Warp Streaks

I've noticed on Deep Space Nine and the Next Generation that when ships are at warp, as the stars streak by they have a tint of color to them. Any idea how this is done?

An easy way to do this is to use a morph. Load your stars in modeler. Extrude all the single point polys far enough so that the end groups are distinct. Save it. Grab all the points at the extruded end, and move 'em back by the length of the extrusion, so it appears as if they're all single point polys again. DO NOT MERGE POINTS. Save this as your morph target.

Apply a color gradient to the source, and morph to the target for a still field. As you decrease the morph amount, the stars will streak and display the color gradient. You could add a surface morph if you want to vary the colors as it streaks.

Or you can dispense with the morph target all together. Use a limited range bone which encloses the extruded end. Move it back to zero for a still, pull it out as appropriate for streaks. You can also cause streaks to point in any direction this way, and you don't need particle blur.

I don't know if that's the way Amblin' did it, but it works nice.

Kent S. Lidke

John Gross also posted how they actually do the streaking stars in Voyager, which is exceedingly simple compared to what I put up (move the stars through a spectrum map with world coords).

What is a spectrum map? Is that anything like a specularity map?

Simply a map that goes from one color on one side thru some other colors and then back to the same color on the opposite side so you can repeat...