Moving through a starfield, trek style

[starbase1]

Hi All,
I'd like to get the effect of moving through a field of stars, a bit like the early star trek stuff, (but I hope a bit better than that!)

My first thought is to use very large numbers of small lens flares, affected by distance, but this sounds potentially awkward and slow...

Anyone got any better ideas?

I just get the feeling this should be really easy!

:mad:

Cheers,
Nick

[mattclary]

Seems like a hypervoxel emitter aimed at the camera should be able to give the effect.

[starbase1]

Sounds like a good idea! And within minutes of posting the question too.

Anyone else got any ideas?

Nick

[Elmar Moelzer]

Hey Nick
There should be a scene in the LW- content, that does just that.
it is called StarWarp.lws and is in the Space- folder.
It basically moves a camea though a cluster of one- point- polys
It is not very good looking, but renders quickly and it is already there. Might lead you to some other ideas too.
CU
Elmar

[starbase1]

Thanks for pointing that out! Initial impressions were that it was very bad.

But I thien found in a couple of minutes that it could be vastly improved by:

* Increasing the surface luminosity to 400%
* Adding linear fog with a 5km radius

This makes it loop smoothly, makes the stars get brighter as they get closer, and makes the streaked stars bright enough to still see clearly!

Hah!

Thanks again, more twiddling is required - slowing it down next I think!

Nick

[PHilly[Dee]]

try adding glow on your one point polys(don't know how that'll look with fog...) as well--and having different clusters render at 2 or 3 pixels.