This is a flexible planet shader for space related projects
It is a multipass SM2 shader which uses 6 textures :

- Diffusemap - default colormap
- Normalmap - and its bump
- Glowmap - for cities
- Specularmap - oceans shine
- Cloudmap - for moving clouds
- Wavemap - noise in the oceans

Included one full texture set for an earth like planet using 2048x1024 textures.
Example project ( PlanetDemo1.3dr ) - a v6.45 compatible project containing the shader.

For designing new planets I highly recommend Lunarcell plugin from Flamingpear (works on PSPX and PS)

Tweakables for the shader are these :
//-------------------------------------
//Cloud Settings
//-------------------------------------
float cloudSpeed           = 0.0025f; 
float cloudHeight          = 0.001f;
float cloudShadowIntensity = 0.75f;
float cloudLum             = 2.0f;

//-------------------------------------
//Atmosphere settings
//-------------------------------------
float outerSize   = 2.75f;     //How far out will outer athmosphere go
float innerSize   = 0.002f;    //How far out will inner athmosphere go

float innerStrength  = 0.75f;  //Amount of light emitting in inner athmosohere 
float innerSpread    = 0.25f;  //Amount of light spreading in inner athmosphere
float outerStrength  = 3.5f;   //Amount of light emitting in outer athmosphere
float outerSpread    = 3.5f;   //Amount of light spreading throughout the outer athmosphere

float atmosR = 0.4f;   //Amount of Red
float atmosG = 0.7f;    //Amount of Green
float atmosB = 1.0f;   //Amount of Blue
float atmosA = 1.0f;    //Amount of Alpha

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//     Texture         Filename                                               //Mapname from Lunarcelll
//----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
string DiffuseTX     = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\3_diffuse.dds";    //map color
string DiffuseNM     = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\3_bump.dds";       //bump w/o oceans (convert into normalmap)
string CloudsTX      = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\3_clouds.png";     //cloudmask (needs to be transparent)
string GlowTX        = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\3_cities.dds";     //cities
string SpecularTX    = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\3_reflection.dds"; //oceanmask (invert this)
string WavesTX       = ".\\3DRad_res\\fxTextures\\planets\\WaterRipples.dds";
Have fun