A client asked that I use a galaxy of some sort as a background on a huge 9ft. wide by 5ft. high poster (printed in 3 pieces) they need for their trade show booth. I searched the net for decent images but none were at the resolution (and the look/shape) I needed for such a large project. ENTER BLENDER! 3 hours and 80 gazillion halo’ed particles later, this was the result:
Unfortunately this image doesn’t do the actual image justice because printed full size in hi-res it looks really cool with amazing detail! Blender makes me proud!
This is 1200x667 @ 220KB. The actual final render was 10000x5556!!
Of course, comments are welcome as there is ALWAYS room for improvement!
BTW, the redish flared stars in each corner are placed this way because of the text that is going over this background. I wouldn’t do it like this if I was creating this image for fun.
I didn’t time it but the render was around 30-40 minutes. Not too bad. I am dreading the render time for the accompanying fly-through animation they want me to do for use on their show booth video screen though this will be at a much lower rez (like 800x600).
The process was pretty easy. I used images from Hubble as general references but I was after a specific shape. The curve of some of the particle emitters were controlled by lattices. This made it easier to get the right shape. The hardest part was getting the shape of the bright, center section correct.
The size in cm is about 275cm wide by 152cm high. Unfortunately, Blender cannot render large enough to get the 300dpi (for our large format inkjet printer) needed for best results so I just rendered as large as I could. The result is acceptable since the poster will be viewed from a distance of no less than 10 feet (around 3m).
