Space Environment

jason33w

Trying to make a High Resolution space environment for a movie that I am making. I want something to use in 3dsmax not just a background of a 2D photoshop pic. Any tips? I know this is kinda vague, just need some tips to get the cogs moving.

[Deleted User]

are you making a nebula, star, planet, moon??

jason33w

Nebulae, I already have the planet models and such. I also want to stay away from the Max starfields.

MadKoiFish

Well if you dont want to use max starfield only other option is a sphere with turned faces and a starfiled mapped to it or some other shader set to creat the random stars. There might be plugs though that I dont know of for generating them.

spudmonkey

You can create a physical star field using a P-cloud with spheres as the particles. For a semi-solid nebula you can use combustion gizmos or a P-cloud again but this time use meta-particles and an object based emitter. That way you can define the shape of the "cloud" using a low poly object. The texture is what makes the P-cloud based nebula. I'll post an example or two if you want

jason33w

an example would be great.
Right now I am trying to create a 4096*4096 background image in Photoshop. I can't seem to get the stars right. I am using the noise effect right now.

spudmonkey

Hideously quick, but here's a starfield example. The rough steps were

1. Create a big sphere with a smaller sphere inside it and boolean to create a hollow sphere. Change the object properties so that the object is not rendered

2. Create a PCloud. Set the emitter object to the object from step one.

3. Play with the settings to meet your requirements. I used the following




You should see something like this in the viewport



4. Play with the textures and glow settings for the texture to get the desired effect. Without glows it will look something like this



As you can (hopefully) see, there is a good random size and position spread to the stars. The camera is placed inside the hollow part of the sphere object, so if it is moved or rotated then the star field will move around appropriately. The hollow space was used to stop the stars from being too close to the camera - your planets and other stuff will be placed inside the space too so that the stars do not pass through the objects and vice versa. You will also want to set the PCloud properties to not receive and not cast shadows.

Other improvements could include using multiple PClouds with different settings, a different texture setting and different glows to create variation in the star colours

Using the same principle but setting metaparticles as the particle type and a more complex emitter you can create something like the following, which would be a good starting point for a nebula



I used a semi-transparent texture and a glow effect based on the original texture colour for the glows. It's probably a little more flamey than you would want, but again you should get the idea

Edit: Attached a screenshot of the PCloud for the last image

Edit 2: Just realised that the Pcloud is using spheres instead of metaparticles, so either would do it, depending on the effect that you want! Spheres will give the cloud volume, whereas metaparticles will give you a smoother object, but with no central details

jason33w

Fantastic, Thanx!

Ill Give it a try!! I let you know how it works out for my project shortly

jason33w

It renders insanely slow for it just being a bunch of particles on the screen. Kind of odd. But thanx anyway. Still working on my Photoshop version though. Comin along good. Though I will definately keep tweaking your version. I cn definately use it.

MadKoiFish

Any time you mess with particles itll lag rendertime. Texture maps do so as well so it is a fine line though what spud showed you is technicaly the best. the stars will have a depth and still paralax well on camera movements.

jason33w

Cool Beans, Thanx for the help guys!

xanthra

MadKoiFish wrote: »

Any time you mess with particles itll lag rendertime. Texture maps do so as well so it is a fine line though what spud showed you is technicaly the best. the stars will have a depth and still paralax well on camera movements.

Why not do both ? A texture map and some particles ?

spudmonkey

Ultimately if you want the best possible scene then you are going to use a mixture of techniques, so there is no reason why you couldn't use both and even add some more into the mix. The point was more about the effects on render time of the different methods than any one method being better than another...

[Deleted User]

so why is noone suggesting MilkyWay for the stars ?

spudmonkey

HawkMan wrote: »

so why is noone suggesting MilkyWay for the stars ?

Is that a Max plugin?

[Deleted User]

yeah, KY Milky Way, awesoem plaugin for space enviroments, with support for twinking and warp streaking and other stuff. and a choice between 3D field or 2D field.

jason33w

Hmmm,

Where can I get it?

Melak

Right here: Last Jedi Outpost | 3D Studio MAX Plug-ins
The description is in russian, but the readme and the plugin itself is in english, don't worry. It's a really nice plugin!

spudmonkey

Nice one

jason33w

Awesome! Works like a charm. Especially coupled with a noise map used as an environment map. I like how you can simulate a thick band of stars like a "Milky Way" (HaHa, Get it?):thumb:

DAve

Also check out the Betterspace tutorials on AP3D http://www.ap3d.com/betterspace/
They are for LW, but the 2nd nebula tutorial is all about the photoshop work.

DAve