I think the Lightwave version looks a bit more realistic than the particles....maybe it's just that there are too many. It reminds me of the "creating stars in photoshop" technique as far as the end result....add mono noise then blur. There are many methods to the madness so I guess whatever works for each person....well there ya go. ;)

Yes, the mind boggles at the number of ways to achieve one effect.

The pic I did in Lightwave was done with the multiple spheres, that way I could animate a ship flyby, or a space battle and give it a true 3d look to it.

If I was doing a wallpaper image or other static pic, then the process seems much more straightforward.

Ok, just playing around tonight. I'm attaching 2 images....the first starfield is done with Oculus' leather texture method. The 2nd is paintFX, not painting a sphere, but adjusting the scene color to black and painting the scene at depth. If Anything, folks can see the results of the various methods.

So without further adieu...here's the leather texture connected to the color node of a blinn (all specularity turned to 0 basically and everything else adjusted to what oculus said...once you start fiddling, it's basically common sense).

I'm kinda digging this one for a distant star background....really reminds me of the original star wars backgrounds.

Ok...now here's the paintFX version. Different than the leather version in that you get subtle glow and size differences but I dig this one as well.

As cool as the particle version seems, I think I need to see it tweaked a bit more.

Anyway, I think we answered the original question. ;) Good thread, guys! Nice to see so many ways to achieve a solution.

Thanks for the pics, Nitroliq.

Yep, the more ideas, the better...