Greetings!
I´m working on a Earth model and it has been textured, for the most part. But one thing i´m wondering tho is how to light up specific places in the shadow. I want it to look like if the light would come from the cities on our planet, it would really add some more realism into the scene. If anyone could help me with this i would be very greatful, because i have been working with it for quite long now.

sry for the english, still in school;)

I think you might want to do this in post, you could create a texture with some bright tiny spots that should make the lights and then bright them in post with a bit of subtle glow.

Another way would require you to put a lot of point lights where you want the lights to be, if they arent that many, but be aware that you would need probably too much lights to be effective.

I still think the best way to do this is make it in post, use texture with bright spots, maybe look internet for some earth from space image, and try to bright lights in post.

I hope i’ve been of some help, have you some image to show? just to get a better idea and help you further

Thank you very much for your comment!, and i´ll give it a shot:). I´ll give you a pic of the Light/dark side of the earth.

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Well, i guess you dont have much alternatives than do it in post, its faster, you gonna have more control too.

I’ve quickly grabbed some images off the web to see if this is the effect you are for

as you can see, especially in last one, you might want to follow with lights the shape of the actual land that has lights on it, so it is more real.
If you put for examples some tiny points like your stars, and form a more consistent shape of lights, i guess you’ll be in the right way on how to achieve this, you might want to use pictures too and composite in photoshop.

If you want to do it straight in 3d for learning purpose, well..i guess you need to use a lot of pointlights, or a black and white texture, being white the light spots, and use the “glare” lens filter from Mental Ray with a combination of photographic_exposure burn highlights, in a separate pass. But that is kinda long and tedious process you can easily avoid doing it in post:)

you are welcome