Planet Animation
Project 1
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Part 1: Begin Animation
Using the tutorial outlined in Chapter 2 of the Derakshani text, I created a basic animation of our solar system.
I created the sun, nine planets (including Pluto) and moons. For each planet with more than one moon, I created two moons. I gave the planets temporary colors for ease of identification. Each body, except the sun, rotates counterclockwise around itself, each set of moons rotates around its respective planet, and each planet rotates counterclockwise around the sun.
Part 2: Personalize Animation
1. Change surface textures of sun, planets, and moons.
I changed the temporary colors on the sun, planets, and moons to more realistic textured surfaces. For the sun, I used an animated lambert fractal to show movement. For the planets, I wrapped corresponding planetary images from https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/.
2. Reposition planets around the sun
For ease of planetary placement, I added concentric circles to represent circular orbits around the sun. Then I used the positions of the planets on February 7, 2022 from https://www.theplanetstoday.com to set the initial positions of the nine planets and their moons.
3. Stand on Pluto
I created a camera and fixed it on Pluto. In the first animation, when we look through the perspective of this camera, we can see that we are orbiting the sun while on Pluto's surface. However, since all the planets rotate the sun at the exact same rate (e.g. they all move 720 degrees during the course of the entire playblast), we don't see the other planets moving.
In the final animation, I adjust the speeds of the planets to more accurately
represent their orbital speeds around the sun, relative to Pluto.
Mercury: 48 km/s
Venus: 35 km/s
Earth: 30 km/s
Mars: 24 km/s
Jupiter: 13 km/s
Saturn: 10 km/s
Uranus: 7 km/s
Neptune: 5.4 km/s
Pluto: 5 km/s