Starfield generator script

Starfield generator script

Hi there. I'm working on a Starfield generator script, and am wondering what the best approach is.

Basically, I am going to generate stars in a spherical shell of a certain thickness.

I just don't know what shapes to make them. I have just generated random points in the past with a package like LightWave, and that was able to render just points. Can I do something similar in Cheetah? It seems like a waste to generate thousands of tiny boxes or pyramids, but I don't know another approach.

I managed to get a "bunch of random pyramids" generator going, I just don't know if it will produce a good star field.

The end goal of this is to render out a skybox for use in a game using the QTVR Helper script after adding in some nebulae, planets, or whatever. Using "flat" unwarped star textures doesn't work too great, as you might guess.

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jon
 
Hi,
I actually won't recommend creating thousands of boxes or spheres because you will run out of memory quite fast.
The task you are describing is normally a job for a particle system. There you only create the geometry of one star and for all the others stars just the position, scale and rotation is saved.
The bad news is that Cheetah3D doesn't have a particle system yet. :cry:

But you can also create a sky by searching the web for a star field texture. Apply the texture onto a big ball objet and you have your sky when you are within the ball. I'm sure that people won't see the difference.

By,
Martin
 
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