Thanks in advance. I want a program that does like Terragen does for terrain, but in outer space. I want to be able to place planets, stars, space dust etc... in 3d space and render it to six skybox textures that are "warped" correctly for skyboxes. In terragen, when you make a skybox using the camera views, the rendered textures are made such that they are seamless on the edges and the cube looks curved, which is exactly what a skybox needs. Is there such a program for outer space scenes as well, or will I have to use an actual 3d modelling program for it.

You could use POV-RAY as the renderer, and generate a POV-RAY input source file (in text format) for the actual scene (where planets, suns, stars etc go). That would be pretty easy to write; just create a text file and write random canned object references at random locations into it (with some heuristics on placement to make it look good).

Set the camera to 90.1 degrees FOV, and render from the center point in all six directions (say, using a 6-frame time animation) and you're good to go. I've created skyboxes this way and it works pretty well for procedural stuff.

What I was thinking of was using either blender or 3dsmax as my renderer and either creating or finding by internet models of planets space dust etc.. and using the programs above to create the scene. It would work the same way as terragen, except that I have to get the models myself. But if such a program existed on it's own, I would rather use it. Otherwise, I think I can do my own solution. I just wanted the easiest way to do it, which would be such a program. Does anyone know of one??