@jacabyte, on May 13 2007, 04:04 PM, said in TC; basic technical help:
Yikes!
Alright, sorry about that, but I use GIMP and I know that it is possible to get better pictures than that. You might want to try going to a little site called Solar Voyager and picking up a few pointers. They have a tutorial on star fields that's pretty good. It does takes awhile to get from the first step to the last step but you'll be happy with the end result. It was also meant for Photoshop but it's pretty easy to translate to GIMP. And for planets I use this script. Have at it!
You probably have more than two class periods (a bit under three hours) to make something in too. After spending a class period and a half learning to make the low-detail planet (which I messed up on the shading a bit if you notice the right end(, I didn't have much time to do much else, so I spent twenty-thirty minutes making the stars, cutting and pasting the Viper, and adjusting the lens flare to make it look like a proper light source (not too bright, not too dark).
Like I said above, my technique is to create a low quality starfield thats a little less obvious that its different quality than a copy/paste job with a grainy image, not to mention its plainess makes your eye focus on the subject as opposed to the background. Of course, its much more effective on the casual viewer, I'm sure.