Making stars, nebulas, and planets with trueSpace
by Michael Smith aka MadCat

Here are a few trueSpace tricks I have stumbled across in my days . These should work in trueSpace 2 and up, thought I don’t know about trueSpace 4 yet . Also, right click on the material color box to input the RGB values, and right click on the shader value box to input the Ambient / Shine / ect. values.

• Part 1 ) - Stars/Suns;
  This is a simple way to make half decent looking stars or suns in only 4 steps .
  1. Create a Circle using the Create Regular Polygon tool with 100 sides.
     
  2. Paint the circle with a RGB value of 255, Ambient value of 1, Shine of 0, Rough of 0, Opacity value of 0, and a Refract value of 1.
     
  3. Quad-divide the circle.
     
  4. Use the Vertex paint tool to paint the Center vertex with a RGB of 255, Ambient value of 1, Shine of 0, Rough of 0, Opacity value of 1, and a Refract value of 1 .
     
  
  (Note: You can change the colors to make it look more yellowish/orangish, and also this technique can be used to make half decent engine glows . Tip: put a local light in the center of the circle, so the light sources are accurate).
  
  
• Part 2) - Nebulas;
  This is a how to on Making nebulas in trueSpace, you can fool around with these setting to suit your needs.
  
  1. Create a plane.
     
  2. Paint it with the following Procedural Marble Settings ; -Stonecol- RGB values of 139, 038, 255 -Viencol- RGB values of 255, and completely transparent -Turbulence- 5 -Sharpness- 0.8 - X, Y, Z Scales- 7, 7, 6, Grain Z -Main panel- Ambient value of 1, Shine of 0, Rough of 0, Opacity value of 0, and a Refract of 1 .
     
  3. Now angle the plane toward you and place it well behind any objects in your scene, re-size it to fill the whole screen.
     

(Tip: Use cameras instead of your Perspective View, this will allow you to select the plane, click on the ‘Look at Object’ ad the chose your camera . This makes it so the plane looks directly at you without having to rotate it manually).


• Part 3) - Planets;
  A simple way to make planets in trueSpace using the Procedural Marble Device . Fool around the settings to get your desired effect .
  
  1. Create a sphere, 64 Latitude , 64 Longitude
     
  2. Paint it with the following Procedural Marble Settings ; -Stonecol- RGB values of 034, 095, 178 -Viencol- RGB values of 241, 255, 254 -Turbulence- 5 -Sharpness- 0 - X, Y, Z Scales- 0, 1, 2, Grain Y
     

(Note: You can make rings for planets by making two circles, one larger than the other, then Boolean Subtract the smaller one form the larger to the desired thickness. Chose your color, set your ambiency and opacity to desired amounts, and vola, rings).

All of this is demonstrated in the following image