Here is an update on the Vue space pack project:

After some more tests and comparisons I decided against using environment maps. The reasons are as follows

1. In order to get really nice results and (almost) distortion-free skies it would require HUGE environment maps. For larger Vue pictures even 8000x4000 maps would still be too small. The reason for this is simple. With the camera focal setting of 66mm (to prevent distortion) it captures only a relatively small portion of the sky.

2.Just using completely premade skies are not really fun. I find that artists should have more freedom in setting up a scene.

3. When using the Environment Mapping option, you you are retricted to just a few parameters to setup your atmosphere.

So I came up with a much better solution.
The overall starscape (and some of the nebulae) will be generated by Vue and mapped onto a sphere.

All other elements will be added either as alpha planes or will be Vue objects.
Handling, as far as I can tell, is easy and fun and the resulting skies quite impressive.

The great thing about this system is that you can place/rotate each element and if you have also some freedom over the coloring of those elements (Including the starfield).
Another cool and very powerful feature will be that for the texturing of the sky sphere Metanodes are used with extracted parameters. It can somewhat be compared to Vue`s water editor.

On the next post you can see a rendered demo space scene which contains some of the elements mentioned above as well as some details. The scene file can be downloaded by clicking here

Id be happy to get some feedback on it . Also, Im curious to know if the scene file works for other versions than Vue 7 Infinite for PC/Vista

Enjoy!

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