dmaas
02-06-2003, 12:17 AM
Does anyone have tips or tricks they'd like to share about rendering star fields that look good on video?
I've got a custom starfield renderer that renders really nice stills, and it looks fine for non-interlaced animations. (the renderer works by plotting each star as a gaussian "splat," usually around 3x3 or 5x5 pixels, which may be elongated for motion blur).
The renderer also does a fine job when I render at 60 fields and transfer to video.
But, I'm having problems with animations rendered and transferred to video at 30 frames, and also when rendering at 24 frames and applying 3:2 pulldown. It looks like the renderer interacts badly with any kind of interlacing - each star looks like a sawtooth box rather than a smooth spot.
I've double-checked that I've got the field dominance correct; the problem is not that simple. I suspect there might be a better way to draw the star spots so that they look better when shown on an interlaced display. Anyone?
(a friend suggested drawing the stars twice as tall as they are wide, to make sure they don't fall between the field scanlines. This helps a bit but I'm pretty sure I could improve things some more..)
I've got a custom starfield renderer that renders really nice stills, and it looks fine for non-interlaced animations. (the renderer works by plotting each star as a gaussian "splat," usually around 3x3 or 5x5 pixels, which may be elongated for motion blur).
The renderer also does a fine job when I render at 60 fields and transfer to video.
But, I'm having problems with animations rendered and transferred to video at 30 frames, and also when rendering at 24 frames and applying 3:2 pulldown. It looks like the renderer interacts badly with any kind of interlacing - each star looks like a sawtooth box rather than a smooth spot.
I've double-checked that I've got the field dominance correct; the problem is not that simple. I suspect there might be a better way to draw the star spots so that they look better when shown on an interlaced display. Anyone?
(a friend suggested drawing the stars twice as tall as they are wide, to make sure they don't fall between the field scanlines. This helps a bit but I'm pretty sure I could improve things some more..)