A faltering start...

Armed with some research and basic concepts, I set about creating the actual Earth model. Modeling wasn't an issue at all, since all the layers (land, clouds, atmosphere) were made up of only spheres.Texturing, lighting and rendering proved to be fraught with challenging technical difficulties, some of which were mentioned before in a previous post.

My original approach was to render different layers and passes in Maya and then composite, color correct and add effects in After Effects. From June 2010 to August 2011, I tried this approach (with about half a year of lull in between) and after literally hundreds of attempts, completely failed to get the desired look.

In August 2011, I re-attacked the project with a vengeance, working intensely for long hours after work and during weekends. Ultimately I realized that my initial objectives could not be achieved using this technique alone. While some of the output feels quite nice and artistic to me, none of them look natural or sufficiently realistic :(

Some sample renders:

 It was at this point that I decided to change approach completely...