Procedural Planet Generator for blender

Create stunning planets for your space scenes in blender Cycles

The Procedural Planet Generator enables you to easily create a great variety of realistic-looking planets in a short amount of time.

The download consists of the blend-file, which includes the node groups that can be used for planet generation and a python script that can be installed as an add-on in blender and can be used to randomly generate planets.

Features:

• Randomly generate planets with the powerful random generator add-on, that offers many options to specify the kind of planet that you want to generate
• Create your own planets from scratch by using the 26 pre-designed node groups that come with the blend-file
• Use 12 pre-designed planet materials as a basis to create your own planet

A large variety of planets, like desert, ocean, ice or volcanic planets, but also moons and gas giants can easily be created with the node groups that come with the blend-file or by using the random generator, including volumetric clouds and atmosphere, as well as ring systems.

The generated materials and textures are 100% procedural, no image textures are used.

Check out the Documentation PDF for the full list of features and explanations.

Important notes:

The add-on only works when the node groups that come with the blend-file are present (meaning it can only be used inside the blend-file that is part of the download or when appending the node groups to another blend-file).

The generator has specifically been designed to be used in blender Cycles and many node groups do not give proper results in blender Eevee.

A good GPU is recommended when using the Procedural Planet Generator.

Version history:

Version 1.0.2 (released 10/13/24): Fixed an issue with the random generator giving out an error when generating volcanic planets in some cases because of the removal of the Musgrave Texture node in blender 4.1.

Version 1.0.1: Fixed an issue with the python script where ring textures could not be generated because of the new Principled BSDF shader in blender version 4.0.

Further information:

The add-on can be installed in blender like any other add-on (see the Documentation PDF or the Showcase and Introduction video for details).

The Procedural Planet Generator works in blender 3.x, 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2. Older versions have not been tested as thoroughly, but it should also work in blender 2.9x.

Note: The random generator add-on only works when English is selected as the language in blender.

For the license, see the Documentation PDF (page 55).

If you do run into any bugs, please contact me and I'll try my best to fix them.

Links:

Documentation PDF file
Trailer
Showcase and Introduction video
Tutorial: Creating an Alien Planet manually from scratch
Tutorial: Creating landscapes (side-feature)
Tutorial: Exporting procedural planets to other software
Thread on blenderartists.org