Step 1
Open blender and select your cube. Yes, select it; don’t delete it. Add a new materiel and use the settings I’m using:
Play around with the settings, you’ll get endless different results, trust me. Seed randomized it, each number is a different effect. Try it; raise the number up one or two, or lower it, the result will be way different. Same with Flare. Experimenting is the key here.
Step 2
Now let’s make a star background. I played around and got a really realistic effect. Go to the World buttons and set the background color to black. And then enable stars.
Set the size to 0.076. This will make it really small, and if you do a render you’ll hardly be able to see them, but let’s go on, thing’s get better.
Set the StarDist to 3.7. This makes the distence between stars less, and gives it that relistic look, more of what you see when you look up into the sky at night, or pictures on Nasa.gov.
Don’t forget to make sure your camera is centered, or the flare will be off-centered and the effect won’t be as good.
Examples
Here are several different renders I got, the first one what you should see, and the rest are ones I changed settings to get different results.











June 22nd, 2009 on 9:42 pm
Hello Craig,
Thanks for this tutorial. I have added it to our list of tutorials:
http://overshoot.tv/node/556
I may use this effect for a future project.
Blessings!
July 9th, 2009 on 12:22 am
nice tutorial, but….
i dont get it, because i dont know
what software did you used?
can you answer me?
July 9th, 2009 on 6:09 am
Blender 3d. “Make an Exploding Star Deep in Space with Blender!”
Get it at Blender.org.
September 8th, 2009 on 10:53 am
nice
September 8th, 2009 on 6:52 pm
Thank you
October 19th, 2009 on 4:14 pm
Simple but Cool!
Thank you
November 7th, 2009 on 5:22 am
Thanks for reigniting my interest in blender, I[d all but given up, but if it can do this and do it this easily I may scrape up the energy to get back into it.
Got any tuts on making a decent spaceship, or even the enterprise?
November 10th, 2009 on 2:16 am
I tried making the enterprise for my sis once and it was failure haha. It was really bad, I don't know how to do something that advanced
January 27th, 2010 on 9:54 pm
This is the most comprehensive tutorial I’ve used. I appreciate the easy instructions.
February 1st, 2010 on 4:07 pm
Thx!!
February 25th, 2010 on 11:43 am
Your Message Thanks I pulled the camera back and did a animation flew right past the stars spun around the camera looks like Hollywood stuff . Thanks again
March 7th, 2010 on 3:01 pm
hey the background of stars showed up (very cool by the way) but the exploding star didnt, please help thanks
April 2nd, 2010 on 6:16 am
Hi
The exploding star doesnt render on mine either, any ideas?
Thanks
Nish