Re: Starfield Environment Shader

Date : Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:35:50 -0600 (CST)
To : XSI(at)Softimage.COM
From : Joe Laffey <joe(at)laffey.tv>
Subject : Re: Starfield Environment Shader
On Wed, 10 Jan 2007, Wayne Williams wrote:

I didn't know single point polys existed. Don't you have to have at least 3 for it to be considered a polygon? Otherwise it's a point or line ya?


Technically yes, given the etomology of the word (many angles).

I would guess the OP has come from LightWave where there is support for render single point polygons (which are a distinct entity from points) as pixels. They work quite well for stars.

As far as making stars in XSI what about making a very large sphere set to emit particles with speed 0 in its volume.

Like this:


CreatePrim "Sphere", "MeshSurface" CreateParticleCloud "sphere" SetValue "cloud.cloud.ParticlesOp.sphere_emission.Generation", 3 SetValue "cloud.cloud.ParticlesOp.sphere_emission.Speed", 0 SetValue "cloud.cloud.ParticlesOp.sphere_emission.Rate", 20000 NextFrame

Then set an initial state, or have the rate drop to 0, or export/import etc.

Then you use one of the particle shaders to get stars, you can even give them random colors, and random scales, which tend to look very good for stars.

--
Joe Laffey                |       Visual Effects for Film and Video
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