Some polygons in shadow getting light…

[Steve Bentley]

That looks right to me – with me assuming you have some reflection going on.
Is the issue the mountain tops mid frame that are just peeking into the suns light? or the sparkly areas bottom left. I assumed these were reflections being picked up from some sky map or spherical (but invisible) reflector with a reflection image on it. Or did I miss something altogether?

The sparkle could be causes by the reflection image not spanning the sky or global sphere reflection object (I should explain this – we usually put a giant sphere around every project and make it invisible to the camera but has a spherical reflection image mapped on to it. So it can act as a GI light source or reflection map). If you just slap a texture on a giant sphere sometimes it will repeat a billion times and you need to right click on the texture tag and say fit to object.
The other thing it might be is that you have all this great bump or displacement info going on in the mountains but the smooth water surfaces are perfectly fat polys (Ok, ok, every poly is perfectly flat) but the ones in the lowlands or water might be much larger than the rest and if there is no bump map in that area (even a hint of one) each poly will only reflect one pixel from what ever there is to reflect across it’s entire surface, and that can create a sparkle or a chaotically changing reflection.

[Steve Bentley]

Follow up – it could be the bump is too high on your ocean and that’s where the sparkles are coming from.

It seems there is more specular on the mountains than there should be so it ends up looking like plasticene – is it these slight brightnings on the mountain slopes that you are talking about? If you kill the spec on the landmasses completley that should go away. Generally only the water gets any spec on a planet render.

[Maxim Fischer]

Thank you for your advice. The reflection on the left corner comes from the back light. I am trying now to reduce the specular. 🙂

[Maxim Fischer]

That didn’t work. So it isn’t the specular.

[Steve Bentley]

I think the spec level is good but the size is probably too big (too big a circle). I would reduce the bump though unless this isn’t antialiased. Always check this kind of thing with your final antilaliasing level as it will soften the points in the sparklies.

From a Tech Director stand point: its pretty common to go for this level of bump because it feels like something to you as an artist, but from orbit you really can’t see that level of mountain bumpyness – you can barely see dimensionality in the clouds and the atmo is crazy thin – if the earth were a basketball the entire atmo would be the thickness of an apple skin.
Thats not to say it can’t look like anything you want.

For the reflection on the water you might have better luck with a reflecting object back their like a disk with a circular grad on it that goes from white center to black outisde. (make it invisible to camera with a compositing tag) In the real world so little is an actual specular highlight and it always looks more real when it’s a reflection of something bright instead of the hack of a spec highlight.

[Steve Bentley]

I think the spec level is good but the size is probably too big (too big a circle). I would reduce the bump though unless this isn’t antialiased. Always check this kind of thing with your final antilaliasing level as it will soften the points in the sparklies.

[Steve Bentley]

For the reflection on the water you might have better luck with a reflecting object back their like a disk with a circular grad on it that goes from white center to black outisde. (make it invisible to camera with a compositing tag) In the real world so little is an actual specular highlight and it always looks more real when it’s a reflection of something bright instead of the hack of a spec highlight.

[Steve Bentley]

Using a reflector would also help you control the back light on the landmass which a looks a little too bright. That and reducing your spec hilight on the landmass.
I don’t think you would actually have a reflection on the water on that side unless this is a binary system or the moon is over there.

I would save that setting because at some point you are going to want micro sparkles on the water and you won’t be able to do it – you can load this file and you’re done. I’ve spent hours trying to get the kind of micro sparkles you have there.

[Steve Bentley]

Turn off all lights and then turn each one on and render and see which one it is – then turn off reflections and see if its that (render settings options)

[Steve Bentley]

if that’s still giving you grief, upload the file and I’ll have a look.