Compositing Venus with a Spaceship

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What does it take to create a realistic space shot? 

In this tutorial we will cover the basic techniques in After Effects from applying star-maps, blending your assets and judging brightness values.
The shot we're looking at is concept art for Syntactic Labyrinths.

When you're compositing stars into your background it is good to use high-dynamic range assets. This will make sure that no matter how you color correct the plate, your stars will always keep their bright core.

I personally use our own collection of 32-bit HDR stars, Star System.

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