Stars Generator for Billboards

Stars generator allows for creating a starry night sky, with stars drawn fast on Billboards. It is found on Billboards node → Stars tab.

To create stars billboards, follow these steps:

1. Add Billboards node.
2. On the Stars tab, press Catalog load button and choose a FK5 stars catalog (the Fifth Fundamental Catalogue).
3. Make sure that the Radius of the created sphere with stars is not bigger than the camera's far clipping plane (Tools → Camera tab → Far clipping). Otherwise, stars will not be seen.
4. Click Create button to create billboards.
5. Click Texture button and choose a location to save a texture atlas with stars.
6. Create a material for billboards with stars:
   1. Inherit a material from billboards_base .
   2. Assign it to ObjectBillboards.
   3. Go to States tab → Options and check Angular size box. The stars will appear on the sky.
   4. Set up rendering of the stars billboards:
      1. Set Ambient pass to Transparent (otherwise, the stars will be too dull).
      2. Set Deferred pass to Skip.
      3. Set all light passes (spot, prob, omni, proj and world) to Skip (not to light billboards).
   5. Go to Textures tab and load a diffuse texture: select the previously saved stars texture.
7. After changing any parameter in the star generator, click Create to reload a texture in the Material settings.