Nebula Effect in Illustrator

Dose anyone know hot to do this. Thanks

Only thing I can think of is Illustrator 9 or 10 with lots of transparency and gradient meshes and LOTS and LOTS of paths overlapping each other for areas where the gas becomes less than transparent.


You'd honestly be better off in Photoshop, if, however, you need a nebula that is infinitely scaleable like you get in Illustrator you could do it, but it would be a lot of work to make it look just right. Of course, you could always use Streamline on a real nebula image and get something halfway decent in a few minutes.

I built myself a nebula in Photoshop Elements that looks superb. It only took about 15 minutes. I did it by doing layer after layer of thick blue squiggles, gaussian blurring each one, every now and then making one layer "Colour dodge" the one beneath it. After I had all the layers I overlayed several layers of a cloud filter over it to give it the volumetric look. If I wanted a few more effects on it I would apply gradients to the layers or put some lens flare or other lighting in.

Thanks guys . I have a plugin that make star..Nebulas...etc in photo shop. Thats the way I do my space photos,but just wanted to see id there was a way to do it in Illustrator because I wanted to make sime lcars from the Dauntless.

YOu could do it, like I said, but it'll be a lot harder than clicking a button in a plugin

Can I get that plugin, Resistance?

Just import the Photoshop images into Illustrator and either overlay the display over them or use a clipping mask to get the shape you want. It will look a million times better than anything you'll do in Illustrator, unless you're going for that graphical stylized look.

Originally posted by Zanith
Can I get that plugin, Resistance?

It's probably Glitterato from Flaming Pear...they have fully functional versions on their website you can download.

Thanks again, Kakaze.

NP