creating a nebula HELP

[spy46]

so i have never used ICE b4, but the best way for me to learn, is to have a project that i want to do as i have ADHD.

i have a space ship that ive modeled and im almost finished it, i want to eventually animate it in a little battle, but it needs an intro, so i figured it emerging from a nebula would be perfect, i want this nebula to also react to my ship passing thru it, one thing i was told that would work is ICE point cloud to create the nebula with some color variation and a few lights inside it to give it that extra glow.

any help would be apresheated.

[spy46]

are there any tutorials that may help show me how to do parts of this that any one knows of.

[Akurra]

I guess, it would be best to do most of nebula fx in post.
I would render several passes of animated nebula.
If you want a nice fluid effect, try using emfluid plugin.
You could also render a less dense pass of particles using emrenderpointcloud.
For volumetric nebula use particle volume shader (see flamethrower sample scene) or http://www.binaryalchemy.de/
Render one pass using shadows, and few other passes with different shapes of unshaded nebulas.

Then play in compositing software.

Also you can use several distorted planes with falloff plugin.

I attach a sample made using particles, distorted planes planes, volume clouds, maya paintfx (very simple fx, volume shader will give a lot better effect) ... very simple stuff. Composited in AE or Digital Fusion... don't remember.


Piotr

[spy46]

that is really freaking cool, but did you say that was in maya?

im using the program XSI 7.5, so would that mean ICE is used in both then?

[Akurra]

I didnt use ICE in them. I used maya and max, but you can get the same using XSI.

My point was, you don't need much complex ICE er... setup, to get good nebula fx.
Perhaps it would be best to create particle cloud, distort it with emfluid to get a natural gasous look
- then render the points to get stars,
- use some kind od sprite rendering or volume rendering on these points to get nebula fx
- add some distorted planes with fallof shader to get some delicate clouds

Then put all the passes to AE, add some glow, color corrections, to get cool final effect.

Check out binaryalchemy website at the examples - some nice nebula fx.
And - mootozoid - photon clouds example and rpc examples.

These elements will allow you to build good space fx using just simple tools.
No need for complex setups.