Creating a Star Sphere in 3D Studio Max
This tutorial will walk you throught the steps to create a star sphere that can be used as a backdrop for any space scene. It is best used in scenes with a lot of camera movement where a flat background or planar background would not be sufficient.
This tutorial is written for a beginner at 3d modeling.
This tutorial is specifically written using 3dsmax 7 but the concepts should be similiar for any version of 3dstudio. I am assuming you have the default toolbar layout in 3ds.
Step 1 - Turn on 3D Snap
Step 2 -Select a sphere object
Step 3 - In any of the viewports, click and drag a Sphere object and make the Radius 500. Remember you can always adjust the size of the sphere using the radius spinner in the parameters rollout to the right.
Step 4 - Now lets open up the Material Editor by pressing M on your keyboard of select it from the toolbar. Pick any slot and lets rename the material 'SkySphere'. Check the '2 sided' option Open up the Maps rollout, and lets assign a Noise map to the Diffuse slot by clicking on the NONE to the right of the Diffuse map selection and pick NOISE from the Material/map browser window that appears. You should end up with this:
Step 5 - Go ahead and assign the Material to the Sphere 
. Click on the Noise map and assign the following parameters in the rollout:
- Size 3.5
- High 68
- Low 66
You should now have something like this:
Step 6 - Click the Up arrow Above, then drag the Noise from the Diffuse slot into the Self Illumination Map and pick Instance
Step 7 - Go ahead and close the Material Browser window. In any of the viewports, create a Target Camera object inside the sphere object.
Step 8 - Render out the scene and have a look at what we got. Its a sky sphere that offers a full 360 backdrop for space battles, planets, or whatever you need that requires something a little more than a static backdrop.
Tips for improving the scene: You may want to add a single omni light in the center of the sphere and include ONLY the skysphere for illumination to help brighten up the stars a bit. I find this helps when rendering out animations with fast camera movement.