How do you guys generate space in an animation?

[peter noble]

I understand how you do the ships and planets, but what about the inky blackness and the stars?

Is it a 2D plane or a 3D space like the inside of a sphere?

How do you choose the right colour black and give the stars their luminosity?

I think the outer space as seen in Farscape and Space: Above And Beyond are good examples of the void.

Peter

[michaelfaries]

It depends: Are the stars objects which move within the field of vision? Or are they stationary objects which "sit" in the background? I think most starfields onscreen are 2D, with some 3D elements added for depth. (Cost-wise, it's cheaper to do, too.)

Timothy Fox has a great site which explains a few aspects of starfield animation creation. See http://www.geocities.com/special_effect.geo/starfield.html

Btw, I understand that ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain and other CG shops tend to write custom C language programs for starfields which surpass off-the-shelf software solutions. Why? So their work is distinctive and unique (and because they can ;) )

(I'd comment on Farscape and Space: Above And Beyond starfields if I had references handy. I don't.)

Michael
:colwar:

[peter noble]

Thanks Michael.

[Titon]

Depends on what your trying to accomplish Peter. For one thing the variables on what your trying "to" accomplish come into play. Such things as how the scene is going to develop, camera moving or not, flybyes ect.

Most of the star fields i do now are nothing more than composite shot's added into the background. But for the most part i composite most everything in my scenes without having my 3d program rendering everything at once. Lighting is the trickest thing to accomplish where one part of the scene looks great but another doesn't. Rendering seperate aspects of the scene (individually) then composite together to have greater control over those individual aspects.

Sorry, kind of long winded.

:)

[peter noble]

Thanks Titon.

I was just interested in how you set the outer space environment up how much space to generate and how to make the stars move when the virtual camera is locked on the ship.

Sometimes it seems you can have a great model in a crap environnment, and of course what sort of lighting to choose must also be a factor, fill light etc.

Peter