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Creating the Final Frontier
I need to create a 3D universe through which an animated camera will fly. I don’t mean to sound like a total noob, but is there a good tutorial out there illustrating a good technique for this? I specifically need to see stars moving in 3D space…over/under/beside the camera.
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5 Replies
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You need a lot of particles in 3D space. For that you need to buy Particular.
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Or if you’re just flying straight ahead, oyu could use AE’s CC Starburst effect. Very Trek.
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The most effective method would be using a particle generator such as Particle Playground (which renders extremely slowly) or Particular (which is all around awesome, but kind of pricey).
Alternatively you could create a few star graphics and write an expression to randomly distribute them in 3D space, within a range, applied to the position property:
range = 800;
range = range / 2;
seedRandom(index, true);
x = random(-1 * range, range);
y = random(-1 * range, range);
z = random(-1 * range, range);
[x,y,z]The above sample would randomly place a layer within a 800x800x800 cube with it’s origin at [0,0,0]. You can make modifications to this to better suit your needs. For more stars just duplicate your layers with this expression applied.
Note that this can get prohibitively slow with a lot of layers/motion blur/DOF. I recommend creating a distant starfield backdrop to help sell the look, maybe some nebulae as well? =) When objects are far from the camera you can often get away with grouping them onto a 2D plane.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Thanks, everyone! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…God Bless Creative Cow!
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Do you actually need to pass stars in this 3D universe? If not, then you could use a flat star map and wrap it around CC Sphere. Then make that sphere enormous and put the camera inside it.
Just a thought.
Graham
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