Download your HD realistic planet textures here!

Planets are the unchallenged champions of establishing shots, with the power to transport a viewer to the other side of the universe in an instant. This is why some of the most iconic imagery in cinema history has featured these planetary spacescapes. Think of almost every opening scene in Star Wars, or the first minute of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wall-E does a great job of using planets for storytelling too, as viewers can see how our entire planet has become polluted into a brown-muddy looking ball in future history.

We’ve taken the step to create these ultra HD planet texture maps to help you build your own space-scenes. Knowing that the universe has too many planets to count, we’ve made sure to feature many variations such as deserts, volcanic and ice planets.

How do you create the planets? Well, these textures can be applied to spherical surfaces either in 3D modelling programs such as 3ds Max, Cinema4d or Blender. If you’re wanting to keep it simple with Adobe After Effects, you can use the CC Sphere effect (in the Perspective category) to make the planet even quicker! Game creators can apply these textures in Unity to help make their sci-fi game even more stunning!

We have gone ahead and built out additional maps for even more control, such as height maps and illumination maps for the volcanic planets, so 3D artists can take their renders even further by giving true detail to their terrain.