panning across a flat starfield?
by Phil Lister (Phil109)
on
May 24, 2008 at 1:21:14 am
I need to create a pan across a flat starfield, as though I'm panning with a superimposed spacecraft from left to right.
Everytime I pan across the starfield, the stars get a little distorted or change resolution or something. Is there a way to create this without this happening?
I'm using Photoshop to create the stars and my resolution is at 72 dpi. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Can this effect be created in Blender? If so, how?
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Brian Berneker on May 24, 2008 at 1:30:40 am
You might want to try using cc particle world and make a 3D field of stars. It will be more convincing for sure, since it will give you the much desired parallax effect...
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Nate Hanson on May 24, 2008 at 12:58:47 pm
[Brian Berneker]"You might want to try using cc particle world and make a 3D field of stars. It will be more convincing for sure, since it will give you the much desired parallax effect..."
Stars are so far away from each other you'd never see a parallax effect. Unless, of course, you were very close to one particular star - but that would be a separate element, not part of the background of stars. A flat image makes more sense, doesn't it?
Think of the intro to the Star Wars movies. They always have a flat background of stars as the camera moves from the opening text crawl to the planet and/or ship.
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Phil Lister on May 24, 2008 at 2:29:30 pm
Nate,
You hit the nail on the head buddy! All I want to do, is pan left to right or up and down against a flat panel of stars.
When I move, the stars seem to distort and even "twinkle" as the moves is happening. Is this the resolution? I'm using a bitmap image at 72dpi. Should this be different? No matter what settings I use, this happens. How does ILM do it? lol
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by david bogie on May 24, 2008 at 3:53:14 am
We used to do this in the olden days by creating two star layers and moving them at different speeds. Sometimes three layers.
I have no idea what you mean in your post about changing shape or rez.
There's no reason to create stars in PS, do it AE, lots of ways, search here on the forum or the AE basics forum. Might even be something in the manual.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: "For crying out loud, read the freakin' manual."
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Phil Lister on May 24, 2008 at 4:49:54 am
I don't think anyone gets what I mean here. Picture the opening to Predator. You see a starfield. Then, you see the ship come into view in the distance. As the ship goes by, the camera "pans" with it. Well, you see how the starfield seems to pan as well. Obviously, the stars were shot/generated as a seperate element to the ship model. But, to complete the illusion, it had to look as though, as the ship passes by, the camera pans with it, thus it pans across the stars as well.
I know how to create a moving star field, but when panning across the star field bitmap image, the stars seem to get larger. When it comes to rest, they go back to looking smaller.
I may post a video clip if I can't get my message across here. And as far as the manual goes, if the info was in it, I wouldn't be posting here. I mean, why does this BB exist? Come on man throw me a friggin bone!
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Brian Berneker on May 24, 2008 at 1:06:53 pm
I've never encountered this, so it's hard to know what you are describing without seeing a sample. Are you rendering at full resolution? The only thing I think you could be describing would be some kind of resampling of the image?
Just stabbing some guesses since I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but are you using easy-ease keyframes? Turning on motion blur? Perhaps if the effect you are describing happens only during "pan," movement then you might consider starting the shot with a very slight gentle pan rather than completely still at first to at least have it look consistent?
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by david bogie on May 24, 2008 at 9:01:00 pm
I don't think anyone gets what I mean here.
That would be correct.
Picture the opening to Predator.
No, thanks.
I need to create a pan across a flat starfield, as though I'm panning with a superimposed spacecraft from left to right. Everytime I pan across the starfield, the stars get a little distorted or change resolution or something. Is there a way to create this without this happening?
They can't possibly be changing rez. They can appear to be distorted because you aren't using motion blur properly, that's one possibility. When you say "pan" are you implying you are using a 3d comp?
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: "For crying out loud, read the freakin' manual."
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Steph Foster on May 26, 2008 at 8:16:39 am
Hmm, I tried to accomplish this by using a starfield image on a layer and using Distort -> Offset to move it across the X axis and wrap back on the other side of the screen.
The odd thing was the stars appeared to pulsate when I did a ram preview ?
Re: panning across a flat starfield? by Graham Quince on May 27, 2008 at 7:13:34 am
I've had this problem too. Isn't it just down to the fact that the stars are a pixel across? I've fairly certain when i outputted onto a DVD and watched it on the TV the problem wasn't there. Although I can't swear to it.
I always chalked it up to the fact that we're dealing with fields/square pixels vs rectangular and you know not working at film resolution. I don't know about Predator, but the early star wars films used a black cloth rig to film starfields.
I did output a starfield from Cinema4D with larger stars once, and it solved the problem, but the stars seemed cartoon-y
Graham
http://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com - Free FX for amateur films
