Celestia Forums

Just looking for opinions here. But how would you folks create a texture of a world that is entirely oceanic, and to a depth of at least 5 to 10 miles consistently? A simple blue map with a cloud overlay? Or is there some sort of texturing and coloring detail that would make even a non-coud covered map interesting to look at?

Or would you even bother, and simply make a good cloud map and nothing more? Or maybe you would make an alternate texture of the ocean bottom?

...John...

would an ocean world even have that many gaps in the clouds for you to be able to see through the surface?

It depends on how you want to visualize it, I guess. The common sci fi ocean world, a tropical paradise (minus the islands for my purposes), then there would be. There would be weather patterns, albeit they would probably be a bit more regular in appearance than a planet with relatively large land masses. This is a type of planet that I will also be mapping out in the near future.

However, the world I am working on now, there wouldn't be, no. This world, called waterdon, is essentially a moist greenhouse planet, with temperatures approaching the Venusian range, but with much more water than a standard planet, and possessing sufficient pressure to keep all of the water from evaporating (at least for a period of several thousand to a few tens of thousands of years). As such, the surface is uniformly covered by clouds.

I was mainly wondering if it would be worth it to try and make some sort of textured surface.

...John...

Wouldn't the surfaces of some life-bearing water worlds have significant plant cover? (Unlike the Earth's oceans.) Wouldn't they cause differences in evaporation and thus in the cloud cover?

Even if they're miles down, wouldn't mountain ranges have indirect effects on ocean currents near the surface, shaping the plant distributions?

You know, I have no idea. I know that subsurface topography effects subsurface currents, but are there not seperate surface currents?

I'll ask around on some of my lists, and see what kind of concensus I can find.

...John...