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how were you able to make your moon sphere completely dark?

To make a “moon sphere” look completely dark, you basically have two options depending on what you mean:

  1. visually shading a sphere so its “night side” is pure black, or
  2. technically hiding or masking the lit part so only darkness shows.

Below is a friendly breakdown in a “forum post” style like your prompt suggests.

Thread title: how were you able to make your moon sphere completely dark?
Side heading: Quick Scoop

Quick Scoop

If someone’s moon sphere looks completely dark, they usually did one (or a combo) of these:

  • Put the light so it never hits the visible side of the sphere (pure shadow).
  • Used a material that outputs full black with no reflections.
  • Used a mask/gradient on the moon’s texture so the visible half is transparent or black.
  • In compositing, simply cut the bright part out and replace it with black.

Think of it as either “no light reaches what the camera sees” or “whatever does reach is overridden to black.”

Mini‑Section 1: Lighting tricks (3D/art)

If you’re in 3D (Blender, Maya, game engines, etc.), a completely dark moon mostly comes down to lighting:

  1. Move the light behind the sphere
    • Put the light source on the opposite side of the camera so the lit side faces away.
    • The camera only sees the night side → it will render as a dark disk.
  2. Kill all ambient/fill light
    • Turn off any environment lighting, ambient occlusion, HDRIs, “sky” lights.
    • If even a tiny bit of ambient remains, you’ll get faint gray instead of deep black.
  3. Make the material non‑reflective
    • Set roughness high and specular/metallic very low.
    • If there’s no reflection of anything, the night side stays “ink black.”

A simple mental picture:

  • Imagine a billiard ball in a pitch‑black room with a flashlight behind it.
  • From the camera’s point of view, the front is just a perfect black circle.

Mini‑Section 2: Texture and masking tricks

Often people don’t only rely on lighting; they use textures and masks:

  1. Gradient mask on the moon
    • Add a gradient (or circular) texture that fades from white to black across the sphere.
    • Use that gradient as a mask : white = visible, black = hidden (alpha = 0).
    • Make the “camera side” of the moon mapped to the black/hidden part → it looks fully dark/transparent.
  2. Connect mask to alpha (transparent background)
    • Route the mask into the alpha channel.
    • The “dark” side becomes invisible against a transparent background, so it appears to just vanish into the sky or background layer.
  3. Override color to black with a mix
    • Use a mix node: if mask = “night side”, output pure black instead of the moon texture.
    • This guarantees no detail or gray bleed‑through.

This is how many people get that “moon just disappears into the sky” look.

Mini‑Section 3: Painting/drawing a dark moon sphere

If you’re talking traditional or digital painting:

  • Define the light direction
    • Decide where the light source is (say, from the right).
    • The left side of the sphere becomes the full shadow.
  • Push the shadow to pure black
    • Normally you’d leave a little bounce light; to make it completely dark, you simply don’t add any reflected light on that side.
    • Just shade the entire visible side to nearly pure black, with no rim lights.
  • Hide the terminator line
    • Don’t leave a clear outline where the light ends.
    • Blend or erase it so the dark hemisphere looks like one solid black disc on the background.

An easy exercise:

  • Draw a circle, shade one half solid black, erase any “rim” highlight, and match your background so there’s little contrast at the edges.
  • That’s essentially a “dark moon.”

Mini‑Section 4: Post‑processing/compositing methods

If this is about photos or renders edited later:

  1. Mask the moon in editing software
    • In Photoshop, GIMP, or similar, select the moon (elliptical selection or object select).
    • Invert the selection/light side if needed and fill that region with black, or use a curve to crush the luminance to zero.
  2. Use layered exposures (photo side)
    • One exposure for the sky, one very dark exposure for the moon.
    • If you only keep the dark exposure of the moon and blend it onto a darker sky, the moon can appear almost fully black against it.
  3. Darken via curves/levels
    • Apply a curve that sharply compresses mid‑tones and highlights on the moon layer.
    • Push everything into the deep shadow region so no detail remains.

This is more of a “cheat,” but visually it works the same: you’re telling the image: “Whatever brightness was there, make it black.”

Mini‑Section 5: Why it looks “unnatural” but cool

In reality, even the dark side of the Moon gets a little earthshine (light reflected from Earth), so it’s rarely perfectly black to the human eye.
When artists or 3D folks make it completely black, they are:

  • Simplifying the lighting for dramatic effect.
  • Copying popular sci‑fi visuals where the night side is an absolute void.
  • Making compositing easier (dark disk against a starscape).

So if you want to recreate that effect in your own project, think:

  • “No light on the camera side” plus “material/mask that refuses to show anything but black.”

TL;DR

To make a moon sphere completely dark:

  • Put light behind it so the camera sees only the shadow hemisphere.
  • Remove all ambient and reflections.
  • Optionally use a gradient/mask to force the visible side to full black or transparency.

If you tell me what app you’re using (Blender, Photoshop, Procreate, a game engine, etc.), I can give step‑by‑step settings for that specific workflow.