Starfield for animations?

max sideburn

Ok, I'm sitting at home watching Star Trek: Enterprise last night, and knowing the the show's space scenes are done in CG, I'm wondering to myself, how do they get such nice starfields in the background?

I mean I've had lots of success making gorgeous starfields to put in the backgrounds of my still renders, but how on earth do you get it to look so good, and so far away, like they do with an animation?

How do you guys do it? I've seen some work some of you have done that have the nice starfields in the background that look pretty realistic and actually allow the camera to pan around and see different stars.

Please guys this is one nut I've been trying to crack for years, and never been satisfied with the results. Any and all help appreciated. Thanks.

Sarraj

1. Find a nice image of some stars.

2. Create a gigantic sphere.

3. Invert the normals to make the texture appear on the "inside" instead of the "outside" in Max is under the modifier list

4. Apply a UVW map, set to sphere at apply your texture. You might have to increase the repeats, depending on the size of the starts and how big the image is. I usually set it to 3 on all 3 axis unless something looks funny.


Hope this helps

aszazeroth

Watch out for shooting towards the poles of the huge hollow sphere, unless you have a pinch-less map or map-projection.

max sideburn

But if I have a huge sphere with a map on the inside of it will the image be bright enough to be seen from far away? In my experience with trying this type of thing the surface of the sphere has to be placed really far away, but at that distance the stars don't want to show up, or are very dim. Or am I doing something wrong?

Sarraj

Did you set the texture's self illumination to 100%? If not that should solve your problem.

max sideburn

yeah I tried that, but I remember still having a problem with it. I'll try again when I get home.

Forcemaster2000

I've done this in Truespace...I've found that I have to set a series of "infinite" lights pointing out from the center of the sphere towards the faces. I think I used 6 or 8 of them. Make sure the lights don't cast shadows, and when using so many, each of them have to be set at a relatively low level.

Hope this helps!

Coolhand

no need to use lights Fm, just do what sarraj says.

Ramiel

This question was already been posted many times...
But...
If you are using MAX, go to this site and download the free plugin "Milky Way" for your version...
Last Jedi Outpost | 3D Studio MAX Plug-ins

Forcemaster2000

Coolhand wrote: »

no need to use lights Fm, just do what sarraj says.

My idea probably wasn't too helpful :shiner: Just thought I'd throw that one in just in case...in my case it was necessary as Truespace 5.2 doesn't support setting a texture to self-illuminate...as far as I know!

backstept

Forcemaster2000 wrote: »

My idea probably wasn't too helpful :shiner: Just thought I'd throw that one in just in case...in my case it was necessary as Truespace 5.2 doesn't support setting a texture to self-illuminate...as far as I know!

in the materials editor just set luminance all the way up

Coolhand

Yeah, it's supported that forever, probably. I remember making lit materials for lights and things in TS2!

max sideburn

hmm, you know I haven't tried to invert normals in so long I can't seem to find the correct modifier in Max 8.

Forcemaster2000

backstept wrote: »

in the materials editor just set luminance all the way up

You beat me to it!

After reading Coolhands reply, I went in and started messing around and realized that that was exactly all that was needed! I can't believe how long I messed around trying to work around something that was eluding me. :shiner:

Coolhand wrote:

Yeah, it's supported that forever, probably. I remember making lit materials for lights and things in TS2!

Thanks for the assist Sensei! You should have mentioned that years ago!

Coolhand

well you never asked before.:)

Not that i can remember how to do it, it was along time ago. I just remember the results.

[Deleted User]

could procedurally generate the starfield using noise modifiers etc. Just select the environment map and put a noise in there Then instance it into an empty map channel to change round sexyness. Thats how i make all mine for animation and stills. If you couldnt be bothered working out the values to procedurally generate what you want then do the sphere thing but go into its properties and change it so it doesnt cast shadows or recieve light. That helps solve alot of issues.

nulll

max sideburn wrote: »

hmm, you know I haven't tried to invert normals in so long I can't seem to find the correct modifier in Max 8.

Dunno if there's a modifier, i just convert my mesh from editable poly to mesh, where you can select faces and invert the normals. Then i convert back to editable poly.

For my star maps i tend to put the same map in the self-illumination slot. Might be a good idea to turn on supersampling as well, especially if its animated and the camera moves around, to get smooth movement of the map in the background.

Zardoz

For that a star map texture in a sphere works good, you need that the texture will be 4x of size of your render resolution ... if not, your stars will be a bit blurry (and avoid of trying make zooms, if not have a more bigger map)

The method of starmaps is memory hungry (big maps need more memory) I use the Milky shape, and i manage to created good procedural starfields that are realistic , using these plug in three times to recreate well the different dims of the stars and how the eye can see the color which the dim (only we can percibe the color of bright stars). Plus not have any problem which zooms or motion blur