Stars Generator for Billboards

Stars generator allows creating a starry night sky, with stars drawn fast on Billboards. It is found in the Node tab -> Stars section of a Billboards object.

To create the stars billboards, follow these steps:

1. Add the Billboards node.
2. In the Node tab of the Parameters window, go to the Stars section and specify a FK5 stars catalog (the Fifth Fundamental Catalogue) in the Catalog field. You can download, unpack, and use the following catalog file: catalog.zip.
3. Make sure that the Radius of the created sphere with stars is not bigger than the camera's far clipping plane (Camera Settings -> Far clipping). Otherwise, stars will not be seen.
4. Click Generate to create billboards.
5. Click Texture 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_stars and assign it to the Billboards object.
   2. Go to the Textures tab of the Parameters window and load a diffuse texture: select the previously saved stars texture.
7. After changing any parameter in the stars generator, click Generate to reload the diffuse texture.