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Creating a star scroller with Blender

Creating a star scroller with Blender
Photo by Federico Beccari / Unsplash

Today I have been learning how to create a star scroller effect in Blender, a classic demoscene effect. I’ve been experimenting with particle systems to generate the stars and fine-tuning their movement to match the desired effect.

  1. Create a plane, rotate 90° on the Y-axis, scale X by 10, and move -40 on the X-axis from the origin
  2. Add a particle system to the plane by selecting it and going to the Particle Properties tab
  3. In the particle settings adjust:
    1. Number: Set a high value (e.g., 5000) for dense stars
    2. Lifetime: Adjust to be long enough (100+ frames) so particles stay visible
    3. Emit From: Set to Faces to emit particles from the plane
    4. Velocity: Normal: Set to 2–5 to push particles toward the camera
    5. Gravity: Set to 0 to prevent falling
  4. Set up your start and end frames for the animation and render the final result
    1. For continuous scrolling, set the frame start to -1000 and end to +1000 relative to your animation frame count
  5. Create and align the camera:
    1. Create a camera (ensure it is selected before aligning)
    2. In the 3D view, press Numpad 3 to select the view
    3. Press CTRL + ALT + 0 to align the camera to the view

Here's how it looks:

Mikko