Nice tut. For the texture bit, you can also just render clouds in black and white, and color it later. Also you can repeat it with more layers and blend modes for a bit more depth to the planet. Oh, and you can also alpha mask a circle out of your texture and add a bit of bulge instead of shape3d. Gives you a bit more control over texture stretchiness, plus then you have the alpha mask for the shadow/inner glow etc. etc. Just goes to show you there's a bunch of different ways to do things
Edit: Woohoo for being linked to