Here's my starfield using an image map...
It works great and animates well.
My "starfld.gif" is 2048x2048 It's a PLASMA image from Fractint
and then using the starfield option.
I think what you may be missing is the "once" keyword...
-============================-
sphere 
    {
    0, 1 hollow
    texture
        { 
        pigment
            { 
            image_map
                { 
                gif "starfld.gif" 
                once 
                map_type 1 
               } // type 1 is spherical
            }
        finish{ ambient 2}
        }
    scale 1e6
    }

-============================-

Emory Stagmer

Helen wrote:
> 
> This is something that worked in the past, but now it doesn't. It might be
> something obvious and basic, but for some reason I can't find it.
> 
> I was doing some space animations and used a sphere with an image map for
> the star background.
> Using the usual star textures on the sky sphere made the stars jump too
> much between frames.
> So I made a png with a pov file - a star texture on a distant plane and
> used that as a map.
> 
> The image I made was very detailed with a size 1280X960.
> 
> This gave stars similar to the sky sphere ones - at least with version 3.1.
> Now, the mapped texture that I see is less than 1% of the total image used
> as a map (about the amount of stars that would show on a 50X50 square),
> with the result that it is highly pixelated. I would think that a texture
> mapped onto a sphere would show a much greater percentage (and it did
> before).
> With interpolate on, the large and few (square) stars just become a little
> blurry. I have made a bigger map image 2000X2000 and the image is only
> slightly improved. The way this is going, I will only get a similar result
> with a 10,000 pixel square image or larger.
> 
> I can't clearly remember whether this is definitely a difference between
> 3.1 and 3.5, or it is something I have changed.
> 
> The syntax I use is
> ---------
> sphere
> {
>   <0, 0, 0>,1
>    texture{ pigment {image_map { png "stars.png" map_type 1
>     }
>     }
> 
> } scale 1000000
>  hollow on  }
> --------
> I have a camera moving mainly between -70 and 100 from back to front.
> Changing the size of the sphere and removing scaling, or changing the scale
> makes no difference.
> 
> TIA for any hints.
> 
> BTW, the starfield discussion was very interesting, but I was aiming for
> something simpler and quicker.
> 
> Helen

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