Tutorial

1. Launch Carrara and select File|New.
2. Create a terrain with a bit of gray around the sides and a fairly flat area of black in the middle. Apply a green shader.
3. Make a cube, then make it taller. Apply a reflective shader. If you want to get advanced you can use the wires effect to simulate windows. Position in the middle of the terrain. Duplicate, position near by and stretch a bit to change the shape. Repeat the last step until you have something close to a city. There should be a couple of buildings with big, unobstructed fronts to show the effect best. Alternately, download a pre-made city and terrain shown in Figure 1 for PC or Mac.
4. Grab the default spot light and drag it around to the right of the camera. Point it a little above the city, set the Hotpoint to x=0, y=0, and z=0.

5. Bring up the properties for the scene and specify StarBright as the background. Set the following properties:
   
   Stars = 1000
   Intensity = 0.01
   Magnification = 4
   Firmament Color = sky blue
   Horizon Color = a little grayer than the Firmament
   Z- = unchecked
   
   We're using a high Magnification value because the initial render will be in a small window (160x120), we need big stars. When the size of a star falls below the size of a rendered pixel they tend to vanish and reappear when animated. If you want to render at a higher resolution, you should reduce the magnification

6. We'll do the transition over 12 seconds, so bring up the timeline and check the snap option. Drag the timeline along to the 12 second mark.
7. First we need to lower the sun. Grab the default light and rotate it down to just above the ground plane. Change its color to dark red and drop its intensity to be very low.
8. Next we need to animate the sky. Change StarBright's settings to the following values.
   
   Intensity = 1
   Firmament Color = black
   Horizon Color = dark blue/purple.
   Elevation = 1
   Rotation = 3
   
   Remember to set the timeline back to frame 0 before you make any adjustments to the buildings or the terrain.

9. You're done, it's time to render! I'd suggest you do the first render at fairly low resolution (160x120) as, even at 12 fps, there are quite a lot of frames (144). Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the first and last frames of the animation. Click here to see the QuickTime video at 320x240.

   To change the length of the animation, drag the keyframes for the final frame left or right. If you increase the resolution of the render, you can reduce the Magnification of the stars and the animation should remain smooth.