tldr: I have an idea of a randomized cartoony night sky with stylized stars shader. Trying to logic out how to create it in UE4.
So in my head I’m thinking about creating a night sky with randomized cartoony stars over a pretty galaxy background. I can sort of already create something like this by faking randomization through warping the UVs with a texture. But I am trying to think of a way to really randomize those stars, sort of like the noise texture but with the stars masks.
My current idea:
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I am thinking that you could create a mask of a white star, and a black mask.
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Then you could randomly transform the stars within the bounds of parameters, and THEN you could randomize how many black masks go in between the star mask. OR, just also randomize the black mask’s parameters.
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Then if you layer two of those you would have a very pretty cartoon night sky. Maybe you would bake the resulting textures onto your sky sphere, OR you could move the layers very slowly at different speeds if you wanted something like showing the passage of time, or to make it look like you were on a moving spaceship.
Is there a better way to do this? I don’t want the stars partly faded out from two mashed together masks, which is why I’m trying to think of this other method. I also do not know HLSL, but have been wanting to learn it, so if there is a possible method using it please let me know. I am really just sharing my idea for brainstorming and for fun.