I looked for space HDRI maps online and I found some decent ones, even 16 k ones, but the stars still don’t sound that convincing to me. They seem a little too big. To be clear, I don’t want to do a totally realistic space HDRI where there are barely any stars because that’s the way it is, according to space travelers. I haven’t had the chance to go to outer space yet, so I can’t now for sure.
But I would like something simple, just tiny white dots. I’ve seen a couple of tutorials but it seemed to me that they were overcomplicating it (and I know I may be completely wrong, but at the same time, it’s not like everyone who makes a tutorial on YouTube is a real expert).
It seems to me that this should be a sphere large enough, and a particle system attached to it. Does that make sense, or does it sound absurd? What should I look for, rather than go into a rabbit hole of tutorials, some of which are a decade old and several Blender versions behind?
Thanks, it’s a good start. But I see the particles moving when I press play. They seem to be dancing at random.
Also, to make them white and bright as starts, I would have to work the material in the Sphere.001, meaning the sphere that is the object for the particle system, correct?
Thanks, Kim. Actually, deleting the vortex disable the vortex motion, however, when I press play the particles still move around, so there’s something else there that’s making it move.
I’m curious, why would you apply several colors to the stars? Just for fun, or is there some specific reason?
If I’m using it as a surround I’ll usually put it on a roundcube (included in the blend file), and I’ve recently used it on a plane outside of a window. If you don’t want the colors you can delete the Voronoi branch and plug the Noise Texture’s Color Ramp into the Emission node.
As shown it’s on a UV Sphere with the UV Map scaled to equirectangular – you can bake this and get an image that can (after cropping) be used as an HDRI in Blender, although it won’t be a true High Dynamic Range Image.
Particles expand and stop for a certain period of time.
Set the frame longer and render where the particles stopped in the post-bake rendering setting.
(Particles can be converted into individual objects, but the system is burdened.)
Stars don’t come in one color.
The other reason is that the monotony disappears when the colors and sizes are slightly different.
I appreciate it! I can’t get it to work with my setup. I would need the sphere to be like 10,000 meters. However, no matter how big I make the sphere, the shapes generated by the Voronoi and Noise textures stays at the same size from the camera’s POV. I set the camera to the origin to have a better idea of how it would behave in my scene.
So if I rotate the camera I can see the environment, but if I make the sphere bigger shouldn’t the shapes get smaller?
Thanks so much for the cool graphic, I had no idea that different stars had different colors other than yellow like the sun.
You’re welcome! You don’t notice it looking up at night because of the way human vision loses color perception in low-light conditions. On that note, it might be a bit much for a regular sky scene, in the version below I’ve included an input to cut it.
Remember that this is just a shader – those “stars” aren’t spheres, they’re noise-generated blobs that usually work well enough for what I need. If you’re using this on a surround then you probably don’t want it much more distant from the camera than needed to encompass your scene. Try this one, see if changing the Density and Star Size inputs gets you what you want. If not then you might want to go back to a particle system, or geometry nodes, neither of which I can help with.
Sorry, I see the confusion. What I meant by making the sphere larger was the sphere that would be the universe, so that when the spaceship is at the origin and the camera travels around it, you would see a background with stars. I don’t know how big that sphere would need to be, but I would guess at least 1,000 meters, possibly 10,000 or more, to give the illusion that it’s the universe.
I think you’re over-estimating it, I don’t think you’d need something that large to pull off the illusion, although if you do I’m pretty sure Blender can do it – make sure your viewport’s and camera’s clipping are large enough. That having been said . . .
Hey, mine works in the World Shader! Although mine needs a Texture Coordinate node – its Vector input default is UV, World doesn’t have a UV map. But Alpha’s got a point: Blender’s World is, in practical terms, the Universe. You can’t get bigger than that.
Thank you all so much for showing this to me! The EXR sequence for the ship is already rendered, now rendering this will be much faster and I’ll be able to show you my work.
Whilst that is true to a degree - star colours are perceptible even to the naked eye. One of the best examples is Orion - where Betelgeuse at the top left has a decidedly orange hue, due to it being a red giant, whereas Rigel at bottom right is a blue/white giant.
Through a telescope - star colours are even more apparent - especially when you have a double star with contrasting colours, like Albireo - which has strikingly orange and blue components.
Although mine needs a Texture Coordinate node – its Vector input default is UV, World doesn’t have a UV map. But Alpha’s got a point: Blender’s World is, in practical terms, the Universe. You can’t get bigger than that.