On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 03:18:10PM -0600, Terry Brown wrote:
I think the original thread was in the devel. forum, but just wanted to share my how to make a starry background trick.
Rather than make a really small circle and clone it everywhere, just a draw messy scribbled line all over the area that needs stars, using the freehand tool. The kind of thing a toddler would give you to put on the fridge.
Then set the line type to the most spaced out, smallest dashes, which are actually square (dash length = line width), so they look like little dots. Make the line white, on a black background you end up with little white points with a pleasing random distribution.
That is actually a great trick. I've used a similar one in the past for sparse leaves on distant trees. Draw a few brown strokes for the trunk and branches, and then do the dots trick in green rather than white for the leaves. You can use two or three lines with different shades of green to fluff it out a bit. Photorealistic it ain't, but it looks less childish than the green-cloud-above-brown-stick effect.