I haven't been able to find anything in this forum about star maps / starfields.
Does anyone know how to make them? I'm pretty sure I'd have to use S3PE and find the section on stars, would I need to replace the file? Would it be an image file?

I want to make my own- using an already made free program I have, I'm trying to find the starfield and extract the file so I can make a custom one for the sims. I've seen 2 people do it on tumblr before..
I just don't know any resources and was wondering if anyone had any?

Edit: I've located and extracted the image files from the program, and I'm going to try to use brntwaffle's starmap as a starting point, so I'm going to replace the image and .dds files with my new ones.
But, still, there aren't any resources for editing stars, other than changing the brightness when you're changing .ini files in entire environmental mods.
I'd like to figure out where the star twinkling animation file is, and how I can edit that. If I eventually do figure it out, I guess I'll post it, in case anyone else needs the info?

He'res how the starmap looks . For some reason when I extracted it from the program, it came with an extra .png file: I'm wondering if it has anything to deal with the lack of color...

I can't get the starmap to be in color, no matter what I do with the alpha layer. It just keeps rendering in greyscale, and it also has a noticeable seam that isn't there when I manually tile the starmap image in a photo editing program. So I don't know what's going on. I wonder if the starmap on default is supposed to be in greyscale, but I know I've seen one before that had color in it.

I've tried messing with the alpha layers in photoshop and in S3PE, and it doesn't do anything to change the fact that there is not color to the starmap. So from what I can gather, it automatically renders in greyscale and there's nothing you can do about it.
The seam is also something that I can't control through experimentation. Also, someone mentioned that it's from the .INI files that determine sky color, I don't know if it's true, but it sounds like it's very possible.

If anyone else experiments with starmaps and finds interesting information, I'd love to know! Especially since there are no resources for starmaps in any sims forums that I can find.

edit:
My process to making a new starmap is as follows, in case anyone wanted to make their own, and can't find info on this either:

• I downloaded brntwaffles' starmap from tumblr (and asked for permission to use their file- they said yes). Open it in S3PE and take a look at the two files- one is the .DDS image file that you need photoshop (or gimp? I'm not sure) to edit. I actually needed to download a plugin for my video card to make .DDS files before I could do anything. The other file is for reference for Sims 3 to read and locate the .DDS file, I think.
• Right click on the file tagged "_IMG" and go down to save .DDS
• Open that up in Photoshop to look and see the image size, bit size, alpha layers etc. for reference.
• If you want you can create a new layer to use that file as a base, or open a new image up with a perfect square image size. At this point, I don't know exactly how image size effects how many times it will tile in the sky, but I do know that the smaller the stars are in your image and/ or the more you tile the stars in your image, the smaller the stars will get in game. The less tiles and/ or the bigger the stars, the bigger in game they are.
• It's really up to you whether or not you want to make the image seamless. I've found that even if mine is seamless, there can still be a seam/ break in the image where it doesn't line up.
• Save as .DDS file. Open the .package file of brntwaffles starmap in S3PE (or whoever's starmap you're using as a basing point- make sure oyu have permission if it's in their TOS).
• Click the file tagged "_IMG", go up to the top menu and select Resource > Replace..., and choose the .DDS file of yours. It should create a new image in the preview automatically, so you don't need to right click the _IMG file and "load image" and "load .DDS" like I originally was doing. Replacing the file is better.
• Select all of the files in the package (CTRL+A), go up to the top menu and select Resource > Export > To .package....
• Then all you have to do is save and put in your sims 3 mods folder. You can't use two starmap overrides at the same time, but you can use a starmap override and an environmental mod (as long as the enviro mod doesn't mess with the starmap files)

Interesting information - thanks