First, thanks everyone for the kind words
Will I plan on releasing this? Yes I will as it's my first one as stated earlier. I also plan to make many more, but most of these you wont see until TotT gets released.
How I made the clouds? I will admit here now, they were the most time consuming part of making planets if you ask me. Honestly, it's a combination of using the Warp brush (I use Paint Shop Pro 9) on a Twirled image. The image for cloud making started using a random smudge to roughly a circle shape. Then used the twirl function until it was looking like a giant hurricane. Once I did that, I used blur just a tad bit. next up I used the Warp brush in several different sizes and this is where things need to be done carefully. I worked in small areas as much as I could as for some strange reason, the warp brush will delete large areas if your not careful. Undo is your best friend here!
Just keep working at it until you get a feel for the effect your looking for. And in my case, this is a ice-menthane planet that has high winds in most cases. Hence why some clouds look very smooth and not so puffy. lastly, use the Soft or blur just a tad to give the clouds some softness and don't over do it! just when you think you can do more, stop and your done. Note, I redid this three times before I got a hang of what I was doing and I'm sure you will too!
Another thing, I went back and forth with the warp brush and twirl function until I got what you see. You may or may not need too. All depends on what you want for your planet.
Yes I can see the unusual areas in the dark areas with the clouds. I have looked into this and what you see is just the clouds in the dark areas interacting with the night filter for the planet. Looks unusual yes, but I think in real life, it might be somewhat the same.
Yes those are lights you see in the dark part of the planet and once you get a close look, you will see they are in canyons and deep areas of the planet and only lights from building are there. Nearly the entire planet lives under ground in large central places like that movie with Arnold Swartzanagger and Sharon Stone on Mars.
It started out as a Mining planet, but since Cappalla's star went POOF, this far end of the GTVA became more important and Dubhe IV got the 21st Battle Group and a new headquarters.
But that's my story and yours can be different too
I'll release this sometime soon.
