Model a star background

Support Modeling
#1

Hi guys,
I’ve been doing a bit of blender for the last few months and I’ve been hitting sort of a snag, I’m have problems modeling a star background for space scenes, I used the noise function to create stars (like here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44773/stars-background-in-cycles ). However, I’m having troubles making stars big enough such that you don’t have to hit full screen on a video to see it.
basically so far I have this:

and I wish to get stars like this (see at 5:55):

and maybe create that nebulae effect to!
thank you very much

#2

Check Gleb & Aidy’s lessons on Space VFX. Got everything on Spacescapes & much, much more… worth every cent :yes:

Otherwise look around, there should be a plugin for creating starry sky and some nebula stuff on YT.
But with this, you won’t have to look any further.

#3

Another option would be to use some pictures of real starfields from NASA. If the stars are too small, use a “Glare” node in the compositor. A Glare>Fog-Glow feeding a Glare>Streaks works pretty well.

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As for nebulas, there are quite a few free nebula generators floating around. Or, again, use one from NASA.
If you’d rather make your own, well, I’ve never done it successfully, so I can’t offer much help.

#4

I personally recommend drawing the stars in another program like photoshop. An easy way to do it, is to make a monochromatic noise map on a black background and then adjust the levels to remove some of the stars, then size them up, and maybe erase or draw a few in by hand. Or just draw them all in by hand with a simple circular brush. You can draw the nebula on that same texture if you want, but I recommend doing it separately, so you can adjust the colors later for different scenes if you want to. I put them into the scene like I would any HDRI background.

Here’s a recent example.

but I’ve been doing stars this way since, before this picture even, which was 2011 or 2010.

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#5

Wow, that looks really good!
The advantage of adding a few bright stars using glare (also dilate to add a ring or two) is the whole effect will wink out when occluded, which might look cool for animations.

#6

If you have a amazon prime account…search for the show “Xploration Outer Space” season 3, episode 5. Art and Our Universe. There is a neat trick using your scanner(if you have one or know somebody that has one) by using food spices. Looks very realistic and fun.
Watched this the other night, going to have to give this a try.

Might be able to find this show elsewhere on the internet also!

#7

60$ is expensive but I think I’m going to invest in the course, it seems really good, any critics on it?