Red Supergiant - Animated Stellar Surface & 3 LODs 3D Model

Bring a restless red supergiant into your space scenes.

This artistic stellar model combines an irregular spherical surface with deep red-orange elevations and glowing yellow recesses. Local regions brighten and fade at different phases, creating the impression of heat emerging from within.

The effect comes from animated surface emission: no external halo, rays, particles or bloom are required. The sphere itself remains stationary while patterns of heat evolve across its surface.

AI-assisted model, refined and packaged by mrbean.

ANIMATED INNER HEAT

• Seamless 12-second material animation.
• Multiple regions brighten and dim independently.
• Emission mask combines surface-depth measurements with texture detail.
• Darker raised areas preserve the visible relief.
• Native Blender material animation without Python or auto-run scripts.
• Unity URP implementation with intensity, speed and pause controls.
• Independent settings for multiple Unity instances.
• Continuous animation phase across LOD changes.

INCLUDED FILES

• Editable Blender file with packed textures and animated material.
• FBX and self-contained GLB for all three LODs.
• Static OBJ/MTL for LOD0.
• Eight 4096 4096 PNG texture maps and masks.
• Unity URP package with prefab, LODGroup, shader, runtime component, material and demo scene.
• Separate shader and runtime source files.
• 16 PNG previews.
• Two 12-second MP4 videos: camera orbit and a fixed-camera heat-animation demonstration.
• English README, license notice, file list and third-party notices.

GEOMETRY

LOD0: 150,000 triangles / 75,002 mesh vertices.
LOD1: 75,000 triangles / 37,502 mesh vertices.
LOD2: 33,000 triangles / 16,502 mesh vertices.

Each LOD has one mesh, one material and one UV set. All three meshes are closed and manifold. Imported vertex counts may increase at UV seams.

The pivot is at the centre. The asset has an approximate diameter of 10 scene units and can be scaled to suit your composition. No real astronomical scale is claimed.

FORMAT SUPPORT

Blender: animated material with packed textures.
Unity URP: animated shader with runtime controls.
GLB: static emissive appearance with embedded textures.
FBX / OBJ: static exchange formats; material setup may require adjustments.

GLB uses KHR_materials_emissive_strength and KHR_materials_specular. Compatible viewers are required to reproduce the intended appearance.

OBJ does not connect the tangent-space normal map automatically. The supplied normal texture can be assigned manually. Emission intensity and material appearance vary between importers.

VALIDATION

Prepared and tested with Blender 4.5.10 LTS and Unity 6000.3.24f1 / URP 17.3.0.

Checks included reimport of the final exported models, isolated Blender loading without external textures, clean Unity-package import, Play Mode controls, multiple instances, LOD switching and animation-loop continuity.

PLEASE NOTE

This is a stylized artistic interpretation inspired by red supergiant stars, not a scientifically accurate reconstruction of Betelgeuse.

Animation affects the material, not the mesh or a skeleton. No rig, surface deformation, stellar eruption, corona, particles or gameplay systems are included.

Fine inherited surface facets and some texture-atlas transitions may be visible in extreme close-ups. The supplied Unity shader targets forward URP rendering; other render pipelines and platforms have not been validated.

Preview videos show the actual model and effect without bloom or glare.