Please give me your input

[Mason]

I made a 3d earth using After Effects, with the gole of photorealism I used several images images from nasa for the earth texture and I still dont think it looks very good. I’d love for some of you you heads to tell me what I could do to improve it.
Watch on vimeo http://vimeo.com/17745322
Watch on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aZy5da_b0E

[guillem ramisa]

Earth spins too fast. The cloud layer doensn’t look right, it’s flat, beacuse you’re in 2d-land with after effects, so I guess you’re limited with that. But it becomes very obvious when you spin the cloud layer faster than the earth is spinning, so skip that, it doesn’t look good. If you want some movement in the clouds you should try and animate that layer in some other way… warp it or something, should be very very subtle I think. Also I think you should work more on the cloud-texture, look at reference.
Then there is how you light the globe. If you look at (real) reference it looks like the dark side is too bright (you should probably skip the extra light on the right hand side). Ther are of course different images with different lighting, but me personally would choose a more moody contrasty reference where a lot of the earth is in the dark. I like contrast, and I think the eye does too 🙂
Also, if you (again) look at referenece you never see any stars. So maybe tone that down bit. The earth atmosphere layer is probably a bit much as well. And the “space” dust layer. All of those things would probaby not show in a real photo but it kind of comes with the genre I guess. Use with care, if too much it will look fake and over the top.
And if you want the image to move and not be too static I would probably add a bit of a camera move instead of spinning the earth. If you want it even more dramatic, add a sun behind the earth globe. Then you will have a lot to work with… flare, the sun lighting the atmosphere around the edge etc.
My final and most important advice: Look at reference! That’s key. Google “earth from space” or something like that. Good luck.

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