Trying to randomly generate planets using concentric spheres

How do I...?
1

Hello, I’m trying to make a game where players are visiting other stars and planets. Currently trying to implement a system where the planets are randomly generated using three 3D spheres, each one slightly bigger than the other. The idea is that I give each textures representing water, land, and clouds. For land and cloud spheres, the textures have alpha channels so we can see the sphere behind it. However, it seems there’s some glitching going on when there’s 2 or more alpha textures on top of each other. I’m getting the land layer popping in and out consistently. See the gif below.ezgif-7ddde9ee766912d3

I’ve tried to space out the sphere sizes so they aren’t close together, swapping the land and cloud sphere (then the cloud sphere disappears), and many other things in the course of troubleshooting. Even tried putting the cloud sphere on another layer, but then it cannot properly go behind the planet.

Gemini says that I can fix this by “Alpha cutoff”, where transparent pixels are culled, but I can’t find this option in Gdevelop :frowning:

Any advice? Or should I move to a 2D based sprite system?

2

How did you go with this? It’s a great idea. Not sure from the gif, but it looks a bit like the land is over the clouds? Would the size of the spheres from smallest to largest be water, land, clouds? I don’t know why the land is popping in and out though.

3

The cloud is over the land, but if I switch it around, then the clouds start popping in and out! It just seems like Gdevelop can’t handle 2 or more alpha layers overlapping each other. I ended up pivoting to a 2D based system instead, which can handle multiple alpha layers just fine.