Gas Giant
The Gas Giant shader is a plugin for Cinema 4D.
For space scenes in Cinema 4D, if you want a gas giant plant there is the supplied Planet shader. This has some very basic variants for Saturn, Neptune, etc. but is not very good. Most users probably resort to using a bitmap to create a gas giant, but then you run into potential copyright issues and there is only a limited number of bitmaps available.
This shader is an attempt at a better gas giant. It is quite customisable and fully procedural.
Here are some sample renders showing what this shader can do. Click the small image to see a larger version. (The star field background is generated using the StarScape shader available on this site.) Note that the planet rings shown in the last image are not present in this shader, but are a separate shader available soon!
- Basic Gas Giant
The basic gas giant shader with all default settings except a distortion strength of 10%.
- Different colour gradient
The same basic shader but using a different gradient.
- Soft clouds
Height-based (rather than fBm) gradient and a Noise shader to give distortion, the aim being to generate soft clouds rather like Uranus.
- Stormy clouds
More clouds but stormy ones - like Venus perhaps?
- Curl mode
Demonstrating the curl distortion mode using 2 iterations.
- Jovian
Here the shader uses a colour palette taken from real NASA images of Jupiter.
- Rings
A bit of a teaser this one; the rings are not included in the gas giant shader, but are a separate shader currently in preparation.
The shader distortion can be animated. In this clip, there is a simulation of a moon transiting the planet, while the coloured bands are also animated:
The shader interface looks like this:
Availability
Gas Giant is the second in a series of 'space scene' shaders and objects. It is free to download and use, and you can download a copy from the links below.
Compatibility
Gas Giant is compatible with the following versions of Cinema 4D:
| Cinema 4D version | Compatible? |
|---|---|
| R2024 | Yes |
| R2025 | Yes (Windows only - see this blog article for details) |
There are no versions of Gas Giant for C4D R2023 or earlier.
Download
Download GasGiant for R2025 (Windows only)
Page last updated February 27th 2025