I made a procedural volumetric galaxy!
Final Render
Close Up
My chaotic nodetree
The main components are the core, the spiral, the dust, and the nebulae. I came to find that the best results came when the only density I used was for the dust. Everything else is pure emission and emission color.
Another thing I found kind of interesting is that the spiral arms don’t need to be super detailed. If you look at galaxy reference, they tend to be more like blurry structures. The majority of the detailing comes from the dust, stars, and nebulae. I think I also added way too many nebulae but that’s alright.
The stars were done through geometry nodes just by instancing them on a similar looking volume as the spiral arms of the galaxy. One of the things I wish I would have done is somehow make the stars cluster more in certain areas but I’m happy with how it turned out overall.