Solar System
Project 1: Solar System Animation
Colin Wright 1/31/2019
Tutorial Animation
Final Animation
4 Unique Additions
Custom Textures
For each planet in the solar system, I found free textures online that make the planets look more realistic. I found most of these textures from https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/. Applying the textures was relatively simple. Instead of just assigning a color to the lambert in the hypershade window, I selected to shade it with a file, and then selected the file from where it was stored on my computer.
Tesla Car
On February 6th, 2018, Elon Musk launched his red Tesla Roadster and its dummy driver "Starman" into space. The car is currently orbiting the Earth. There were no free Tesla models I could find online so I settled for a simplistic, somewhat generic looking red Porsche. I imported the model as a 3d model, then scaled it down to fit the scale of the solar system. Then treated it just like the other moons in the animation, by creating an orbit node that rotates the car around the Earth.
Death Star
Originally I tried looking for a model to import for the death star, but I couldn't find a free one that was useable. I decided to just add a free texture to a sphere like I had done with the other planets. I used cylinders to create the death star beams and a small sphere to help smooth the transition from the three smaller beams into the main beam. To animate the beam hitting Pluto, I chose a time in the animation when I wanted the beam to intercept the planet, found the near exact distance to the planet at the point in time, and then expanded the beam from not existing, to hitting Pluto by key-framing the scale of the beam. The Death Star also looked a little flat so I gave it a bit of motion like its traveling into position to fire the beam. Then I used the shatter effect to shatter Pluto on impact. I could only get the shatter effect to work on a new sphere, so as soon as the beam hits Pluto is replaced by an identical sphere but with the shatter effect. I then animated all the shattered pieces to float away and added smoke at the end of the laser using a 3D fluid container.
Planet Days and Years
Amount of days and years elapsed for each planet assigned based on their actual day and year times. The fastest rotating and revolving planets are the fastest in the animation, but the differences in speed are not to scale for the sake of a viewable animation. Days and years for actual data is in Earth hours, days, and years.
Mercury
In animation Actual
Venus
In animation Actual
Earth
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.375
Days: 2
Years: 88y
Days: 59d
Years: 3.125
Days: 1
Years: 225y
Days: 243d
Years: 3
Days: 5
Years: 1y
Days: 24hrs
Mars
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.875
Days: 4
Years: 687y
Days: 24.5hr
Jupiter
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.75
Days: 9
Years: 4,333y
Days: 9hr 55min
Saturn
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.625
Days: 8
Years: 10,756y
Days: 10hr 40min
Uranus
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.5
Days: 6
Years: 30,687y
Days: 16.8hr
Neptune
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.25
Days: 7
Years: 60,190y
Days: 16.1hr
Pluto
In Animation Actual
Years: 2.125
Days: 3
Years: 104,755y
Days: 6d 9hr