"Skip Talbot" <ski### [at] aolcom> wrote in message 
news:web.44793c72b1d7796fd6b588060@news.povray.org...
>
>>The problem is, there are MILLIONS of stars to render.
>
> Billions (or trillions depending on your galaxy).  It would be impossible,
> needless to say hideously slow to attempt to render all the individual
> stars in a galaxy, in one view.  A comparison would be modeling a small
> desktop object... using atoms.
>
Whooppee!!!

> What you'll want to do instead is have levels of detail.  The renders you
> presented would be your lowest level of detail.  As you get closer to the
> galaxy you'd zoom in one more level and use another, more intricate media
> density.  Your third level of detail could be a transparent texture with a
> noise function on it.  The noise would create dots that would wind up to be
> your stars.  Your final level of detail would use the coordinates of the
> dots as actual objects, spheres or glows.  The other LODs would still be
> visible in the background (except maybe the highest two).
>
> Coding your proximity to galactic center and computing a resulting star
> density, and translating the noise into 3D objects, will definitely be a
> fun project!
>

Thanks Skip,
LOD seems to be the answer.


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-
----------------------------------------
"The truth is out there..."

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