BlenderAdept - Hobbyist, Digital Artist | DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Your Nebula generator is nice and I really hope this comment will neither drag you down nor be ignored because you've clearly worked a lot on it but it looks too flat and "procedural" and I think you're putting your efforts in the wrong direction.

To get a feel of an actual volumetric nebula, you need :

- form shadows
- cast shadows from one volume to another
- volume scattering and absorption in varying gas densities
- light rays piercing through holes and space
- overall consistent lighting
- shapes inspired from real nebulas

And really there are only 2 ways to get that :

1. Painting (if you're very, very good)
Check out Tim Barton's painted 360 space panoramas like this one :

All the features I mentionned above are there (and very well executed)
Tim Barton's are easily the best painted ones I've found so far.

2. 3D smoke/particle simulations :
Check out Teun van der Zalm's Houdini simulations like this one :

I don't see how procedural setups can get any close to this, but Blender's smoke simulator definitely has the ability to give stunning results (maybe even more so with the upcoming mantaflow integration), so I would turn my efforts in this direction if I were you (provided your computer is powerful enough to run big simulations).

To me there's not much point in having a quick procedural generator for any user to get his unique nebula if the results are miles away from those of longer but better techniques.

Again I hope I don't demoralize you with this, you've done a great job with the method you picked. I just think it's not the best one, so I also hope you consider it for your future work.