here is a still image from my first attempt at a nebula useing a tutorial on http://www.avidgamers.com/Randall3D/
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6622/neb1.jpg
Please C&C this image as i tried to expand on the tutorial that randal3d created.
the stars are a little big
This is really nice! Thanks for the link, I’ve been trying to make nebulas with procedural textures for some time.
the stars aint big someone looking through a telescope lol 
Wow nice! I like it!
Its not so much that the stars are too big…they just look too round and blotchy. I’d set the average star size smaller…and maybe the distance larger.
wow thanks for all the positive feedback 
as to the star size and positioning, i used the settings provided in the tutorial. they can and probably will be tweaked a little when i do my final pet project which is still kind of on the drawing board 
i did this because i wanted to do the total project in blender and use particles for a nebula because i have seen them done via a set of planes with a procedural texture on them to make the nebula, but it never seemed to be quite what i was looking for. i still think that a particle based nebula in blender is not totaly feasable at this time. i want to have a ship pass thru one and as it passed through it, the ship creates little eddys in its wake much like a boat through the water. with blender’s current physics i dont think this can be done. i may be totaly wrong 
if any of you can simulate this in blender with the current physics please post a tutorial on how to do it.
well the stars would be fine since to see a nebula like that you need a time exposure shot, so you could gather lots of light from other stars. i tryed the tutorial and mine didnt come out as good as yours.
Do I have to sign-up on that site you posted to get the tutorial ? ¿ ?
Or can I it another way?
its not that hard to register 
i really wish that people wouldn’t direct link such huge images, my poor modem connection was overheating, it took ages to load it!!!
after the long wait…
very nice image, the stars are kinda big, other then that its a pretty cool way to make nebulas, looks like you could make some nice steam effects with this.
mystery
i tried the tutorial, and it was messed up…i must’ve had the settings wrong
You mentioned a ship passing through the nebula and disturbing it like a boat through water but you failed to realize the shear magnitude of a nebula. We’re talking about a celestial feature the size of a solar system. Driving a ship through it would be like a fart in a typhoon. I don’t think that would be a realistic interaction (swirling and eddies).
“We’re talking about a celestial feature the size of a solar system.” – BIGGER. The Orion Nebula, to take a fairly familiar example, is 1500 light-years away and it is still visible to the naked eye as a blobbish object. That nebula is several light years across. Now to be fair, a planetary nebula can be less than a light-year across because of how it is formed, but asmiro’s work looks like an emission or reflection nebula.
Now, with the above said, there should be a bright spot somewhere in your nebula, asmiro, representing the star(s) that illuminate them. Aside from that, it’s a beautiful picture!
That’s a very nice nebula. You might want to try the new procedurals in the latest CVS builds (see blender.org, testing builds forum).
For having a ship pass through it and stir up the gases (as in the opening to Star Trek Voyager), the only thing I can think of is thophu (not the correct spelling, again see .org), it has the ability for objects to deflect particles. Won’t produce swirling but it’s a start.
Incidentally the Orion nebula is about 30 light years across. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be small, dense patches though. In fact there’d have to be, otherwise star formation wouldn’t occur.
Incidentally the Orion nebula is about 30 light years across. I don’t see why there shouldn’t be small, dense patches though. In fact there’d have to be, otherwise star formation wouldn’t occur.
The small, dense patches are often obscured by dust that blocks the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s why most such areas have been confirmed with infrared scopes.
The nebula looks great. I agree that it would take one VERY large spaceship to affect the look of the nebula. Given the vast distances involved, any gravitational effect would be only barely detectable and over 1000s of years at that.
Any effect from physically displacing the atoms and/or molecules forming the nebula would also be barely noticeable, unless the ship were near a more densely-packed protstellar cocoon. But if that were the case, there would be bigger issues for the ship to deal with.
Very pretty. Add some hand-made stars for a cluster, and it could be real…
-Waylena
ok first of, i do not believe you have to register at the site to access the tutorials - i have a google link directly to the page try searching google useing randal3d (no space) and also adding the word nebula to it for the search. it should work.
next, you are correct that nebulas are HUGE. let me rephrase what im looking for - im looking for a turoial on exactly the kind of effect that is seen in the beginning credits on ST: Voyager where the ship passes through planet’s ring that surrounds it (like the rings around uranus). I am not particularly interested in making the reflections on the particles although, if anyone would know how to do that i would be interested to find out how to do that effect for reference sake
and last i will edit my starting post so that only a link to my image shows up.
as to how much better my pic turned out than all of yours, i do not know why, other than the fact that i added a single extra color to the colorband to achieve the extra color. that is ALL i did that was different from the tutorial. please keep the C&C - going it helps