Finding/making/buying a star field?

[Sulla]

I want to make a star field to back a fake window with. I have an ovalish window opening and about 4"-5" depth to place a star field behind it. I don't need anything transparent or a full color nebulae or anything. Just a bunch of white and maybe a few other shades of stars if it'd make it look good on a matte black background.

I have experimented unsuccessfully with speckling white paint on black backgrounds with brushes and spray bottles. Irregular blobs look terrible as I want this to look slightly passable at 5' (it does not need to hold the illusion of true 3 dimensional space thought that would be a cool effect.)

The cheaper the better. I could create a vector file that would work but I have no way to print it in nice color, full size without spending an arm and a leg on some vinyl at some sign shop.

Anyone have any ideas to throw at me?

 

[Ikariya]

If I remember right, in Star Trek: The Next Generation they used a giant cloth with sequins sewn in for their stary skys out window shots. They used varying lights to make them twinkle. They showed this off in one of the specials.

 

[Sulla]

Hhmm... sequins... nah, I think I'll pass on that. Thank you for the tip though, I appreciate the information. I am not viewing a blurry star field through a TV camera lens focusing on the foreground; this will be a feature of an office I am re-doing.

Think of it as a fake porthole through a bulkhead into space.

 

[TalkShowOnMute]

Why not use something like this..(link below). Backlit with holes of varying sizes punched in it.
anything too big would be cheesy, but pinhole size holes with slightly larger ones tossed around would give an effect of distance for sure.
BLACK STYRENE PLASTIC, 11 " WIDE x 14 " HIGH x .030 " THICK

 

[Sulla]

Cool idea. But I am not back lighting it. Just want a graphic.

 

[Sulla]

Wow, if I only had the money:
©CinemaShop StarTiles™ Starfield Lighting Ceiling Tiles

I thought about using fabric though... that's an idea.
Starfield Map fabric by corseceng at Spoonflower - custom fabric
Blue Nebula #1 fabric by corseceng at Spoonflower - custom fabric
Red Nebula fabric by corseceng at Spoonflower - custom fabric

Or even a set or three of LEDs like these I recently saw here pushed through some black fabric covered foam as the starfield... I know I can get smaller bundles from hobby stores for making christmas wreaths and I am pretty sure there's a few on-line retailers that sell the things.

 

[propologist]

tooth brush and some paint for good splatters ( white,off white etc.) and then vary with other brushes for various sizes etc. You can use different dark shades of blue to help give it depth as well.

 

[darthgordon]

Something like black velvet would absorb light without glare. Fiber optics placed in pin holes could simulate star light.

A projection against a dark wall behind it... not cheap though, unless you already have a projector.

 

[modelcitizen]

backlit through a black medium is the oldschool way so i heard....

 

[darthgordon]

backlit through a black medium is the oldschool way so i heard....

It really is the easiest and cheapest way to do it... and it looks better than anything else.

 

[Klwl]

alternative to startiles

Fiber Optic Ceiling

 

[Phelyx]

I'm thinking the best solution is just to get a nice high-resolution photo of a real starfield and print that as a translight, then put some diffusion and fluorescents behind it to light it up. It might also look good enough without light. If you get it printed at a quality place, it'll be nice and sharp. If you're using a real window, the natural light outside might work.
If you decide to create your star field with paint, lights or punched holes, etc... there's one interesting thing to remember. It has to do with "true randomness" sort of.
I worked on a TV show once where I had to recreate a short film to look like a 50s sci-fi movie that the characters on the show were watching on TV. I only needed a few iconic shots to sell it as a "classic" sci-fi movie, and one of those shots was a rocketship with flames and smoke flying across a starfield. It was determined that the starfield was a "lighting effect," so due to union rules, I had to hand over the creation of it to another department. I told them (incorrectly, I realized in retrospect) to make "random" tiny holes in a large sheet of tin on a frame. The idea was to shoot light through the back and dangle the rocket in front of it facing downward with the camera on its side so the flames would appear come out of the rocket's engine straight back.
When they were done, the resulting starfield looked really fake. Nothing like real stars. Sort of like those Fiber Optic Ceilings...
The grip argued that he'd done exactly what I told him to do. He put "random" tiny holes in the tin sheet. The stars were indeed "randomly" spaced but his random spacing of holes oddly made the stars look too uniformly scattered to be actual stars. Real stars are somewhat clumped and have areas where they're clustered into almost cloudy areas. Sometimes a few bright stars are right next to each other, sometimes they're all alone in a darker area, etc... The grips had taken an awl or some other pointed tool and just BAM BAM BAM into the tin sheet, and somehow their instincts on the idea of randomness created what might be considered random if it were supposed to be a random pattern of dots in a design or for a textured wall or some other design where a uniform style of randomness would be appropriate... but these were supposed to be stars.
We (they fixed it, actually, no union grievances here!) fixed it by making more holes in certain areas... less in others... areas of star clusters, etc... We looked at a photo of real stars, and finally got something that was good enough for our fake 50s sci-fi movie.
So my point in all this is that if you're going to make your own starfield, don't do it like the fiber optic ceiling folks did, to me that just looks like a decorative pattern of tiny lights - and don't think of stars as "random."

 

[Lichtbringer]

A backlight printed Starfield in my Cinema, lights on:

Without the backlight, looks even nicer (better black and better contrast) :

And the Fiberoptic ceiling in my living-room (it´s hard to make pics from it):