Trying to do a star field

[Korash]

I am planning on starting a scifi game with Star Hero as a system. Of course a Scifi game NEEDS a star map so I went looking through the Tuts section and found this. Unfortunately, I believe that the tut is for Photoshop while I have gimp. What you see below is my attempt at following and translating that tut. CnC is more than appreciated...I feel that I require some...Thoughts about the star field in back, and I am not sure about the glow on the cluster stars because some of the more distant of them seem to fade into the background. Should also point out that the image is only 640x400 at 150 for a test

Anyhoot, any suggestions would be welcome

[Domino44]

I think you are going in the right direction, in my opinion the background is to bright, those stars are to small to be that bright, I think you should dull them down ad add a few bigger background stars that are brighter. I do like your main stars a lot, but the background almost outshines them, remember the background is a 'Background' it is still very important though.

I think it space maps a little bit of color goes a long way, you have a lot of blue and purple in this map. I know that you have the one yellow star but I think you need to add some faint red's, or green's, or whatever color works best for you. Having something else that catches the eye would help the look of this map.

I know that you said this is just a test and I think you will learn a lot from it, I know that the first time I tried to do any space maps it was a huge learning experience. I hope that my suggestions help you out! Keep up the good work!

[Jaxilon]

You might check torstan's stuff on this http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=29469

He does go into a bit of how he did it.

[Korash]

Thanks Domino44.
Thats what I was thinking. I saw that the masses of stars looked too "coherent" and bright. The point about the blueness is well taken and I think corrected in the Update below. I played with curves and a bit of color balance to tone down the star field and blueness a bit, and used two layers (one with Supernovas on a aquamarine background set to Grain Extract and a dupicate inverted color set to color, and reduced opacity) to give some variance to the colors of the background. I didn't add any stardust to this yet, but am planning to later.

Any more suggestions?

Jax, thanks for the link. I had forgotten about that. I had seen it before. Wanted to go through the steps that Jon showed. And completely forgot about it when I wanted to make the starfield. ....

[Azélor]

I think you were doing quite well. On the last part of the tutorial, he adds star flares. I'm not sure exactly if it can be done in the filter menu but I think the flares are too precise. Personally, I would go with something blurred like this : http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap071118.html

Also, the tutorial added space dust. That makes a big difference.

It's hard to tell since your picture is small but most of your stars in the background seems to be at the same size. It could be better with more variation.
Also, as mentioned by Domino, your stars clashes with the surroundings. Adding dust clouds could help but you could also consider using a softer shape (with faint borders) when you are adding the stars.

This is my main inspiration for star maps : http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...t=25664&page=3

[Korash]

Azelor, actually I tried to add the stardust on the first one , and I agree...it just does not do what it did in the tut mentioned above. Am trying ways to get something close to that link you posted as I type...well not exactly NOW, but you know what I mean. Any suggestions on how? I am thinking some kind of blurred cloud overlay over the cluster....

[Midgardsormr]

The flares you have on your main stars are the wrong shape. Most camera irises have an even number of blades, and each point of the star flare radiates out from the place where two blades meet. I'm not sure if I've ever encountered an image or footage that indicated a five-bladed iris. I think they exist, but they're not common.

Copy your background stars layer, give it a huge blur, and reduce its opacity. That will give you the effect of an aggregate blur on all of your distant stars without making them indistinct. I think you also need some stars at an intermediate distance. You have a cluster that's really close, and thousands that are all at about the same distance away, but nothing in between. Maybe you could also throw a layer above your background stars with a clouds filter set to multiply and opacity very low, just to give some additional random variation in the brightness of the overall star field.

And, of course, the best reference is real star photography. Browse through the images at that NASA Picture of the Day archive Azelor posted.

[Azélor]

What I did was to paint the dust in white or a pale colour with low opacity and with a very soft brush. I added more layers where I wanted the dust to be more opaque. You can blur the layers to make them smoother. Then, you might want to add some randomness by adding a texture or a mask layer by using the cloud by difference.

[Korash]

Okay...so putting the star field aside for a bit, I have tried my hand at doing planets...



I had a problem with some of the textures that I tried to use when they developed a band of yellow, blue and green lines after running the lens filter on them...

Any comments or suggestions on these planets would be welcome...

[Korash]

I had this texture (unfortunately I forgot where) I found on the interwebs and decided to try making a busted planet or moon following Ilanthar's Method and I like the way it turned out. The only thing I modified on the tut was to duplicate the ball and set it to multiply and full opacity.

C&C welcome