Points?

Sounds like you need a simple 3D particle system. You could do this by having an array or linked list of particles, holding data about their points and their texture. The point is always drawn by making a square surface, the centre of it being the point, and always facing the current viewport. You can then make stars of different types and sizes by simply specifying another texture.

Hope that all makes sense, I''m not much of a 3D programmer but I think it should work.

Good luck

Starfall

Yep, using texture mapped, color keyed/alpha keyed, cam aligned squares is about the only way to do it. You can also change the size of the points by scaling the vertex positions of the square.
You can change the colors/transparency by changing the vertex rgb and alpha values. You can also rotate the transformations to spin the particle squares. All sorts of fun stuff you can do.

Edited by - blaze on 1/3/00 9:05:45 PM

When I say points, I only mean cooridinates. Then you could use these to place your polygon or sprite.

acw83 == blaze?
Anyway, what blaze mentions is called a Decal in RM, so you can check the docs for info about them (Look for the RM page titled "Textures". In short, I think (it''s been awhile since I did RM) you load a texture, put it into a frame as a visual, call SetDecalSize and SetDecalOrigin on the texture, and render that frame (by itself or as part of another frame).

acw83 != blaze