Animated Starfield

porthos62

Hi. I'm trying to produce an amimated starfield effect that has 'stars' passing by the camera. Can I use a Particle Emitter ?. if so could anyone suggest some settings for it ? thanks.

PhilW

Try this as a starting point:
Start with 5000 particles and have a large emitter space (eg. 50ft cube).
Start the simulation before 00:00:00 and set the emission rate to 5000 so that the particles are fully populated from frame 1.
Set the lifetime to be longer than your animation.
Set all mass / velocity / gravity type information to zero so that the points are static in your scene.
Set the particle type to object and use a splat with a circular gradient map in the alpha channel and glow set to white.
You will probably need to scale the splats down to quite a small size.
Animate it by flying your camera through the static particle field.

I hope this gives you something approximating to what you want.

FractalDimensia

PhilW said:

Try this as a starting point:
Start with 5000 particles and have a large emitter space (eg. 50ft cube).
Start the simulation before 00:00:00 and set the emission rate to 5000 so that the particles are fully populated from frame 1.
Set the lifetime to be longer than your animation.
Set all mass / velocity / gravity type information to zero so that the points are static in your scene.
Set the particle type to object and use a splat with a circular gradient map in the alpha channel and glow set to white.
You will probably need to scale the splats down to quite a small size.
Animate it by flying your camera through the static particle field.

I hope this gives you something approximating to what you want.

I'm going to put this suggestion into a "remember" file. What a great way to do a "Star Trek" like warp effect. :)

Thanks, Phil!

PhilW

Just for some addition "food for thought", you can use a similar approach to get small particles of debris in an underwater scene too!

porthos62

Thanks so much. I will give this a try later. :-)

Spaceland

Ok i will need to get that training from Daz for 8.5 .

But i try a little bit the partical and i think i missed something, i never playd with it before. But from what i read i could create a star field using the partical generator and then render only the frame that look like what i am searching for but is there away to change the color of the particles to be random or i would have to do that post work?

I very a novice with partical generator, but learning

PhilW

Once you have it the way you want with a single colored splat, duplicate the splat (Ctrl-D) and go to edit the shader. You will get a panel popup asking if you want to edit the master or create a new master - in this case, it is important to create a new master as we want to make several different colors. Now edit the glow channel so that it is a different color (let's say bright red).

You should now have two objects grouped under your particle emitter, both called splat, one white and one red, and the emitter will make a random choice between the two for each particle. Continue to duplicate more splats and change the colors until you have enough variety for your purposes, then you will have your multi-coloured starfield.

Oh and by the way, here is a suitable map for your alpha channel.

PhilW

...and here is a still from my version for comparison.

evilproducer

I would also disable the cast and receive shadows option in the particle emitter's General tab to avoid unwanted shadows.

Another possibility is to use small sphere primitives with a glow channel set in the shader. Whatever method you use, you could use a color gradient and a Particle shader to drive the color of the particles. There's options to use size, age etc.

No need for a splat either. There's a Point At Camera particle option that is essentially a splat or billboard, so no need to createa separate splat and fiddle with it's size.

Spaceland

PhilW said:

...and here is a still from my version for comparison.

wow thank You Phil. Great input, when i am home i Will tested put.

regards

Dartanbeck

If you wanted to further the warp' appearance, like going into hyperspace in Star Wars, you could then take your rendered result into Dogwaffle Pro: Howler, and apply an animated effect, like mystic vision, to warp the light at just the right time and blast to yet another effect by the end.

For those whom might own "Starry Sky for Carrara", you can use the 'Panorama Camera'* view to stretch the globes that hold the replicated stars. It's actually really easy in that because you can actually keep your stuff in the center of Carrara's view, and animate the star fields from that outer camera view.

I built it just for having ultimate control of what stars can do in the scene. Something that I've found to be incredibly missing. While you can change the shapes of the invisible space spheres, you can also change the stars, the patterns of stars, etc., I made one of them specifically to be completely different from our own constellations, because space travel should certainly give different patterns. That particular map uses a cloud placement distribution map so that when you "Shuffle" the replicator it gives an entirely new result. Where as the earth-bound view, while not an completely accurate placement, will always produce constellations that we recognize, but will switch out what colors go where, and their sizes, etc., 'Twas most fun to tweak to production version. Then two more star fields are merely random, clustering distributions of the smaller, less bright stars for higher or lower 'fill' stars. This is useful because the more light that gets emitted from, say, within an atmosphere, you should have less visible stars. So you can turn those off, leaving just the brightest, constellation stars.

You can stretch them out, then move them until the one end is near center. Then further down the time line move the whole thing to the other side. You're flying along without moving the camera. So, if you wish, you can select your ship and pan and pitch the film camera as well and really crank in some drama.

Edit:
Oooops... here's the screen shots:

* Panorama view sees the globes from the outside

Dartanbeck

Oh... I almost forgot.
For some scenes, I'll be keeping the camera on one side of the ship as it's cruising. So I can simply add a rotation to Invisible Space and we can fly for really long distances. You could also use the spin modifier on the whole group and speed it up at the right spot for super acceleration.

porthos62

Thanks for all the help.

@Phil - works great. I'll post my results soon
@Dartanbeck - I've now bought Starry Sky for some future animation I'm planning

Thanks guys. :)

3dOutlaw

I was curious if you got good results using the emitter?

porthos62

Here is a sample of the Starfield creation. Looks great when animated. thanks guys.