Getting what I wanted out of PhotoShop's gradient tools could be done, but would take time and experimentation for all the color and strength variances in the rings I wanted. I had already come across an excellent fragment of an image of some rusty metal looking objects that had all the colors I was looking for.

In steps Gradient Thief. A couple hundred clicks of the colors I wanted from the original image, and in seconds I had the ring gradient image that I wanted.

I can only think about how much time would have been involved in trying to make this complex of a gradient in PhotoShop. And if I didn't like what I ended up with after all that labor? No thanks! With Gradient Thief, if I want to change it, I just start selecting other colors, and I can change it on the fly.

I then quickly saved out this gradient image as a color map, made a gray scale version of it also, and then tweaked the contrast and brightness of the gray scale version for later use as a transparency map.

In Lightwave 3D (version 5.6c for those who are curious), in order to map a gradient as a ring, you have to use a morph target to get the result. So there are three basic objects in the scene, the planet sphere (and it's atmospheric spheres), a rectangular plane object (the one the images are mapped to for color, transparency etc.), and a morph target object (the bent rectangular object that is turned into a flat disc ring).

There are more settings than I have time for here, but one important setting is in the objects panel for clip mapping. I used a Fractal Noise pattern to break up the rings to give it a more rough and realistic appearance. I could have also used Fractal Noise on the specularity channel in the ring surface to give it periodic random highlights as well, but I wanted a dark and dismal look.

I used a background gradient on the Celestial Equator to give this area of space a dirty and dusty look. I also used a low end Tan color for the star field, and a gradient fog with a Brown color to show depth of dirt between the camera and the planet and surrounding space. Finally, I adjusted edge transparency on the atmospheric surfaces of the Planet object to give that dusty edge to the planet.

With the appropriate lighting, shadow rendering functions turned on, and Light Diffusion and Letterbox Image filter plug-ins applied after rendering, we end up with the final product.

About the author... Jack Nichols is a 3D Modeler and Animator from Oakhurst, California. His primary interests include Hard Surface and Celestial modeling and Sci-Fi animation using Lightwave 3D, Adobe PhotoShop, and of course a whole host of Kerlin Softworks utilities. When not animating, he can be found online at a variety of forums such as the Babylon 5 Modelers Guild, and the FirstOnes: Babylon 5 and CGI forums, or driving his Jeep between the 3,000 and 7,500 foot elevation in the Sierra Nevada's.