Another bane in Fan Films is how you make the streaking effect that is used in the Star Wars movies whenever a ship goes into lightspeed. Well, I believe that I have found a solution.

I can't give you EXACT details on how to do this, because quite frankly, it was fluke to start off with, and I can't remember how I got to the solution in the first place.  Not good enough I hear? Fear not, I will jot the stuff down as best as I can, but if you like, you can just download the file that I made.

However, if you want to try this one yourself, then go right ahead, but these aren't detailed instructons, more of a rough guide really so you will have to experiment.

1.) Change the Animation TIME CONFIGURATION to about 3 seconds/75 Frames (NOTE: Since I'm from the UK, we use 25fps, where as the US uses 30fps - for this exercise you will conform to my standards)

2.) Create a CAMERA facing directly ahead. (24mm - 35mm should do nicely).

3.) Create one CYLINDER, with a radius of 0.33 and length of 1.0 (10 sides).

4.) Go to MATERIAL EDITOR, and give it a BRILLIANT WHITE surface. Set the shading to PHONG, and the AMBIENT/DIFFUSE/SPECULAR/FILTER to white, and the SHININESS/SHIN. STRENGTH to 0, and the SELF ILLUMINATION/OPACITY to 100. Apply this to the Cylinder.

5.) Animate it - Between frames 0-45 STRETCH IT, so the radius is still the same, but the lenngth is a couple hundred units. Between frames 45-75 you will MOVE the cylinder towards the camera. (maybe just a little beyond).

With any luck, that should be star #1 done. All you have to do now is create a whole field of them.

6.) Make over 1000 copies of that cylinder. Move them to around the screen so they look like a whole shit load of dots in your FRONT VIEW.

7.) Go to VIDEO POST, and ADD your camera to the timeline.

8.) Create a STARFIELD - DIMMEST STAR: 100, BRIGHEST: 255, COUNT: 75000, SEED 20000. 9.) Add an IMAGE OUTPUT - Name it HYPERSPACE.AVI (Set your desired filter) 10.) Render!

Any comments, questions, job offers, love letters, and hate mail should be sent to the following E-Mail address.

dirkdiggler@onetel.net.uk

Good luck in your projects.

Yours truly,
Mark Hedge.