You may have seen the really sweet looking planet animation from Philipp Pavlov in the last little while. Philipp created a really great looking planet animation by using Trapcode Form and Trapcode Particular in After Effects. If you have not seen the “Trapcode Planet” animation, I have added it below for your viewing pleasure.

Philipp Pavlov starts out by creating the sphere shape for the planet by using Trapcode Form using the base shape of a sphere and setting the particle number, sizes and color appropriately, then adding the continents using a simple image map. The planet’s rings and miscellaneous streaks are accomplished by using Trapcode Form as well, and just changing the base shape and adjusting how the particles are drawn. Philipp Pavlov writes:

“In this video I’m gonna make similar planet from scratch and I’ll show a few technics wich I used for Trapcode Planet. I know, final result need better color correction and settings need much more tweaks, but I’ll hope you’ll get main idea.”

Philipp does use a geodesic sphere exported from Cinema 4D as an OBJ file (which is one of Form’s newer added features),that he also uses with Trapcode Form however, barring that – everything else is completely creating inside of After Effects. Really a fantastic looking piece.