ron_ivi wrote:
>On the subject of stars and starfields, how do you make little stars show
>up?
>
>Ideally in my mind I think (a) all stars should take up no more than one
>pixel (unless using focal blur :-)), and (b) all stars in a pixel would
>contribute to to the intensity of that pixel.
>
>
>Yeah, I know that's not now raytracing works, but it seems it's almost
>exactly like what goes on making Vista Buffers so I'm guessing it's
>implementable.
>
>Yeah, I also know this won't work with reflections, etc. but I don't see too
>many reflective enough items to show stars anyway.
>
>
>Or am I thinking about this in the wrong way?
>

I would have thought that (especially for animation) the stars should be
sampled by at least two pixels across the diameter. Since the angular
resolution of the image will be known (for a particular field of view and
linear resolution) it's trivial to work out what the diameter of a
spherical or circular star should be to cover two pixels if the distance
from the star to the camera is known.

I have made many scenes where reflection of a starfield is involved. I'm
still puzzled as to what's wrong with just placing a lot of
spheres/discs/triangles a very great distance from the camera. I find it
looks good whilst preserving speed and simplicity.

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