Does anyone know of  agood way to produce a background star field? I need to 
be able to pan and zoom the camera with the stars staying as small as 
possible...

Things I've tried:
    Sky_sphere with a granite texture, but it goes flickery when animated 
and it doesn't like Antialias!
    Sky_sphere with a bitmap texture, but it needs a very big bitmap and the 
"stars" don't resize as the camera zooms
    A cloud of spheres centered on the camera... This works, but is quite 
slow to parse

Any other suggestions?

Rarius

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Rarius wrote:
> Does anyone know of  agood way to produce a background star field? I need to 
> be able to pan and zoom the camera with the stars staying as small as 
> possible...
> 
> Things I've tried:
>     Sky_sphere with a granite texture, but it goes flickery when animated 
> and it doesn't like Antialias!
>     Sky_sphere with a bitmap texture, but it needs a very big bitmap and the 
> "stars" don't resize as the camera zooms
>     A cloud of spheres centered on the camera... This works, but is quite 
> slow to parse
> 
> Any other suggestions?

Look up stars.inc and stars2.inc...they're exactly what you want.

~Mike

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"Mike Thorn" said
> Look up stars.inc and stars2.inc...they're exactly what you want.

I've looked in my includes directory. I have a stars.inc file, but that just 
uses the granite texture method... That doesn't work well with a panning 
camera or with AA turned on...

I don't appear to have a Stars2.inc! Could you post your copy please?

Rarius

Post a reply to this message

Rarius wrote:
> "Mike Thorn" said
> 
>>Look up stars.inc and stars2.inc...they're exactly what you want.
> 
> 
> I've looked in my includes directory. I have a stars.inc file, but that just 
> uses the granite texture method... That doesn't work well with a panning 
> camera or with AA turned on...
> 
> I don't appear to have a Stars2.inc! Could you post your copy please?
> 
> Rarius 
> 
> 
I'd also be happy to have a good star texture. Unfortunately AA kills 
all the stars with granite pattern method. I don't know any other way.

Post a reply to this message

Andrey Skvortsov <sti### [at] yahooca> wrote:

> I'd also be happy to have a good star texture. Unfortunately AA kills
> all the stars with granite pattern method. I don't know any other way.


Hello,

this image
http://bilder24.parsimony.net/forum54930/bilder/dorf06.jpg

was rendered using the following star-texture.
It is part of terraform (http://terraform.sf.net)


Greets, Mark (http://povfront.sf.net)


// Copyright (c) 2002 Raymond Ostertag
// Generated with Truevision
//
// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
// GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
// Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
//

#declare stars_pigment =
pigment {
  granite
  color_map {
         [ 0.000000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.270000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.271000
rgbft<0.500000,0.500000,0.400000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.285000
rgbft<0.800000,0.800000,0.400000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.286000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.470000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.471000
rgbft<0.400000,0.400000,0.500000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.485000
rgbft<0.400000,0.400000,0.800000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.486000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.680000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.681000
rgbft<0.500000,0.400000,0.400000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.695000
rgbft<0.800000,0.400000,0.400000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.696000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.880000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 0.881000
rgbft<0.500000,0.500000,0.500000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.895000
rgbft<1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,0.000000,stars_transmit> ]
         [ 0.896000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
         [ 1.000000 rgbft<0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,0.000000,1.000000> ]
   }
   frequency 1.000000 phase 0.000000 sine_wave
   turbulence <1.000000,1.000000,1.000000>
   octaves 6
   lambda 2.000000
   omega 0.500000
   translate <0.000000,0.000000,0.000000>
   scale <0.500000,0.500000,0.500000>
   rotate <0.000000,0.000000,0.000000>
}

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> Does anyone know of  agood way to produce a background star field? I need
to
> be able to pan and zoom the camera with the stars staying as small as
> possible...

This should suit your needs. It's a simple pattern (so it's fast to parse
and render), but it works great with antialiasing and should be perfectly
consistent in an animation.

The stars are perfectly circular (thanks to the crackle pattern with form
<1,0,0>), and you can control their size and density. One thing you cannot
control is the distribution of their size (you can't make them more likely
to be small than big), although it's possible that it could be tweaked to
make that option available.

#declare star_size = .002;
#declare star_density = 50;

sky_sphere {
 pigment {
  crackle
  form <1,0,0>
  color_map {
   [star_size*star_density rgb 1]
   [star_size*star_density rgb 0]
  }
  scale 1/star_density
 }
}

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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"Rarius" <rar### [at] rariuscouk> schreef in bericht
news:41a3944a@news.povray.org...
> Does anyone know of  agood way to produce a background star field? I need
to
> be able to pan and zoom the camera with the stars staying as small as
> possible...
>
You could try also galaxy.inc by Chris Colefax. You can find it at:

www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/1434/

Just now the site seems to be unavailable, though (...exceeded its allocated
data transfer). If this remains for some time, I can post it.
I don't know how it reacts with animation...

Thomas

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"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlnet> wrote:
> You could try also galaxy.inc by Chris Colefax. You can find it at:
> I don't know how it reacts with animation...

Galaxy.inc is working fine with animations, i already used it for some
animations. But my personal oppinion is that the starfield is not very
close to reality. But the galaxies and nebulas a very, very nice. And You
can make phantastic things with it.

Shu

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Rarius wrote:
> "Mike Thorn" said
> 
>>Look up stars.inc and stars2.inc...they're exactly what you want.
> 
> 
> I've looked in my includes directory. I have a stars.inc file, but that just 
> uses the granite texture method... That doesn't work well with a panning 
> camera or with AA turned on...
> 
> I don't appear to have a Stars2.inc! Could you post your copy please?

Sorry, I must have been mistaken...I thought for sure thre was a stars2 
file in there somewhere. I guess fiddling with stones.inc (which 
references stones1.inc and stones2.inc) has me a little tweaked right 
now. :) Sorry about that!

~Mike

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> #declare star_size = .002;
> #declare star_density = 50;
>
> sky_sphere {
> pigment {
>  crackle
>  form <1,0,0>
>  color_map {
>   [star_size*star_density rgb 1]
>   [star_size*star_density rgb 0]
>  }
>  scale 1/star_density
> }
> }
>
> - Slime
> [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]


Thanks for this Slime. This was exactly what I was after... I'll post an 
image into povray.binaries.images and an animation into 
povray.binaries.animations when they are done...

Rarius

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