Post #5by John Whatmough » 26.05.2005, 15:17
Hadn't thought of that, but wouldn't modifying flare.jpg affect all stars? Is there a way to set a flare style for a specific star?
Also, I neglected to mention the technique I used to get this effect...
Basically, the belt is a combination of three "planets", each with a zero orbit that puts them inside the star. The first has a giant ring that extends 100,000,000 km. The second is highly oblate and has a atmosphere height the same value as the ring width. The third is the same as the second, only less oblate and smaller. The actual radius of each "planet" is ~600000 km, so the "planets" themselves are hidden inside the star. And, of course, the radius of each is slightly different than the others to prevent them from "blinking".
Only flaw so far is that you have to turn off ring shadows. Otherwise the "planets" cast a long thin shadow on the ring. You can make the ring emissive, but then you get an odd brightness gradient across the ring. I've toyed with using a null mesh to remove the planet shadow, but this tends to crash the program.
Also, zooming in on the star penetrates the atmospheres, so you'll get the same kind of blinking and odd effects as when you get too close to a planet with an atmosphere, only more so because there are two atmospheres overlapping.
-John
