This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to make a realistic Moon with mountains and craters, using a UV unwrapped sphere, created from a Grid object with warping. We also create the Earth, using an Icosphere and the new Spherical mapping in Cycles. Finally, we animate the two in a simple cosmic scene.
The required textures, available from links in the description of the video, are in the public domain, derived from data offered by the US Geological Survey and NASA. They are corrected for best quality results in whole-body renders.
Not a big fan of step-by-step tutorials. Without explaining and preferably showing why something needs to be done or changed, all those teach is to follow steps. It’s a problem when the steps show to do X and after watching the video you try to make Y. Z will be just a distant dream. Monkey see, monkey do.
The sphere modeling and unwrapping is straightforward enough process which could be explained as steps, although the tutorial could show a better view and take more time to tell and show what is happening. It’s the main point of the video since it’s in the title.
For example, the tutorial goes through the steps of making the sphere. It tells to go to the top view, then rotate along X 90 degrees. Then rotate along Z 180 degrees. Visually it’s the same as doing nothing so why was that done. It flips it around but why one has to do that and could it be done by starting rotations with -90 along X.
Another example is when telling that the loop cuts need to be placed near the ends so that the remove doubles doesn’t remove those. That’s good, but could show how the remove doubles is used as merging tool and that it has a merge distance, and the viewers would know to use that tool for similar purposes after seeing this one.
I know what is happening when you do those steps without further explanation or visual response because I’ve been figuring this stuff out for quite some time now. No need to explain what the difference between clamp direct/indirect is, what the suitable values for those are and why, or what dithering does when you shoot render settings like a machine gun, but I’m not the one who needs the information.
You’re calm, your voice and english is clear and understandable, the tutorial doesn’t teach all about the word “umm” like many others. I think your skills and knowledge would be better put in a tutorial that teaches instead of reading instructions out loud. It would probably take more time to prepare and make the tutorial but that way it would be more valuable to the viewer. So much so that if the tutorial contains the information, it could be linked as an example even if someone is not making an uv unwrapped sphere.