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# 1 26-06-2003 , 05:37 PM
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Particle stars

Hello guys,

I've been trying to do an animation of starlike particles flying by a camera much like the effects you would see in Startrek when they are at warp speed.

I've looking for some suggestions on how to approach this.

I was trying to use streak particles and then add a basic white shader and tweak the glow to illuminate them. Hardware render them and then compose them in the final shot with after effects. I was also thinking that it would look nice if I could make each particle a point light and then tweak its various effects to make small stars. But I'm not sure how to map a light to a particle.

Any suggestions?


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# 2 26-06-2003 , 08:05 PM
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Are you looking for a "pixie-dust" sort of look?

..or are you going for a full-on "warp-drive" look?

Or both effects?

Lemme know, because I have ideas for bothuser added image


Israel "Izzy" Long
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# 3 26-06-2003 , 09:41 PM
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Actually I'm going for a full on Warp drive look.
user added image


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# 4 27-06-2003 , 03:13 AM
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Well, there are MANY ways one could achive this effect, and if you do a search on any major 3d site, you will find LOADS of threads describing many 2D and 3D ways to do this.

(EDIT: actually, I just did a search, and I couldn't find any!?? weird! They used to be everywhere!)

Anyway,

One way to do it in Maya (i.e. in 3D) would be to:
_________________________________________
1. Create a directional point emitter.

2. Place your camera in front of the particle stream, (or direct your emit direction toward your cam, either way doesn't matter)

3. Tweak your particle emitter and particle shape so that the particles are emitting in an ever-expanding cone-shape travelling toward your camera.

4. Increase the speed, and rate till you are happy with your star-like particle cone.

5. Add a COLOR dynamic attribute to the particles, and color the RGB values to 255. (bright white)

6. Render it in the hardware renderer using, (HERE IS THE TRICK), multi-pass rendering, (like say 9+ passes or so), and a little (or a LOT) of motion blur. (tweak to taste)

TIPS:
*You don't have to only use a directional emitter.

*Try doing it by emitting particles from a plane using a surface emitter, and the same steps aboveuser added image

*To add a sense of depth to the starfield zooming by, you could add a rgbPP attribute to the particles INSTEAD of the basic COLOR per object type.
Then just add a slightly noisy ramp to the default gradient that is created by the particle array mapper.

*That way, the particles in the far-off distance start out dark grey/black and pass your camera at a Bright White coloruser added image
________________________________

Another way would be to do it in 2D, like in After Effects or your favorite compositing app.

Hope this helped a little!


Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
# 5 27-06-2003 , 05:34 AM
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I did something similar a while back, not exactly a star field but easily modified into one, you can see a low res version Here Just right click and save as. If you think you can modify it to what you need you can get the scene file from Here

Again just right click to download it.

# 6 27-06-2003 , 02:47 PM
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Thanks much for the help and kindness mrmacca!!


Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
# 7 27-06-2003 , 04:56 PM
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Well it's not much but it may help a little user added image

# 8 27-06-2003 , 06:46 PM
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Your movie looks GREAT man!

Care to describe a little bit as to how you were able to do it?


Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com
# 9 27-06-2003 , 09:28 PM
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That is a great effect! That is incredibly close to the effect that I'm trying to get.

About the scene file. Is it 4.0 compatible?


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# 10 28-06-2003 , 01:48 AM
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It's a 4.5 file. If you like i can upload the ma file for you to edit and open in 4.0.

ragecgi, i used a volume emmiter (cylinder). I rotated it 90 in X. I scaled it a bit longer than defualt, 5.45 on frame 1 so the particles are appearing from throughout the cylinder then i animating it's length on frame 120, in y, scaling it back down to about 1.8 so the particles appear as though they are just being emitted from a distance. Set the emitter to emit along the axis only. That was the basic setup. The rate was set about 160. I used Multistreak for the particles with a constant lifespan, then mapped ramps to the opacityPP and rgbPP.

Hope that helps.

# 11 28-06-2003 , 06:23 AM
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If it wouldn't be too much trouble I would really appreciate it if you could upload an .ma file

Boy I feel like I'm falling behind the times! user added image


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# 12 28-06-2003 , 07:17 AM
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Helps a lot m8!

Now the users have more than one way to do it!

Thanks!


Israel "Izzy" Long
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izzylong.com
# 13 28-06-2003 , 02:56 PM
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You can get it Here

# 14 28-06-2003 , 03:14 PM
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Thank you both for your help.

Just one more question. When dealing with the hardware renderer is it possible to save the sequence as an .avi or .mov so It can be imported into after effects? I can't seem to find an option that will allow me to do that


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# 15 28-06-2003 , 03:31 PM
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There's no option with the hardware renderer for avi's as it uses your graphics card and just basically takes image captures from your screen. You can render it as a tif or targa sequence and import the sequence into After Effects.

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