Matt Hilliard wrote:
> 
> For fun and practice I am working on a somewhat Generic 3D Space Battle
> sort of thing.  I'm sure its been done thousands of times before, but,
> well, the work->coolness ratio of 3D rendered spaceships is just
> irresistable, I guess.
> 
> Anyway, I'm having some trouble with starfields and getting them to
> properly animate.  There are of course wonderful starfield textures
> which do not work in animations.  I'm sure you all know why and have
> answered this question a thousand times.
> 
> And yes, I do have Chris Colefax's galaxy file.  However, using the
> object based starfield, I have been unable to get (a) a nice dense
> starfield and (b) figure out how to animate them.  By b I mean that when
> I rotate or translate it, instead of visibly moving the stars tend to
> fade in and out.  I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.
> 
> So, what I'm asking here is if anyone can tell me the best way to do an
> animated starfield and, if there is no better way, perhaps a sample bit
> of code animating galaxy.sf (the animation example the include file
> comes with only animates a nebula).
> 
> Sorry for asking what surely must be a FAQ, but I didn't see it in any
> of the FAQs I looked at.
> 
> Matt Hilliard

 Density can be a matter of scale. Anti aliasing kills star fields faster
than anything else I know of. The color map entries can be adjusted to
compensate for this but it takes a lot of trial and error to find a happy
solution.

The fading might be caused by the number of frames used for the whole
animation. Increasing the quantity will probably give more satisfactory
results than a low frame count will. If you want smooth think in the
range of 35 - 45 frames for each second of animation playing time. This
is a starting recommendation and your welcome to try more or less to suit
your own needs. 10,000 frame pov animations are not that uncommon for
longer animations. How much hard drive space you have is probably your
deciding limitation.

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

Post a reply to this message