout rendering where foreground elements are positioned in the scene.
• Reflections - Generates the Planetary environment in scene object reflections.
• Refractions - Generates the Planetary environment in scene object refractions.

Sun Direction

• Use Dummy Direction - When active, the Planetary environment uses the dummy Sun object in the Viewport to determine the sun's direction.
• Longitude/Latitude - These options become available when you disable Use Dummy Direction. These work with the geo-based longitude and latitude values to determine the sun's direction.
• Month/Day/Hour/GMT Offset - These options become available when you disable Use Dummy Direction. These work with the Longitude/Latitude settings to determine the sun's direction.

Sun

• Turbidity - Adjusts the sharpness of the sun light's shadows. Low values create sharp shadows like on a sunny day, and high values diffus the shadows like on a cloudy day.
• Power - Adjusts the light's strength. This affects the image's overall contrast and exposure levels.

• Sun Intensity - Scale factor that adjust only the sun's strength.

• North Offset - Adjusts the scene's actual North direction. This is useful for architecture visualization to ensure the sun's direction to the scene is accurate.
• Sun Size - Controls the size of the sun disk that's visible in the scene.
• Altitude - The camera's altitude. Set this to a very high value in order to view the expansive horizon of the planetary body.
• Star Field - Conveys star fields behind the planet.
• Importance Sampling - This toggles the importance sampling of the Sky texture, similar to the importance sampling in the Texture environment.
• Medium - This parameter accepts an AbsorptionDefines how fast light is absorbed while passing through a medium., ScatteringDefines how fast light gets scattered when traveling through the medium., or Volume medium node to create volume or fog effects across the scene. More information can be found in the Volume MediumsThe behavior of light inside a surface volume described by scatter, absorption, and transmission characteristics. topic of the Effects category in this manual.
• Medium Radius - Adjusts the Medium's scale.
• Longitude/Latitude - Coordinates where we are currently positioned.

Planetary Surface

• Ground Albedo - The planet's Surface texture map.
• Ground Reflection - The planet's SpecularAmount of specular reflection, or the mirror-like reflection of light photons at the same angle. Used for transparent materials such as glass and water. texture map.
• Ground Glossiness - The planetary glossiness.
• Ground Emission - The planet's Surface texture map at nighttime.
• Ground Normal Map - The planet's Normal map.
• Ground Elevation - The planet's Elevation map.

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