Basic shell script using povray. If i continue i will probably try renderpixie. I do not like gui's and many raytracing things seem very gui-centered, that narrows it down a lot. (for one, gui's make tutorials retarded.. click this click that.)

The examples are made using jattenalle's planets.

Even if i can't find a good alternative to povray, it is good enough, and ray tracing and how povray does textures is interesting; using cyclic parameters to stuff you can make tiling textures and stuff, and generate as many as you want by randomly translating the various patterns. You can even make different varieties of stuff, I have tried on another planet generator, but the latter is slightly more difficult. Got too many ice and desert planets, or hot planets with a lot of ocean, or stuff that didn't quite look nice. Btw, the failed attempt to add ice(caps, but also atop of mountains) here came from that.

Note that converting to jpg saves a factor 5 in data. I can see the difference, but it looks better to me :)