Water Ripples in Crater Lake, Oregon:

This is where I started, by experimenting with the WaterWorks plugin for Terragen.   I was trying to get some nice height ripples in conjunction with reflections.

In the process, while moving the sliders around in Terragen, I came upon a couple of settings that looked like they might work for a "flowing lava" effect.

Waterworks has a "Lava" setting, but the effect I saw in my mind's eye was a bit different.

Terragen world file: lake_ripples.tgw
Terragen terrain file: crater_lake_ripples.ter

Changing the Water to Lava on Io:

I changed all the colors in the atmosphere, creating a red & gold pallete with a red-hot haze layer.  And I established the viewpoint I wanted, closer to the water surface with some interesting rocks on the left.

I reduced the size of the sky and raised its height so it wasn't visible anymore. (Later someone mentioned that if I turned off the sky in the rendering, it would work the same and save rendering time. - duh!)  Anyway, the trick is that the sky creates the colors in the "lava" because the water is set for maximum reflectivity.

I saved a couple of different renderings of this, with different amounts of roughness in the "water". (I wanted to reduce the "blockiness" of some of the bright spots in the foreground by mixing the two images.)

Terragen world file: lava_lake2.tgw

Rendered with No Atmosphere:

I didn't particularly care for the degree to which the haze affected the rim of the crater, so I saved a reference image without the water and atmosphere.

2 Lava Images Combined:

The layer in Photoshop with the two lava renderings combined.

Lava Lake added to the Crater:

The "no atmosphere" rendering on a layer under the lava.

Glow Added between the Layers:

A bit of the original rendering, which had such strong glow, is added between the lava layer and the crater rim layer. This layer has been edited to show only a bit of the crater rim, fading out as it goes up. The whole layer is highly transparentized, also.

Adding the Stars:

The black sky area on the crater layer was cleared, and behind that layer I inserted a star-scape created in Universe.

Creating a Model of Jupiter:

I have an existing Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) model of Jupiter, that uses this map. (Based on  images captured by the Cassini spacecraft on its way out to Saturn.)

Capturing the View of Jupiter:

This is what the Jupiter model looks like in the VRML browser.  I can "fly" around it, to get the view I want.  When it looks right, I capture the screen to use in Photoshop.

Adding Jupiter to the Scene:

Image processing done on the Jupiter image:

• Brightness/contrast/saturation
• Horizontal stretch (Jupiter is an oblate spheroid)
• Stronger sunlight terminator (VRML always makes very soft light to shade transitions.)
• Rotated

The Jupiter image was inserted on a layer between the stars and the crater rim.

Here's a link to a hires version (1024 by 600, 94kb) of the final image:  lava_lake.jpg