Can someone point me to a tut on how to use a star field in VUE so that you get the moving effect of the stars like the opening of Star Trek?  I downloaded a warp example but there's tons of stars. I need something less populated for slower movement.

If I could figure out how to modify the star warp I purchased I would but don't know which fields to toggle to reduce stars, etc.  This particular exampe has the stars mapped to a cylinder with the camera travelling down the middle of it.

Any thoughts are suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

What kind of star warp?  Is it a Vue animation?  If it's a mapped image, just go to that map and  black out a bunch of stars....Not really clear on what you are using here....

This would be a VUE animation. With a static star field in the back and then a few moving stars along the sides and into the foreground. Watch any Star Trek tv show opening and you will see what I am referring to. Thanks for responding.

Oh I'm quite familiar with the Star Trek thing....just wasn't sure how you were doing it in Vue.

Here's what I would do......Go to the material that is on the cylinder. Right click in the color tab and click 'load function'.  Under spots you'll see several starfield functions....one is 'Sparse Starfield'.  Load that function. Load the 'black and white' color map...black on the left, white on the right.  Next go to the filter and place a control point in the center and drag it to the lower right. This will get rid of any unwanted stuff between the stars.  Then click and copy that function and place it in the transparency tab with variable transparency on. Invert it if necessary.

Without seeing what you bought I cannot tell how it's animated but I would assume it's 'velocity of material origin'.

Hope this helps a bit.....

Could you do what Monsoon suggested, but use several concentric cylinders with stars on each of them? That could give an illusion of parallax.

MyCat
that's a good idea :)

another tip is to use light objects for close stars, make sure they all have the same style of lens flare, NOT the same colour/brightness though.
Just same number of points etc as lens flares are caused by the same camera, so they all should look roughly the same style.

That's what I use on lot of my space shots (another trick I learned from Monsoon! bows :) )

Here is a PS link to creating a static starfield backdrop.  The tutorial is easy as the narrator/artist is really top in his field and speaks and instructs with incredible clarity.

If you dont use Photoshop then you can undoubtedly do the same in other paint programs.

Enjoy.

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/space-background.html

oh, damn I'm on wrong PC, art PC has all my colelcted tutorials so I can't reference URLs etc at moment, sorry.

for PS starfields, Greg martin ?? has a fantastic pdf on  making starfields and space scapes, best there is, IMHO.
this is starfield one form a quick Googlefu :
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html

:)