Teaching People to Dream

stars

Obviously planetarium shows need stars (big ones you can be close to not the background ones). And a star is nothing more than a sphere (in terms of modeling in Blender)

However, I can't seem to figure out how to get the start to LOOK like a star. I have experimented with turning EMIT up as far as it will go but that makes my sphere look like a flat round disk.

I know there should be a way to darken the limb a little so it gives it some shape without resorting to adding lamps and shadows etc. There should also be a way to make it appear to glow without adding another sphere around it and turning the alpha level down and...well you get the picture.

Any ideas?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ron Proctor on April 21, 2009 at 3:06pm: I like to composite in a second render pass as a glow effect. It's similar to the alpha process outlined here:

http://community.weber.edu/planetarium/productionshare/production_t...

...except you make the second pass object the glow color you want and blur it up a bit before adding it to the primary pass (and you don't map it to the output alpha).; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Rod_Kennedy on April 21, 2009 at 3:17pm: Ok I was good up to the link, after that the language wasn't english lol. Translation please?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ron Proctor on April 21, 2009 at 3:30pm: Sorry -- the overall workflow is like the stuff described in the file, except instead of mapping to alpha, you want to blur the second render and add it to the first.It's easier to show it than to explain it. I'll make another one of these poster thingys for glow effects (but I have a lot of high priority work right now, so it might be a while before I get to it).

Something else just occurred to me. You could always take a flat square bitmap that looks like what you want, map it to a square plane, and add a "Track to" constraint so that it always faces the camera...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Rod_Kennedy on April 21, 2009 at 3:46pm: No need to hurry it was kind of a theoretical question at this point anyway. I found a work around yesterday by rendering out a png sequence and then taking it into After Effects and applying the CC Glow effect in there (Blaspheme I know but I knew how to do it in AE.

In any case thanks for the help. We are making great progress on Spectrum. (Professor Photon is presenting interesting Challenges) but my junior staff is getting good a t 3D modeling.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ron Proctor on April 21, 2009 at 4:00pm: Oh, there you go -- that's basically the same as my second idea. There are lots of correct answers to each question!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ron Proctor on July 24, 2009 at 12:46pm

Following up on glow effects:

Glow effects can be achieved through a combination of scenes and layers.

Once you have your scene the way you want it (everything animated, etc), make a copy of the scene. Then, using composite nodes, apply the effects you want to each image path, combining them into a single output. It takes longer to render, but you get a lot of control over the bloom size, etc. You can extend this into different glow effects for different objects.

Play around with it!

Attachments:

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Permalink Reply by Ron Proctor on July 24, 2009 at 12:50pm

I had an idea on my way home from Wyoming the other day: making a full copy of a scene can be cumbersome. Try putting glow objects in their own layer, then making a linked copy of the scene instead of a full copy. You can assign layer visibility separately in each scene. This way you are free to change object animation/positions/materials/etc without worrying about updating every scene.

An example blend file is attached.

Attachments:

array01.blend, 693 KB

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