Hi,
I know others have posted some image maps of stars to use in TG2 renders. I was looking for a program to generate my own. I went out to Fry's Electronics and in their cheap jewel case software I found "The Ultimate Home Planetarium" $9.99, not sure exactly how well it will work, it allows you to view the stars as they would appear anywhere, but it's very colorful, I've not tried doing a render with one yet, but I figured I'd mention it. If any of you have heard of or used other software for this purpose, please let me know as well.
Thanks,
I don't use it . Celestia...Free :)
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Thanks, Celestia is cool. I tried some searches the other day and didn't find anything.. but the planetarium software was only $10, and looks to be somewhat useful as well.
If you use Lightwave there is a plugin for this , but it is a little pricey :)
http://www.maasdigital.com/starpro/
I use Celestia, 160-ED to be exact. Default settings more or less, and drag the sky around (you start out right in front of the Sun) and take a screenshot with Print Screen (unless you're on Mac, in which case do whatever you do to take a screenshot). Put it in Photoshop (Windows and Mac) and crop it so none of your OS UI or Celestia's UI or explanatory text is visible. Then crop it to the aspect ratio you want, and put it in Terragen. There's also a couple of procedual starfields available here. Import one into TG2, then delete the default BG node.
Stellarium does a very nice job. It is a more pure planetarium than Celestia. I think it can also be used to drive telescopes for tracking. Not sure about this function though.