Asteroids

                  Ok, the cool thing about space scapes is there are not a lot of poly's invested across the breath of your scene. Which is great for us because this means we can indulge ourselves in the planet rings themselves, using the high poly count for that. However, if you have a lot of large ships and space docks for repairing all the damage inflected by battles in a far off nebula, you may want to scale down the poly count for your rings as it can cost CPU time in the rendering.

So lets have at it shall we . . . Open Modeler and search for a planet you want to use. If you have a costume planet you made this is fine, use that. But for this tutorial I am just going to use the stock planet in LW located content\objects\space\planet.lwo.

Step 1:   Load the planet in the first layer. This planet comes with an atmosphere already so we won't have to worry about starting our planet belt too close to the atmosphere. The planet measures 7000 FEET across so we are going to have a nice size ring system.

                Now activate layer 2 and put layer 1 in the background so we can see what we are doing. The two most important view ports here are TOP and LEFT. These are the ones we are going to be using to shape our ring system, so use whatever set up you like just make Top and Left handy to work out of.        Ok now save object as planet_rings.lwo.

Fig 1

Step 2:   Ok grab your Spray Points Tool: Create Tab\ Elements and click to the left of the planet in the top view to activate it. In the Numeric Tablet: n key (Mac). Set the Rate at 20 and the Radius at 450' this will give us a nice size inner system to start with.

Fig 2

Step 3:   Take your Spray Tool and circle the planet once this is all you need to do in order to get started. You should wind up with about 1900 point or so. Don't worry about the shape of your circle, as asteroids are anything but uniform. Just make sure you have some space between your planet and the start of the first ring set.

Fig 3

Step 4:   Ok, now that we have our first ring set, we need to make it a little more dense as 1900 rocks in an Asteroid Belt is laughable. So we copy paste the points in layer 2, into layer 3.    Set layer 1 and 2 into the background. With layer 3 in the foreground grab your Rotate Tool: Modify Tab\ Rotate, and in the Top View "Center", rotate layer 3 about 25 degrees.
    Repeat step 4 as many times as you like in order to get a dense field of soon to be Asteroids.

Fig 4

Step 5:   I made 7 separate layers to get a nice thick Asteroid Belt going, but like I said do as many as you like but keep it within reason we have a lot of room as far as poly count goes but keep in mind that points can add up very quickly here . . . .

Fig 5

Step 6:   Now flatten the layers with all the points so that they rest on layer 2.

Fig 6

Step 7:   Ok, now we must clean up the areas inside and outside the first belt system.    Select points along the outer and inner edges of the ring, the idea is to make a clean edge without too many stragglers. You don't have to make it perfectly clean and sharp "as asteroids are anything but uniform", but you want to be able to recognize the gap between the rings at a distance. .
      Save object . . . . . .

Fig 7

   Continue to part 2 .... here