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Notes:

• There are 2 tutorials on this page, two ways of creating different types of starfields. You can download the first one below.
• There is a preset in Trapcode Particular that makes really nice Starfields with no effort whatsoever. Plus it's easy to manipulate. Get a demo of the entire Trapcode Suite.

Tutorial #1

1. Create a night sky in either photoshop or illustrator. You can make the stars different sizes if you like. Mine are all 1 pixel by 1 pixel. I made my sky 320x240. Dark blue or black are recommended for the sky (unless you are building an alien landscape).
2. Import your sky into AE.
3. Create a comp and make sure it's the exact same color as the sky you created.
4. Duplicate this layer several times four layers look okay, but ten look excellent) and rotate each one. I've rotated mine 40° apart and moved them so that the entire screen will always be covered by stars.
5. Add random keyframes on each for opacity. I had better results by keeping my opacity between 0%-40%. Too bright looked fake.
6. Select all of the keyframes for opacity on one layer. Use the wiggler to create more random keyframes. I set the frequency anywhere from 3 per second to 8 per second and achieved good results. Do this to every layer.
7. I reselected my keyframes and ran the smoother on some of the layers that seemed to abrupt. It's up to you.

To Make it more realistic:

• Instead of reusing the same starfield picture you created, use several different starmaps.
• Check the NASA website for free pictures of the night sky and starfields.
• If you'd like to change the whole color of the sky or add a gradient, place an empty solid color over the entire comp and play with the transfer controls and transparency until you get the color you want.
• Use moving clouds or fog on a different layer, using a transfer mode or alpha mode. There is a tutorial about creating clouds and fog by using displacement maps. Several companies make excellent plug-ins to create clouds, too.
• Add lightning using the lightning plug-in.
• Don't forget, stars twinkle, planets don't!

Tutorial #2

Here's a technique for a quick way for creating a sky full of tiny distant twinkling stars. If your stars are bigger than pin-point size then this wouldn't work without some significant modifications.

1. Create a still frame with the stars in it. For lots of stars, the easiest way is to create a single frame of a star field of lots of tiny stars (without any motion trails), using one of the third party starfield plug-ins.
2. If you don't have any plug-ins you will have to make this frame up some other way, maybe by painting in Photoshop. Make the stars white and the background black.
3. Import this into After Effects, and use it as a track matte over a black solid layer which has the Noise effect applied to it. Uncheck the Use Color Noise, and Clip Result Values boxes. The noise will create random fluctuations between light and dark, which will only show through the little holes in the track matte.
4. You might also want to layer another copy of the still star field over the top, using add or screen transparency to get rid of the black, and set opacity to 50%, which will ensure that the twinkling never goes completely to black. If the noise particles are too small, you could scale the solid up, or apply the mosaic filter