Heya, Steve.

I hoped you would like it :-)

You may have noticed the metanodes generating the starfield. One is for the overall field, the other one provides the foreground stars. 
The naming of the parameters will be a bit different in the final versions. Also I will probably remap some values so the sliders are less tricky to use.

Metanodes are amongst the things I really love most about Vue. Extracting just the relevant parameters saves you from having to deal with the complexity of the original function tree (which is sometimes hard to see through, if it has been created by someone else).

 Nice, Timspfd!

You gave the scene a completely different look. Thanks for the details.

Great to know it worked with Vue 7 Complete. Well, I expected the file to be incompatible with Vue 6...

It satisfying to see those results und to feel that this concept is useful.

Can`t wait to see what you guys come up with once the space pack is out :-)

Glad you like it, Charles.

So the scene works in Vue 7 Pro Studio also. That`s good news.

 Another helpful advice, thanks :-)

Very cool! Looks nice without the starfield.

The render size of the moon picture is 1024x10024px. You went quite to the limit with it.

Nevertheless I`m impressed by how faithfully the original render is reproduced in Vue.

 Nice picture, btw. :-)

Seems you have no trouble manipulating the scene...

 Thanks for feedback and advice, Mazak. Will check this out.

Artur and Frank, that`s what I like to hear :-)

I`m relieved the scene file loaded correctly and that you like the effect this approach can have. 

You are both using Vue 7 Infinite I suppose.

If anyone finds any kind of faults regarding this setup I`d be interested to know too.

 Thanks for all the informations I`m getting here on Vue bugs :-)

The scene contains a starfield projected onto a sphere.

Diameter 190km.

The starfield is generated by Vue.

The reason this sphere is so big is because this will prevent cutting haze and fog off or bleeding into fog and haze (at least when Spectral Atmosphere is used)

The camera is placed somewhere near the center of the stars sphere.

Focal 66mm. This minimizes distortion near the edges.

There are 3 additional sky elements which are in fact pictures mapped onto Alpha Planes. The planes have "Billboard" checked so they will always face the camera.

As a reference I also have added a ground plane as well as a terrain which is placed

80km away from the center (hidden when you load the scene)

 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.

1. 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!

 Thanks Timspfd,

Will post a scene example a bit later...

 Hi DarkAngel,

Welcome! I am new to this forum too and it seem that the folks here are really friendly and helpful.

Thanks Mazak, Richard and Timspfd for the warm welcome and nice feedback on the cirrus clouds. You`re welcome.

I`m confident that this kind of cirrus layers will make a nice contrast to the amazing Vue cumulus layers.

Mazak, thanks for putting up the link :-)

Richard, thanks for the hint on attaching files. The next file (in a couple of days) I  will be way too big, so I better provide a link...

Timspfd, I really hope that the SciFi sky pack will provide more depth.

Currently I`m figuring out the best way to get the scifi/alien sky collection into Vue.

Did tons of tests.

When things have progressed a bit further I will post a link to an example Vue scene. 

Things seem to work really fine with with environment mapping. They need to be huge (8000x4000) so the sky is crisp without the need to zoom out. 

Currently I think  that in order to get the best results and to be flexible it`s good when the environments maps provide the overall star scape with for example one mean nebula.

All the other elements, like moons, planets, clusters and additional nebulae, are separate renders that can be put onto alpha planes.

What`s really cool is that if you delete the ground plane you have a space environment all around.

Quite impressive.

Below is one of the test renders with an enviroment map (2048x1024) and some additional elements that were put onto alpha planes (the moon uses an alpha mask,  the other elements I turned additive.)

There were point lights added.

Rendertime 10 seconds :-)