"cubicApocalypse" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> How do I fix these dark spots around the stars?

It's an old media{samples...} situation when using multiple enclosed media
objects. And the problem is two-fold here--but easily remedied.

The dark-looking 'star halos' are basically because a media samples count
somewhere in the scene is too low. But it's more interesting: The real
cause of the problem is that the bigger 'nebula' sphere *encloses* all the star
spheres. The camera ray(s) 'see' this larger sphere first (the rays hit it
first, before they hit the individual star spheres.) In which case,
the NEBULA's media samples override the individual stars. So in your scene it
doesn't matter if the stars have very high sample values, or even very low ones;
they'll all be overridden.

The problem is in the nebula, where you have four medias. The samples values are
all set at 30, which is too low. But here's the interesting thing: the LAST ONE
of the four medias is the one that sets the samples count for all of them. The
other samples/methods/intervals are ignored and can even be left out. Try this
experiment: Put in 500 as samples values for the first three of the medias
there, and 5 for the final one. The render will look really bad!

The overall solution is easy: For the very last media in your nebula, give it
this:
method 3
intervals 1
samples 300 // This looks OK

Also, I think all the stars' 'halo spheres' have an emission value that's too
low. It looks like you're to trying to make them glow, so I would increase those
to maybe rgb 2.5*<0.3,0.7,1>. (Not the color_maps.)

BTW, this is a really nice scene!

Post a reply to this message