How to make an asteroid field?

Posts

• [Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member

  June 2009 #2

  what program are you using.
  
  if you program supports it you could try to model about 10 or 15 of varying shape/size then duplicate or make instances of them.
  
  And for the dust i would imagine the best thing to do that with would be a particle emitter.
• Melak332 Posts: 0Member

  June 2009 #3

  

  Like Puny_Lemon suggested I'd model a couple "hero" asteroids from looking at photos, depending on the level of detail you are looking for with craters and pick a few rocky photos to clonestamp a texture together from in PS
  
  Scattering them around can be achieved easily with a particle system, and that's what I#d use for the dust too. Facing planes or boxes or spheres with transparent fallof.
• spudmonkey0 Posts: 0Member

  June 2009 #4

  When doing the "hero" asteroids try using a sculpting program like Mudbox or ZBrush as you can get really fantastic results that way
• L2K0 Posts: 0Member

  June 2009 #5

  I would render an asteroid turnaround in tga/png for the transparency, and use it in the bg (as facing particules/sprites) to boost the scene without beeing too heavy.
  a few low poly normal maped mid range models, and 1 or 2 hi poly models for the foreground.
  
  zbrush would be great to model them. a few strokes on a sphere and youre done.
  texturing wouldnt be an issue. a few earth and dirt photos will do the trick.
• Starship472 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,981Member

  September 2009 #6

  

  Here it goes a few options:
  A free video tutorial on 3d Max Asteroid Field
  YouTube - 3ds Max Asteroid Field
  3DS MAX Modeling Tutorial : Space Scene Asteroid Belt - Tutorialsphere.com
  Space Scene: Asteroid Belt - 3DS Max tutorial
  Hope that helps.
• Freak1090 Posts: 4,361Member

  September 2009 #7

  

  Is there a program like mudbox or Zbrush that is free like Blender?
• animator0 Posts: 0Member

  September 2009 #8

  Yes, there are a few. The closest to ZBrush or Mudbox that you are likely to find would be 3D-Brush. It is not quite as advanced as the commercial apps, but it does work well.
  
  Link: 3D Brush - Texturing of 3D Model
• Freak1090 Posts: 4,361Member

  September 2009 #9

  

  Thanks for the link.
• Toa_Kaita332 Posts: 0Member

  September 2009 #10

  

  If you ever use 3ds Max like I do, you can also reverse-engineer my ringed planet tutorial and instead of making a tube, you can make a box.
  
  Making A Ringed Planet (In Detail) In 3ds Max
• backstept2250 Posts: 950Member

  September 2009 #11

  

  hey I forgot about this thread!
  looks like some cool things to try :thumb:
• BDelacroix0 Posts: 0Member

  October 2009 #12

  You'll need to break it down into smaller problems.
  
  Dust, small rocks and large rocks (the hero asteroids talked about earlier.)
  
  For the dust, I use a modification of Peter Draper's technique for generating a galaxy.
  
  The small rocks shouldn't be too hard. Just make some convincing wrinkled ellipsoids and spread them around using the particle system.
  
  The hero asteroids are where your real work will come in. Peter Draper has a way to make these as well in his book "Deconstructing the Elements" starting on page 277.
  
  You might also be able to pull something out of his tutorial on making a colliding asteroid field scene. That's the fun part about this kind of work. You can learn techniques that can be modified and applied to other applications.
  
  One caveat about the dust part. It uses additive/subtractive filters in a transparent texture. There isn't anything wrong with that, but what I have found is that having more light sources seems to exponentially increase the amount of render time. If your computer isn't an extremely hefty one, you may be looking at very long render times or have to do a composite render.